The Graduate is a benchmark film for my generation ... and many of us remember the "career advice" given to Dustin Hoffman early in the movie: "plastics." Many of us may blame the overuse of credit on some subliminal effect exercised in this movie.
Yesterday, I got a call from Alec's Work Coordinator that he was showing folks at Merrick his new Credit Card and they asked if I knew about it. I sure didn't.
Checked my credit cards and none were missing. (Alec sometimes "borrows" things.) So I called Merrick back and talked to Alec, asking that he show the card to us when he got home.
Turns out that he'd been mailed a "debit" card and (from the cover letter as well as the brochures that accompanied it) it was unsolicited.
("Unsolicited" is a a major point. Alec loves to enroll in all those programs that he sees on TV or in the paper or magazines for "more information." For a while, he was deluged with mailings for "Credit Counseling" as he thought it meant he'd be able to get a credit card. Then we've periodically gotten calls from various "brick and mortar" colleges as well as "training for a new career in ....." institutes and a few Internet colleges. Plus, we will get calls from a recruiting Sargeant or Chief for all branches of the services.
(We've banned him from doing any signups so I was a bit worried he'd decided to ignore our request.)
So, in this early springtime, the seduction of plastic had its way with our son but was thwarted by his ever-vigilant staff and parents. Thank goodness he doesn't know that Mrs Robinson is the really seductive one and hasn't experimented with any of her sisters!
The sad thing in all this is that Alec sees everyone using plastic. The fact that you have to have money in the account or pay the bill hasn't connected. Maybe we need a few commercials showing that aspect!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment