I need to rant (lyn)

I love the Weight Watchers program.  Everything about it works for me.  I like the fact that it’s not really a diet…you can eat anything you want.  You just need to manage your points.  I love the meetings.  I look forward to going.  I love Steve, our charismatic leader.  I love Miriam and Robyn, the always-smiling women who do the weekly weigh-ins.  I love the people in my group.  They’re smart, supportive, informative and nice.  There’s not a single person in the group who dominates or talks for the sake of talking.  I love some of the WW food.  The chocolate covered one-point pretzels are so good that even Alexander likes them. And most of all, I love that the program works.  I’m a true believer.

But I’ve discovered something I don’t’ like.  Once you venture outside the walls of the program itself, the bigger world of WeightWatchers is a mess.  

Take, for instance, getting a job there.   I’d love a Marketing position at the company. I have the skills, and many ideas.  I begin by writing to the President and work my way down from there.  Long, detailed letters about how I can help them, and how they have helped me.  My letters should, at the very least, have elicited a response.  But I get nothing.  Just a call from someone’s assistant telling me to apply online.

So I try that.  Again, no results.

I write to the magazine when they are looking for success stories.  I have a good one.  Okay, I didn’t lose 200 pounds, but maybe my story is more typical.  Again, no response. 

And finally, I apply, with Steve’s encouragement, to be a WeightWatchers’ leader.  I write to the person in charge of the area where I live.  I call.  I use Steve’s name, as he says I can.  Not even the courtesy of a reply. 

Perhaps live people don't really exist outside the meeting rooms.  Maybe somewhere there's just one big Oz-like room with a single wizard controlling everything.

And now another problem.  The online etools that I use for tracking are not working correctly.  After I logon, and get to My Plan, the screen is blank.  I cannot track.  This is serious.

I call Customer Service regarding my problem.  I’m on the phone for a while.  I explain my problem in detail.  She listens patiently.  She asks the right questions.  When I’m finished, she tells me that she can’t help me with online problems.  She instructs me to WRITE to Customer Service.  A separate group handles online problems and they can only be reached via email.  Already I know this story is not going to have a happy ending.

I write and detail my problem.  I even send screen shots.  Dexter (a Customer Service Associate) emails me back two days later and asks me a long list of questions about my Operating System, Browser, etc.  I answer all of them.  I tell him I use a Mac, that I only use Safari, and then I provide him with specifics of the versions I use.    Two days go by and then Geoff writes back.  He never got the screen shots.  They are on my copy of the email I sent, but not on his?  Oh well, I send them again.  Next I hear from Sarah, the third Customer Service Associate.  Her email lists several things that might be causing the problem, not one of which pertains to be.  She tells me:

• How to create a new password if I lost mine (I never said that that was a problem)
• How to erase cookies if I’m using Internet Explorer Version 6
• How to erase cookies if I’m using Internet Explorer Version 7
• How to erase cookies if I’m using Internet Explorer Version 8 (she must have skipped the part in my email where I say I use a Mac)
• How to erase cookies if I’m using AOL as my browser.
• How to erase cookies if I’m using Firefox -2 different versions (did she also skip the part in my email that says I only use Safari?)
• And finally, how to reset the date/time on my Mac (why is that thrown in?)

I’m surprised Sarah didn’t walk me through the shortcuts for cutting and pasting, just to make her solution list even longer.

Finally, someone named Jean (a Team Lead) writes back with instructions so technical that I would need to be an MIT grad in Computer Science to even begin to decipher what I am supposed to do next.

Perhaps Jean and her crew should intern at Apple and learn the right way to offer technical support.

Meanwhile, I guess I won’t be tracking for a while.