Waiting for Gouda

I don’t know about where you live, but here in the Second City, Comcast corporation continues to threaten our lives.

In their latest batch of advertisements, a rather smarmy fellow with a microphone, apparently a Comcast spokesperson of some kind, accosts a seemingly random Comcast customer, often as they are getting out of their car or leaving their homes, demanding to know what they would rather do than give up Comcast service.  Forced with such a bizarre question from out of the blue, the customers, who would certainly be forgiven if they figured it was a rhetorical question, blurt out the first silly thing that comes to their mind.  They say things like, “Give up Comcast?  I would rather re-marry my ex-husband!”

It’s kind of like the old “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” routine, except instead of rewarding people for doing something stupid with a delicious ice-cream-based treat, Comcast threatens to take away telephone and cable service from their ostensibly paying customers, unless they agree to do something stupid.

The customers respond with a little smirk or perhaps a giggle… having no idea that, for the Comcast guy, it is no laughing matter.  Not only is Comcast guy dead serious about the question, he has also apparently been endowed with some special legal and moral authority from Comcast to actually force the unsuspecting people to do that thing they suggested on a whim.  Without warning, the poor consumers, who seem to enjoy their Comcast service at least to some degree, suddenly realize that their mere off-handed utterance was enough of a binding agreement for Comcast guy, who may or may not actually be Satan in disguise, to make it so.

Soon enough, the poor woman has been propped up at a makeshift altar (one can only assume that she has been forcibly dragged), and her ex-husband appears dressed in a tuxedo, fully ready for the coerced ceremony.  And boy, is he happy.  In fact, he appears to be doing some kind of dance.  Makes you wonder what kind of terrible relationship they were in that he can’t wait to get back at it, even as she, who apparently has not been given the option to reconsider the original offer and opt for a different cable TV provider, begins to openly weep.

Man, what a funny commercial.

I come away feeling really glad that I am not a Comcast customer.  I would hate to live in fear of some all-powerful spokesperson jumping out of the shrubbery to force me to move to Texas and become a Republican.