"This is your Coffeemaker Recall Kit"

It took a couple of days for me to remember the puffy little packet in the stack of mail laying on the table. Then I finally decided to handle my mail and recalled my initial curiosity. I hadn't ordered anything small that required such packaging. Why, then, had someone sent me a padded envelope within my mail? I figured it was some new marketing scheme to capture more attention than so much of the junk mail coming my way.

I wish.

Turns out those folks I've been expecting me to send a new coffee maker have a few ideas of their own before they're going to part with any extra small appliances. What they've sent me is a Step by step instruction sheet and a postage paid envelope It's my own Coffeemaker Recall Kit. Really. Says so right on the letter, in the space above the one in which I'm given my "Instruction Steps" which read as follows:

1. Unplug your coffeemaker from the wall
2. Cut the AC power cord 2 to 3 inches from the AC plug
3. Place the cut off AC power cord including the AC plug in the Postage Paid Envelope
4. Place this sheet along with the aC power cord in the Postage Paid Envelope
5. Seal and Mail the Recall Kit back for processing.

All right, fine. I get that they have to, I don't know, get the offending product out of circulation.

But here's what I want to know:

How Do They Expect Me To Make My Morning Coffee During the "up to 14 days for processing" Period Leading Up To The Much Anticipated Arrival Of My Replacement Coffeemaker? You know what I think?

I think they frankly don't care how I make my morning coffee. I can buy a new coffeemaker if I like. I can go to storage and figure out where I stored the glorious French press. I can borrow a spare from some unsuspecting friend. I can go to the Salvation Army and pick up somebody's reject. Perhaps I can stop drinking coffee until my new one arrives? Irrelevant. They don't care. I have to cut off that cord and send it in if I'm going to get the coffeemaker to replace the one they don't want me using anymore.

Sometimes the solution is not, turns out, necessarily more useful than the original problem. Sheesh... 

Update on Tuesday, 8 July, 2008 at 8:34 PM by Melody

That little kit? The one with the padded envelope into which I'm supposed to place the cut-off cord of my coffee pot? Yea. Still laying there on the table. Sigh...