Saturday, April 2, 2011

Oh, Suburban Princess Narrator, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways....



Back before I started to embed these ads, I did a post on this commercial which got me a very funny "sorry you didn't like our ad!" response from a very alert member of the Angie's List team. Because this particular commercial continues to pollute the airwaves, I thought I'd give it another try. It's a challenge to determine what I hate the most about the awful narrator: Is it that

1. She has so many plumbing issues in her suburban castle that she has a "favorite plumber?"

2. She has a Papillon?

3. The Papillon's name is Molly?

Or is it that

4. She sees no problem in asking her plumber to walk her dog (because plumbers aren't professionals, or anything. I'm a schoolteacher- I'm sure if my principal called and told me that the cleaning crew was sick and would I mind very much mopping and waxing the classroom floor, I'd be fine with that.)

5. She tells us that Joe will always be her plumber because he's willing to sacrifice his "time and dignity" parading her fucking little rat/dog up and down the street "until her 'business' was done." (And, presumably, cleaned up after it, too.) Not because he's a good plumber.

6. She presumes that her plumber has gone off the clock before doing this extra little job for her (seriously, tell me this isn't so. Please tell me that Joe continued to charge this woman $100 per hour to walk her dog around. Because God Damn It, it's NOT HIS JOB.)

Actually, I don't think it's any of these things. I think the real reason is embedded deep within the context of the ad- which is that what this woman likes most about this plumber is that he's a freaking little worker-drone monkey she can order around with impunity, because after all, if he steps out of line and refuses to ask "how high?" when she says "jump!," there's this little website called Angie's List, and we wouldn't want a bad review now, would we? Want to keep food on your kid's table, don't we? Scoop that poop, monkey!!

Seriously- shouldn't the comments on Angie's list be restricted to how well people actually do their contracted JOBS? Instead, we get bitching about painters stepping in red paint ("they did the job on time and budget, but they are far from true professionals," this guy sneers. So, on time and on budget is not as important as their attitude, you elitist scumbag prick?) or "the domestic slave I hired because 'I was TIRED of cleaning my house' kept whistling this annoying tune..." Good Fucking Lord. You assholes don't want laborers. You want robots who will do things Just So or else suffer the wrath of Angie's List.

Sorry for the rant. Back to the commercial at hand- I wish someone would make a parody of this ad in which Joe either A) hands this woman a bill including the time spent walking her dog, and the citation he received for refusing to pick up the poop because god damn it.....or B) refuses to walk the dog, leaving it to mess all over this woman's lovely furniture. And Angie's List be damned.

That and that ugly little "dog."

9 comments:

  1. It's sort of appalling that a service like this exists; although the intent was probably good, the potential for abuse is too high to really justify it.

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  2. Excellent rant, I hate these commercials.

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  3. Dreaded- you just KNOW that if he had refused to walk the damn thing, this woman would have posted at Angie's List "Joe is lousy plumber; rude, disrespectful. Hates dogs."

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  4. Which is exactly the point I was making; it's as if it was designed to allow the Elly Pattersons of the world to ruin the lives of those who don't do whatever insane thing asked of them.

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  5. Let's not insult the poor dog. It can't help it that its owner is an asshat.

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  6. Sorry, Czaerena. I just hate little toy dogs like that- maybe because they represent our unbounded willingness to fuck around with nature to create what we want.

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  7. Well, I have a 16 year old, 8 lb. Italian Greyhound. That breed has been around for about 2000 years. Toys aren't new.

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