I make a lousy criminal

I screwed up

Today I had to come clean about a low effort "scam" I have perpetrated against the Register Guard. In a fit of pique at the increased subscription fee last November and the deteriorating content [since the paper was sold to some money grubbing, talent firing, band of  corporate yobs who skipped grammar in school] I cancelled my subscription rather than pay their ransom for tawdry goods. My subscription ended Nov. 23rd 2018. I have received a paper every day since, with only two skips I certainly could not call to complain about.

But this morning, for some reason, I knew the jig was up. Elton (my dad) would absolutely have cut off the service, but would he have been complicit in theft by letting them give it away? Why was it a theft I could stomach until, oddly, this morning?

Maybe because on Wed. I ordered a 6 qt instant pot from Amazon because it was a very good price. It arrived yesterday, and first thing, I read the entire user's manual. This amazing appliance offers users more ways to self injure (if not burn the house down) than I am entirely comfortable with. Plus, I hardly ever cook, and I doubted making it riskier was going to goose up the urge. So, I returned the $70 device, accepted a $14 penalty (restocking fee? splurge fine? stupidity tax?). I am thinking as I type this, that it was looking at myself with clarity and as little judgement as possible, that made the decision easy: that technology was not me.

From there, I woke from my petty vendetta against a company that delivers a paper I still want to read. Theft, even passive scamming is also not me. And there are compensations for the deproved Guard: I get a frisson of superiority and contempt to balance the sad collection of comics, the cluttered typos, and the loss of Eugene-based professional reporting and editorials.

I wrote an email to the subscription department confessing my transgression and requesting back billing and a new subscription. They were confused, then amazed, and unfailingly gracious. Also deeply puzzled as they had timely informed my carrier of said subscription's demise. Hence, it was not as I surmised incompetent billing practices but a "gift" from my carrier. I do hope that my willingness to pay for those ill gotten dailies will forestall any punishment upon my 98.5% reliable* and generous carrier.

I am back to living according to my scruples!


* Calculation: 19 weeks (133 papers), 131 delivered for a 98.5% reliability rate.
I have a friend who never cancelled, and has had much less reliable delivery.