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how brand loyalty is won Thursday, July 16 2020
This afternoon, I rode with Gretchen and Powerful into town to pick up our Toyota Prius from Prestige Toyota. That ten year old car is battered, with a lot of body panels not quite snapped in place, and yet Prestige had replaced its inverter completely free of charge. They'd even paid for the tow. It was actually enough of a good experience to give me a twinge of brand loyalty for Toyota. Aside from this problem, the Prius has been trouble-free, and this problem didn't even cost any money.
On the way home, I stopped at the Home Depot to buy more tools for removing grout from between tiles. In an ideal world, I would've bought a thin disk-like tool with a rim made of wire brush, but I found no such tools. So I settled on the thinnest radial wire brush I could find and a diamond circle-saw blade designed to be installed in an angle grinder.
My next stop was Miron Liquor, where I bought a half gallon of cheap gin and a litre of Gran Agave (since I already have more scotch than I feel like drinking). When I returned to the car, a youngish couple in a battered old Yaris commented jokingly about how fierce Neville was being in the drivers' seat. I agreed, adding that "he'll tear your face off!"
When I returned home, a jackass who had driven to the bus turnaround in a white pickup emblazoned with the logo for AccuDraft, some sort of paint booth ventilation supplier, was still shooting a very large gun. So I sent Gretchen a message urging her to attack him with a machete (by which I meant leave her polite anti-shooting note under his windshield wiper).
This evening we dined on burrito-like wraps out on the east deck. Powerful regaled us with tales of all the times his implanted pace-maker/defibrillator has zapped his heart back from the brink. The first time it ever did this was in March of this year, and then it did it several more times into April. But it hasn't zapped him since he arrived here in mid-May. Powerful likens the experience of being zapped to "being kicked by a horse," though none of us have actually been kicked by a horse. The first time it zapped him, Powerful said he turned around to see who had just punched him in the back. But, of course, nobody was there.
Powerful also told us about how things had been for him in his Brooklyn neighborhood before we went into foster care on Long Island. He said he father's profession was as a stick-up man, and nearly all the adults in the neighborhood, he said, were either welfare recipients or made their money from criminal activities. The few who had legitimate jobs tended to be regarded with something less than the median level of respect.
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