Dear FedEx

If your website says that the last pickup at a given location is 4:00 PM, and I arrive at said location at 2:08 PM, I shouldn’t have to hear, “Gee you just missed the FedEx guy. Guess this’ll go out on Monday.”

In short, learn how to tell time.  If you need to use a digital watch, rather than one of those fancy antiques with little metal arms that move around (I know, I know, the short hand representing a longer period of time IS confusing), I’m okay with that.  Just stop being stupid.

Sincerely,
Peter

Dear Facebook Users

Do not threadjack. When someone posts a status update, and someone else comments, and then you dive in and are all “Hey second commenter, I’d like to start a new totally unrelated conversation about whatever here on the original poster’s status update”, you are breaking the internet.

Dear Mom from the Olive Garden Commercial

I wouldn’t get my hopes up about Donna.

Love,
Ron

Dear Dish Network Phone Tree

Your menu system sucks. You offer two options, neither of which apply to me. When I’m frozen due to indecision, you offer me the two options again.

Thankfully, jamming 0 enough times took me to a human being. Not so thankfully, she proceeded to send me through to another phone tree.

Sigh.

- joel

p.s. It would not be in the spirit of this blog to mention that when I did get through to a human being, he was extremely helpful and got me taken care of right away. So I won’t.

Dear Movies

Cars peeling out on sand do not make squealing noises. Because it’s sand.

love,

Joel

Dear OSX

When I have an application in the forefront, that application should stay in the forefront FOR ALL TIME until I switch to something else. Me opening application A then switching back to application B while A opens is not your license to then steal focus from B while A does whatever it’s doing while it’s opening. A stays in the background until I bring it to the foreground. End of story.

Instead, you get all Patrick Swayze and are like “Nobody puts Application A in a corner!”, and decide that suddenly it’s time to just switch to A and send half of the sentence I was just typing to it instead.

So… fix this. Seriously.

Thanks,
joel

Dear All Websites

When you add JavaScript to your site so that as soon as I fill in a form field with enough characters it auto-advances me to the next form field… you are emboldening the terrorists.

Just thought you’d like to know.

Dear ESPN

Let me help with something, since you are clearly confused:

news (noun) \ˈnüz, ˈnyüz\
1. a report of a recent event; intelligence; information.
2. the presentation of a report on recent or new events in a newspaper or other periodical or on radio or television.

I could continue, but let’s just stick with those two simple definitions.  With those in mind, I’d like to know: how does the NFL Draft fit into either of those definitions?  It has not happened, it is not informative, it is not a “recent or new event”.  Moreover, I think I counted three playoff basketball games, three playoff hockey games, and sixteen regular season baseball games.

So why the hell are you spending large swaths of time on Sportscenter for weeks on end on something that doesn’t remotely qualify as news (and isn’t really all that important in the grand scheme of things)?  Take a freaking break: Saturday will be here soon enough and then you can report on, you know, a news event: the actual draft.  If I see one more mock draft, I will be taking the family vacation to Connecticut this year to asplode your studios.

Yours,
Peter

P.S. In case you think I’m just biased against the NFL, it was even worse when you had that tool, Steve Phillips, doing mock press conferences for each of the MLB teams.  Really, just stop it.

Dear Family Guy

It is not enough to simply show up each week.

Be more funny.

Love,
Ron

Dear Golden Wok Restaurant at Knapp’s Corner

It’s nice to have an Asian option in the area where I work where I don’t feel pressure to shovel as much food as possible  into my gullet to get my money’s worth. You, my friend, are a good ol’ fashioned no-buffet sit-down get one plate and that’s it restaurant.

And wow, your Hot and Sour Soup is great. It really is! There are so many places whose Hot and Sour is way too heavy on the sour part, and this makes for a really ridiculously bad-tasting broth. Yours is perfect. Don’t ever change that. Ever.

However.

Your menu needs an overhaul. Quickly. Any number of cliched Chinese dishes are on your menu. Sweet and sour pork. Kung pao chicken. Cashew Shrimp. Moo Goo Gai Pan. I could go on. This isn’t problematic, of course. Those dishes are expected to be on there for Mr. Non-adventurous-eater-who-got-dragged-here-by-his-coworkers-and-never-eats-Chinese-food. But grow a pair and add your own unique dishes! Most places like yours have a “Chef’s Specialties” section of the menu with more exotic or less common fare.  Most of your staff is Chinese afterall. They probably have a couple of ideas.

You also need to change your distributor for egg rolls. They are generic and boring. Not gross like the one place I went to in Muskegon that one time, just boring. Your crab cheese needs more crab. Some more cheese would also be nice.

But again — kudos on the soup. Keep it up.

Jonathan