The retail shock at the Lake Wobegon Mall would be immense.
I used to work for the Social Security Administration and we had manuals which explained in great detail, with samples, just about every type of legal documentation which were and were not acceptable. This included foreign documentation, with translations of common terms (names of months, etc). We also had notices of invalid documents such as stolen blanks with pre-printed serial numbers, and known sources of forged documents.
Today was a good one. I got an email from the President and Owner of the largish plumbing firm who recently made a house call. He said he was asking me personally for a review of my experience because it was important to him.
I had had a pretty good experience, so I thought I would give it a try. At the beginning, there were two options: I had a good experience, or I had a bad experience. When I clicked on Good experience, I was immediately taken to a public page where I could publish my comments under my (screen) name. So I canceled that and went back and, just to see what happened, I clicked on Bad experience. This went to an email type screen that would only be seen by the company (I’m sure the president would not be reviewing either of these). So we have a scheme to pump up the good reviews, and remove the visibility of bad reviews, all based on the lie that the president personally wanted to know how things went with me personally.
One time I was waiting for my car repair to be finished at the dealership, I wandered into the showroom and noticed a strategically placed looseleaf notebook containing customer reviews. The notebook was opened to a section containing gushingly effusive comments. I paged through and found some negative remarks, then left to check out a new car model. When I came back a few minutes later to read more reviews, the notebook was again opened to the gushingly effusive comments.
I think they had an employee detailed to make sure that only the positive reviews were immediately visible.
That sailor story is amazing. I wonder if he did get a legal divorce. If I was bride 2.0, I might call it off. He sounds like he comes from the shallow end of the gene pool.
I mentioned this story another time, but a clerk at a Texas DMV once told a friend of mine “we dont take driver’s licenses from foreign countries” when she went to change her Alaska DL to a Texas one.
That sailor did not get a legal divorce while I was at the same station in Japan. What astounded me even more was that she, along with her parents, were not bothered by it; they just went on living their lives. And the commanding officer did not care, so no UCMJ charges.
That bit about Alaska is hilarious. I’m fairly used to stories about New Mexico not being recognized by certain individuals in America, along with the number of companies that do not have the United States territories, including DC, as a recognized entry for the state field on the address. WTF? How can you not recognize that the federal capital is, in fact, part of the country? And it still galls me that some outfits that sell mostly to the military or that offer military discounts cannot fathom that APO and FPO addresses are United States addresses.
Just two days ago, I started filling out a survey and the darn thing only had the 50 states, no territories, no APO, no FPO, no DPO*, and no DC. I stopped the survey and sent E-mail congratulating them for being forty years behind the times.
*DPO was added to in 2009 and wiki thinks it’s a city abbreviation like APO/FPO were before the 1980s. Those are all listed in the state field per the USPS.
Want me to fill out your survey? Fix the damn thing so it works.
When my older nephew was in first grade they had a project to get postcards sent from all 50 states.So I looked up the administrative address of the territories and got him some unique cards and info sent. I think they were so pleased to be recognized and sent him envelopes of stuff, not just a card. I also got the addresses for a couple of “fun” states. This was when the governor of Minnesota was Jesse Ventura. He and the lieutenant governor(I can’t remember her name) sent big manila envelopes of stuff, plus a postcard.