"Why are you so upset, sir?" I heard our business manager, Carole Glenn, say yesterday, on the phone. She often takes calls from our subscribers and invariably handles them with tact and good humor. Since many of our readers are old (i.e. my age) we do get a few who have a bone to pick with us. Earlier this week, a guy called and said the T-shirt he had bought from us (The Doctor Will See You Now) had cracked and flaked and he wanted a new one. When Carole looked up the order, he bought the T-shirt over a year ago, so the fact that it was flaking, no doubt after numerous washings, is, in our way of looking at it, maybe not beyond, but certainly on the outer fringes of the warranty zone. But, Carole, being Carole, took the complaint and request to Roger, our T-shirt guy, and he said, if the guy would return the shirt with the flaking, he would replace it. When Carole told this to the customer, he said, and I quote, "Now I'm not going to have to pay shipping on this, am I?" To add insult to injury, the guy then sent Roger three new, blank T-shirts and wanted the Doctor Will See You Now image put on these three shirts and then sent back, no charge.
Daily Whipout: The Doctor Will See You Now
But that's not the guy who elicited the opening remark, above.
It turns out the guy who was so upset, saw the ad for "The 66 Kid" in the latest issue of True West and was calling because it didn't have the price of the book in the ad. When Carole told him the price, he said a few unprintable things about how misleading we were and hung up on her.
There Ought to Be A Special Place In Hell!
I guess the only thing I hate more than cheap weirdos is weirdos who blatantly steal. Or, at least I thought I hated them. When Max Evans confronted Sam Peckinpah about ripping off Evan's novel "The Hi Lo Country," for the ending of Peck's film "The Losers," Peckinpah allegedly replied, "Of course. It just shows you what good taste I have."
This is from the forthcoming book, "The Authentic Death & Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid," by Paul Seydor.
On the other hand, Peck says in a letter to Charles Neider: "Some people take up golf, a lot of people play tennis, I try to hang on to what I believe in." Which, I guess means, stealing from his friends.
"Good artists borrow, great artists steal."
—Picasso