I grabbed a pack of gum while waiting in line at Target the other day. I threw it in my bag and thought nothing of it until needed. While picking up a friend for dinner, I whipped out the 12 pack of gum for a quick zest of fresh breath. As I slid the foiled goodness out of the packaging my eyes glazed in confusion and utter surprise; there was no gum in 8 of the 12 foiled slots! I’ve been robbed, ripped off, denied! Did someone pop the gum out and slide the package back in the shelf? In further investigation, the sealed foil was untampered. This was a factory malfunction, a really bad quality control computer or person, or something gone wrong!
Anyhow, I thought I’d just share this little experience with ya’ll. I’ll write Dentyne and see if they’ll send me a years worth of chewies in exchange for this foiled flawed experience. That will make me happy again. This reminds me of some other such food experiences I’ve had, like, the soda with no air in the can, small bag of chips with just 3 chips, an orange mentos in a roll of white mints, a baked in raisin in a 6 pack of muffins, an immensely large M&M in a small pack(was like 9 of them mashed together into one orange stamped one), a ball of sugar in a box of cereal (size of a pinball), a bolt in a box of brownie powder, and now this pack of missing gum. Click on the image for closer look.

Update: Dentyne sent me a pack of gum, not the same one I bought, and 2 mints.  I was expecting a box of gum or something, but I guess they are cheap in customer service.

I ran into some moments this week where my perception and respect for certain places or things lost some points. I’ll site a few here briefly:

1. Door bell rings, 2 guys introduce to me to a charity, they keep acting nice, personable, asking me several questions, saying I’m cool, let us send you some free magazines, we should hang out, etc. Next thing I know, all my info is on a receipt and they want my signature. They were sneaky in obtaining my info, without asking the me directly. When I realized this, I said, no thank you, and they ripped the paper up, took the brochures they said I could keep, and sneered at me with some rather harsh words. This was just a reminder that I personally hate it when I am pushed into a sale without realizing it. Please just ask rather than lure. Sure you can push for a sale, but making a sale is not always the most important thing in a sale experience.

2. Art store visit. I bought some nice mylar paper to draw on, new person folds paper in 4 and stuffs in bag! I just looked at her oddly, and manager replaced my paper. When a person running a store does not know how to handle the products they are selling, that store has lost some points in my view.

3. I received a promotional gift for some free printed photos. How great. I went to the website, went through the painful membership process and uploaded pictures, only to find out there was no way to get the promotional gift. Perhaps there was, but I dug deep and could not figure it out…and I’m a tech type, so, if it’s hard for me, it’s probably really hard for many others. Case in point, if your giving away something free, make it easy to get, then let the customer decide if they want to return to learn about your services or products. Start them off with a smile, not a bad experience. I’m never returning to this site.

4. I found a new blog that seemed pretty cool, because it was from a pretty famous person….then, a few days later, the company writing the blog puts up a post to fyi the readers that that the posts are not written by that person, but just in his perspective not written by him. My delete button was the next thing pressed.