Today I'm starting a new series of beatdowns. Many companies today have begun what I'm calling the screwover mentality to add charges to unsuspecting customers. Certainly I've ranted against the credit card banks recently, but there are other nefarious bastards that need their day in an octagonal ring.

Screwover #1: The photocopier lease insurance screwover.

In the last day the controller in our company popped by to alert us to a little clause that is tacked into leases for photocopiers, a function recently taken over by a team member of mine in my IT department. Apparently the leasing company requests in very fine print that you provide proof of insurance for the device, and if you don't find the fine print or react accordingly, they quickly start providing their own insurance on a monthly basis as part of the bill. It's probably not even going to show up as a line item--the bill would just magically go up a few bucks to cover this cost and most companies would be none the wiser.

This should be far more forthcoming with a customer. This type of screwover action for a few bucks is utter crack and should be met with physical violence.

If you position yourself on the stairclimber between me on my treadmill and a fan, and then proceed to rip ass the entire time you're in the gym, I should be allowed to choke you with a 10 pound kettlebell. I wish I was making this up.

If you're a religious zealot who uses a huge national disaster as an way of insinuating God is punishing someone, you deserve to be drown in your own holy water. I'm embarrased to share the human race with this type of nonsense.

To the guy who does his best to be the person to post "FIRST" to anything on a blog or a Facebook entry, you deserve the first ass-kicking. It's so annoying going to a blog and seeing every post have an idiot post "FIRST!" then another idiot below him posting "FIRST!" when he's second. Come to think of it, the guy who gets the second "First" deserves twice as much vengeance. Second place is the first loser.

AT&T you deserve a beatdown. Your wimpy response to Verizon's 3G network maps is leaving out the very important fact--your coverage is only on your old SLOW EDGE network, not 3G. You might be able to pick up coverage for voice, but slow ass data is all over the country. Lying like this is marketing fibbing at its finest. You bastards.

If you show up at the only bar in town showing the UFC fight, which has a full house of mixed martial arts fans and you start whining to the host about showing a Nebraska college football game, you need to get tapped out. Lardass in red was sitting with his family in the middle of the place last night looking around like a deer in headlights. There's a sign as you walk in, and damn near everyone in the place is there for the fight. Don't whine, move on.

If your restaurant's interesting "garage sale junk on the wall" includes motivational work posters (i.e. "Successories") you deserve to be smacked about like a yarn ball by a kitten.

I repeatedly get this stupid e-mail that Outlook junk filters catches from some yahoo who is peddling his services to do foreign language conversions of our web site. We only operate in North America so we're not interested.

Yesterday I get a new email, one saying "Did you get my previous emails? I seem to have some problems with my mail not getting through because some email systems think my message is spam." HELLLOO!!! It IS spam you ignorant buffoon. It's an unsolicted commercial email that I have no interest in, and frankly I don't think it's worth my time to even tell you to bugger off. I hope someone hits you with the Portuguese translation of "battering ram" in your head.

This reminds me of the old George Carlin "You stuff is shit and my shit is stuff" routine. It's like this guy thinks his email isn't spam but other spam he probably doesn't want. Yo, get a clue you bumpkin.

In the "OMG that's sick and creepy" category: If you proposition your own teenage daughter on Facebook, you deserve 15 seconds with a tin snips, you perv.

In this post, the return of "caught with my phone while stopped at a stoplight.":

That's some sort of odd carrier attached to the bumper with...a gas can hanging out there ready to get rear ended. Does this yutz miss his mid-70's Ford Pinto or what?

Courtesy of Mr. Wizard:

Yesterday I got yelled at for jumping in line in front of someone else waiting to use the microwave. I pointed out the second microwave that's been sitting there for the last 5 months. "Oh." Yeah, you're welcome.

Nice job there First National Bank of Omaha.  I've been a cardholder since 1994, and done 994 transactions over that timeframe according to ye old Quicken.  I'd transfered balances to you several times, made lots of interest payments, and recently paid off the card. It set dormant for about a year, and yesterday you sent me the BucksBack letter--a B.S. program of cashback no better than any other cashback cards (1% on all transactions in $25 dollar intervals), wrapped in a service fee of $49 a year, with terrible interest rates.

So, I rejected your rates and cancelled the card. I'm a good customer, pay interest at times, and am not late.  You made money off me in the past, and were destined to do it more in the future under the existing terms.  But you screwed the pooch.  I was a card member for 15 years, but no more.  I reject your terms and your lame marketing.  It's too bad the banking industry got so greedy these past years they are trying to milk the good customers. I am being milked no more and you rat bastards deserve to be bashed in the head with an early 80's cell phone until you go down like a first fight punk at a UFC bout.

Kanye freakin' West.  At the MTV video music awards on Sunday night, yanked the microphone from Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech to indicate that Beyonce's video should have been the winner, in his less-than-humble opion.  Kayne, you are a +10 douchebag, and your utter arrogance puts you at the front of the line for a mega beatdown. Grow up you jerk.  I don't even like Taylor Swift's music, and that was absolutely uncalled for. Sober up and go home.

Civilized common courtesy seems to be slipping more and more these days. Case in point, this last week I'm at the local supermarket for the lunch salad bar.  It's a double-sided bar thing where people mingle around, and generally I'm not too stressed if someone jumps around me to grab bacon if I'm busy populating my lunch with onions.  Eventually all attendees make their way to the dressing area. The woman in front of me has like 5 people waiting for her, and she applies dressing to her salad, closes the cover, and proceeds to shake up the salad to mix the dressing in.  5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds pass.  She stops, oh thank God she's done.  She opens the salad, adds another couple teaspoons of dressing, recloses the salad, and begins her Hawaiian dance yet again.  After 3 rounds of this, she finally leaves, bewildered as to why there are 5 people all giving her "I hope your remains aren't identifiably without dental records" faces.  I hope she's stuck in traffic for the next 5 weeks, and that she gets a baseball bat to the head to see if she even notices it connecting.

I work in information technology, as I've mentioned before. This means loads and loads of vendor spam. One of the worst is APC, also mentioned before, as they send me their catalogs to 4 different variations of my name or title to the same address, thereby adding to their marketing costs and paper recycling center work.

Today I get an email from them, here's the header with time send information:

Nice job, dillholes.  Request a response by 3pm, send it at 3:09pm...reminds me of the Guthy/Renker weekend TV where "if you respond in the next 30 minutes, we'll throw in blah blah blah." 

APC, you have too much marketing money.  You need to beat down your marketing gurus and fire them.