{"id":3387,"date":"2006-02-14T22:31:32","date_gmt":"2006-02-15T06:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2006\/02\/14\/3387.html"},"modified":"2006-02-14T22:31:32","modified_gmt":"2006-02-15T06:31:32","slug":"persistence-of-smithsonian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2006\/02\/14\/persistence-of-smithsonian\/","title":{"rendered":"Persistence of Smithsonian"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The previous owner of my house is still on the Smithsonian catalog mailing list.<\/p>\n

As those of you who've been around for a while know, I moved into my condo in November of 2003. That's over 26 months ago.<\/p>\n

So I've gone through the following procedure about 25 times:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I receive a Smithsonian catalog addressed to Ms. Anderson, the previous owner.<\/li>\n
  2. I call Smithsonian's toll-free number.<\/li>\n
  3. (optional) Sometimes, I navigate through their phone tree only to find out that their \"leave a message to be removed from our mailing list\" voicemailbox is full.<\/li>\n
  4. I eventually speak to a live customer service rep.<\/li>\n
  5. I explain how long I've been trying to be removed.<\/li>\n
  6. The rep takes Ms. Anderson's information and assures me that this time she'll really be removed from the list.<\/li>\n
  7. (optional) Sometimes, the rep expresses surprise or confusion over the fact that Ms. Anderson is listed as having been removed from their list several times.<\/li>\n
  8. A month passes.<\/li>\n
  9. Repeat procedure.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    (Note: \"Repeat procedure\" is as close as a tech writer can get to that most glorious of stage directions, \"Repeat play,\" from Samuel Beckett's play Play<\/a><\/cite>.)<\/p>\n

    At this point I've passed beyond annoyance and into mild amusement. I've asked them to have a manager call me about it tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure I've spoken to managers about it before, to no avail.<\/p>\n

    Tonight, the customer service rep suggested that I call my congressperson. I think she had in mind that by doing so I could get put on do-not-send-junk-mail-to lists, but that wouldn't help; it's not me who's on the Smithsonian list, it's Ms. Anderson. I suppose what I should really do is send her name and my address to the Direct Marketing Association. But that sounds too much like giving up. :)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The previous owner of my house is still on the Smithsonian catalog mailing list. As those of you who’ve been…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-customer-service","category-customer-service-demon"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}