Eat Your Damn Oatmeal!

This little nugget came about because of my daughter. In fact, it came about twice because of her. The first time because of her craving for Quaker's Cinnamon & Spice instant oatmeal, and the second because she reminded me of it when I told her stores were now selling it.

They say you can’t put a price on a

child’s happiness. Sorry, sweetie,

“they” aren’t your parents.

Back in November of 2010, my daughter was away at college. Being the conscientious parent that I am, I wanted to make sure she had necessities such as food. She said she wanted instant Cinnamon & Spice oatmeal, but she couldn't find any. So, dad's on the job.

I looked everywhere, but I couldn't find any. It wasn't for sale in the grocery stores. It wasn't for sale on Quaker Oats' website. I checked all over the Internet and found nothing. Well, almost nothing. I did find it for sale on Amazon...in the U.K. and for $42. This seemed ridiculous to me, so I emailed the consumer relations link on Quaker's website and asked the following question:

Why isn't Cinnamon and Spice instant oatmeal available for retail sale in the U.S.? Other than its inclusion in the variety packs, it seems like it's only available as a single flavor overseas.
EMAIL*MESSAGE*END

And several days later, I received this response:

From: ConsumerRelations@cr.quakeroats.com <ConsumerRelations@cr.quakeroats.com>
Subject: RE: Quaker Instant Oatmeal with Cinnamon & Spice , REF.# 027345449A
To: c*******@*****.com
Date: Monday, November 8, 2010, 10:15 AM

Chris:

Thanks for contacting us about Quaker Cinnamon & Spice instant oatmeal. We're sorry you're having difficulty locating this at the stores in your area. However, I'm pleased to tell you that this has not been discontinued, and we're still making full boxes of this flavor of instant oatmeal.

Since ordering online is an option for you, and our Quaker Oats online Store doesn't carry this oatmeal, I did a search to help you out. I'm pleased to tell you that right at this time, Amazon.com has this oatmeal in stock and can ship it to your home. I invite you to visit their store at the following link for more information:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=cinnamon+%26+spice+oatmeal (*blogger's note: This link is no longer valid for the $42 product, but they still have one listed for $39)

With regards to the stores in your area, I don't have a list of stores that carry this oatmeal, and this is why. Individual stores don't order products directly from us but rather through their distributors. The final decision about which products to stock at an individual store is up to the store manager, provided they are able to obtain it from their supplier.

So, if you want to purchase a product that is not available in your grocery store, ask the store manager to check with their supplier as they may be able to order this flavor for you. If this is any help when you talk to the store managers, here is the UPC code for this oatmeal: 30000-01350.

In addition, a variety of our products are also available in Wal*Mart, Target, and K Mart; as well as the club stores like Sam's, BJ's, or Costco.

All of that said, Chris, we have some new Quaker Instant Oatmeal products on the shelves, and I've mailed you a $2.00 off coupon so you can give them a try. Your coupon should arrive in about a week; enjoy!

Jeff
Quaker Consumer Relations
A Division of PepsiCo
Ref# 027345449A

Here's what I know from my limited experience working in retail: If a product is available and it will sell - and this cereal will sell - a supplier will have the retailer stock the product because it's money in the supplier's pocket. If it's not available, it's because the manufacturer (Quaker Oats) isn't distributing the product to the suppliers. It's called withholding supply to increase the demand. That's one of the reasons we pay high prices for things like gas.

Had Jeff read the two sentences I wrote he would have understood that I knew the folks at Quaker were still making the product and I knew where it was available. In roughly six paragraphs, he did a marketing two-step around my question and simply regurgitated what I wrote. I wasn't pleased with the response I received from Jeff. I felt like he blew me off. I felt like he was responding because he was obligated to, as if whatever answer he sent to me would suffice and that I'd be happily distracted from his shitty response with a $2 coupon. I felt like writing him back. So about an hour later, I did.

From: Chris ****** <c*******@*****.com>
Subject: RE: Quaker Instant Oatmeal with Cinnamon & Spice , REF.# 027345449A
To: ConsumerRelations@cr.quakeroats.com
Date: Monday, November 8, 2010, 11:25 AM

Jeff,

Thank you for your response to my question. Believe me, I did my research and my inquiry was based not on the fact I can't find your product in my area, I can't find an American product IN MY OWN COUNTRY. I am familiar with the Amazon availability as I checked there before contacting Quaker.

I know Quaker is still producing the Cinnamon & Spice flavor because, as I said in my inquiry, it's available in the variety packs. If it was available in the U.S. I'm sure you would have told me I can find it in Indiana. However, my research tells me Quaker doesn't distribute the cereal as an individual flavor in the U.S. I'm sure Quaker knows this, and me being a person who appreciates honesty I would not have been hurt had you just said, "Sorry, Chris, unfortunately the flavor is not available as an individual item. Because Quaker values its customers and understands we can't meet all of their personal preferences, we would like to offer a coupon for..."

I understand your position is to put a positive spin on what the consumer sees as a company's oversight or failure or whatever you want to call it. However, I find the option of paying $42 for a 10-pack of $6 cereal as offensive as you being pleased to tell me about it. Here's a suggestion for your consumer relations career: If YOU wouldn't pay an exorbitant price for one of your own products, don't offer that as an option to a customer. Suggest that it "may be available on an on-line site, such as Amazon," apologize, send me a damn coupon, and wish me luck. Just be honest, Jeff.

Chris ******

I never heard back from Jeff, not that I expected to. Maybe Jeff responded to my initial query the way he was taught and could care less about being a douche. Or maybe he realized from my response to his response that any further attempt to correspond would only result in me making him seem like a bigger douche. OR, maybe my response never reached Jeff because it went into a consumer relations email pool from where it got the attention of Jeff's boss, who shit on him for being a douche and reassigned him to other marketing functions, like dressing up in the spoon costume and dancing with the guy in the bowl-of-oatmeal costume at elementary school nutritional education events.

I'm not a credit seeking whore, but I'd like to think that my efforts affected change here. I'd like to think a big corporation bowed to the pressure of the little guy. I'd like to think that today, on our local store's shelves between the boxes of Maple & Brown Sugar and boxes of Raisins & Spice, one can find boxes and boxes of Cinnamon & Spice instant oatmeal. All made possible because of a simple letter inspired by a father's love for his child. Sigh.

Yeah, I'd like to think those things are true, but I have to believe it was a coincidence. I have to believe in coincidence because, much like me being charming and good looking, a coincidence is the only rational explanation for why this occurred.

In any case, my little girl is getting her oatmeal, albeit a year late, and I...well, I got to do what's becoming a favorite pastime of mine - poking holes in the inflated egos corporations and marketers with word pins.

Closing Our Borders

I'm going to do something a little daring and share my opinion about this issue. Keep in mind this is only my opinion, and you know what opinions are like. That's right. They're like personal judgments formed on grounds that are insufficient to produce complete certainty yet influence an individual's convictions through thoughts, ideas or expressions.

And they're like assholes.

I'll keep this short. I realize that lately this topic has not been in the forefront of debate while other, more pressing issues have understandably taken center stage. We have an ongoing economic crisis the likes of which a majority of our generation has never experienced before. We have political infighting that will likely change the course of our country as the two major parties splinter in varying degrees toward the left and right. We are participating in - some would say perpetuating - global hostility. Gas prices up, stock markets down. Food prices up, housing market down. Taxes creep higher, yet we can't afford basic services, let alone basic cable. We have national security issues. We have Social Security issues. And as problems continue to grow for this great nation, we must not ignore existing problems or shunt them off the main track. And, indeed, one of them has slowly been fading from our view.

Borders being closed around the U.S.

I'm against it.

I don't believe this country should allow an action to take place that could have an adverse affect on the whole of society. Borders should remain open to stimulate job growth and spending. Borders should remain open because the people available to perform the labor directly related to them being open are people working in low wage, low benefit jobs that a majority of Americans would see as beneath them.

I believe it's time for the government to take a stand and promote the very tenets that made the United States an envy across the seas. This country a place synonymous with new beginnings, a place so desirous that inhabitants from other lands and cultures would risk everything they had to come here, to America, to achieve a dream and have a life. We need to show the world, and ourselves, that we can still be a power to be reckoned even if a weak link needs to be supported in order to maintain what is an integral part of our nation's backbone...

Economic Competition.

The U.S. government found $700 billion to help bail out

the banking industry, keeping them solvent and competitive.

Surely they can find a few million to keep our Borders open.

What did you think I was talking about?

The Gray Mafia

They're coming for me. They found out I'm turning fifty and getting ready to retire, and they're coming at me non-stop like a bus going to a casino. I can see them...hundreds of them. A wrinkly battalion of men and women, fresh off their naps and chasing me down, swinging their canes with reckless abandon and pelting me with pills from their Canadian-filled prescriptions. And all under the watchful glare of their patriarch, the one and only, Wilford Brimley.

What? You don't think so? You don't see Wilford Brimley as the capo of a Gray Mafia? Remember him as Gene Hackman's head of security in the movie The Firm? The car trunk scene with Tom Cruise? That was art imitating life, my friends. That was a man tapping into the depths of his soul to bring pure anima to a character. I can picture myself standing at the trunk of his car as he shames me in that folksy, matter-of-fact tone of disappointment. Never yelling or threatening to get his point across. He doesn't have to...

WB: You know who I am?
Me: Umm...you're Wilford Brimley.
WB: You're right. That's good. Now, do you know why we're here?
Me: Because I didn't eat my oatmeal?
WB: No. Now you're wrong. And you're not funny. This isn't a time to be a smartass. It's a time to listen, to pay attention. So do yourself a favor and pay attention. We're here to talk about the letter we sent to you regarding the medical insurance.
Me: The letter...yeah. You know, I already have med-
WB: Son, it's not about what you have, and to be honest we don't really give a goddamn about what you have. See, it's about what you can lose. When we sent you that letter we expected to hear back from you, and I must say we're a little less than pleased that we haven't. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna send you another letter. This time you'll take a look at it, and by look at it I mean you're gonna read it. Now while you're reading it, ask yourself, "Do I have enough insurance?" Then ask yourself, "Do I have enough insurance if I don't send this back?" You follow me?
Me: All the way to the hospital.
WB: Good. I always say there's no misunderstanding that can't be cleared up when two people just stop and have a nice chat about it.

Yeah, two people just having a nice chat...over the back of a car trunk in an empty lot. I know...talk is cheap if you can't back it up, and Brimley did get his ass handed to him by Cruise later in the movie. But that was acting, because Cruise's best fight without a double was when he stomped the shit out of Oprah's sofa cushion. In my opinion, I think Brimley could have kicked out whatever crap Cruise hadn't dropped in his pants once Brimley was done "explaining" things to him.

Anyway, back to getting old... I've been seeing an increase in solicitations from insurance companies in my mailbox lately. They once offered peace of mind for me and protection for my family in the event of a catastrophic illness or accident. Now they offer discounts for seniors (if I qualify) and a death benefit to ease the burden encapsulating my sorry ass inside a coffin and planting me in the ground will cause my loved ones. Don't get too excited, loved ones. The payout on one of those policies might be enough to pay for a wake at Chuck E. Cheese. You all can lift whatever burden is truly left by reading my will, swimming in my pool and drinking my beer.

QuikQuiz: Did you know the average cost of a funeral can range from $6,000 to as much as $9,000? Did you know there is renewable term life insurance - available with guaranteed acceptance, no health questions and no physicals to take - that will help cover that expense? Did you know you're just a phone call away?

I've also been getting recruitment letters from AARP trying to draw me into their greedy, pre-arthritic clutches with brochures, postcards and slimmed down versions of their magazine. Have you ever seen their magazine? It looks like a Cialis ad without the erections. Retired couples walking hand-in-hand on the beach, on horseback, cruising along the coast in top-down convertibles, sipping wine in a hot tub. Those aren't the retired people I see in my neighborhood, the ones with skin covered in liver spots who gimp around like their hips are a stair step away from blowing out. AARP's people are the hand-picked, healthy elderly living in resort "grayborhoods." Golfers, swimmers, bike riders...they're men trying to look young in tank T's and board shorts and heads painted with Grecian, and women whose bodies have had a substantial amount of roadwork done to hide the miles they've been ridden.

AARP wants me to believe I can feel younger while getting older, and they can make me believe it for only $16 for 12 months. And what do I get for 12 months?

*I get a co-membership for my spouse, who's only 39 (just ask her).
*I get 10 issues of the AARP news bulletin, because apparently the only old person working for them who knows how to use a computer is in Florida two months out of the year.
*I get discounts on travel, lodging and fine dining, like 20% off at participating Denney's restaurants between 4pm and 10pm.
*I get representation in Washington to help protect my pension rights, Social Security and Medicare. After watching the representation I've been getting with the 2011 budget balancing fiasco, I'm guessing they mean representation in the state of Washington and not D.C.
*I get a FREE Trunk Organizer. It's a limited time offer, but I suppose once you hit 50 everything becomes a limited time offer.
*And, if I join now I could win a chance to meet Betty White. Wow! I can't think of a better way to put my age into some perspective than spending a few minutes standing next to Betty White. Or a rock.

Turning fifty doesn't bother me. Retiring certainly doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that these landmark events are actually societal separation points. I've long recognized that various ages in my life have served no real purpose other than to identify my place in the broad marketing spectrum of cereal, toys, cars, alcohol, and an endless list of age appropriate gadgets. But as I started nearing semicentenniality, all things marketable seemed to be coming with a "check with your doctor before..." caveat. I say no. No to Brimley, White, Trebec, and all of other gray-haired mafioso trying to make me an offer I can't refuse. I don't want to be a merchandising target for medicines and term life insurance. Hell, I don't want term anything! I refuse to conform to the notion that I've reached a pinnacle in my life that carries an obligation of being a member of a segment of the population defined as "senior." I'm not ready to be old on the Gray Mafia's terms, I want to keep getting older on mine. Because I've still got some living to do before I grow up.

I want to be a rascal, not ride a Rascal.