HEEEEY YOOOOOUUU GUUUUUUUYS!!!

We're gonna turn it oooon, we're gonna bring you the powerrr...

Oh, no, yooou guuuuuys, I WISH I was about to rant about that Electric Company, but I actually want to bitch about Green Mountain Power Corporation. And  I do realize,  'tis a dull and trite rant topic...something your classic J Arthur Crank
would be apt to grumble about ...therefore I'll try to be brief.

I set up my GMP account so that it's "paperless".    I'm sorta lax about attending to my actual, USPS snail mail, (whereas I'm more or less fused to a computer for the majority of every day) and that's why I've set up my account this way.  It cuts down somewhat on all the mailings, though they still send you a sort of abridged bill once a month.  You can,at any time, view your account online in full detail. This whole set up would be perfect if I could also pay my bill online.  Well, it's not entirely true that I can't .  The case is that I won't...because there's a $4.95 CONVENIENCE FEE that I cannot stomach.

Every crafty hippy peddling paper bead garlands on their bush league Etsy shop has set up a way for me to easily pay online but a corporate giant power corporation can't manage it?? They turf off the processing work to Western Union and that's why there is this infernal convenience fee.  I'm trying to PAY THEM (on time, if I can swing it)  and they  want to charge me more so that I can do so conveniently.  Does this seem whack to anyone else???

I know, I know...it's a power company.  They don't have to bother with that competing for business foolishness that entails all that striving for customer satisfaction bushwa. They will charge a convenience fee and I will DEAL. "ThankyousirmayIhaveanother!"

Well, conversely (just so's you don't think I'm a dissatisfied consumer 100% of the time) there is a corporation I am actually pleased with ...and that is Mysteriously Anonymous Pad Vendors of America Association Corp LLC.  No, no, I actually don't have any idea who I'm pleased with (that was a made-up corporation name.as perhaps you surmised) but here is my thought...

these vending machines were the best ever. I remember them being at Ames and I think one  Ames store had a modified one w/ a Fred Flinstone inside rather than the standard FunChicken.  He yelled "Yabba Dabba Doo" before vending....in my hazy recollections of the thing.

I remember when gumball machines at the front of grocery stores used to have goodies priced at 5 CENTS. It was utter rubbish, of course, but NOW the cheapest rubbish in the bank of gumball machines is a quarter.  And I think the quarter machines are becoming rare!  Vending machine soda prices have shot up also.  It's still pretty cheap to get Sam's Choice soda in the vending machines outside of Walmart, but I, like most discerning adults, would rather drink alpaca piss.  I don't know who this "Sam" is, but I seriously question his judgement.  Anyway the main point here is :blah blah blah INFLATION (with a sub-point about me being old).
However, in a public restroom the other day, I had an ephiphany. Epiphanies always find me in the can--it's uncanny (HA!)  The generic Kotex-esque pads in ladies' room vending machines have been priced at 25 cents since the dawn of time.  Ok, well, for as long as I can remember, they have been.  And, hey, it's been established that I'm olllld, therefore "as long as I can remember" = BEACOUP decades.   I was inordinately charmed by this realization (I've decided that "epiphany" is too grandiloquent  a term for this case...though let the record show I have had a fair amount of bonafide epiphanies on the toilet).  It meant to me that this company....or perhaps companies...(probably they're unionized?) ..realizes that if you have to resort to using one of those almost completely nonadhesive, ginormous, cotton monsters then you are for certain in a bad way.  And it would simply be wrong to ratchet up the price on someone who is need like that, inflation be damned.  I took it as one of those rare instances of ethics trumping greed, and I was moved. (compose your own bowels wisecrack here)