Beware Big Company Lies!

In July 2004, I was preparing dinner at my kitchen counter in front of my kitchen window. On the left side of my counter I had placed my electric frying pan and was preparing to cook a chicken dinner. I had purchased a package of McCormick Country Chicken sauce mix, which you must follow the directions on the package to be successful. In stirring the mixture I guess I was a little too vigorous doing so because some of the sauce spattered up onto my kitchen curtains. I did not think too much about it, but did wipe off what I could at the time and thought if it stained I could wash them later. That is the only thing I was preparing at that particular place. This is important to remember. After a while, I happened to glance up at my curtains and the color was bleached out where the sauce had landed. I am not kidding you!! The chicken sauce bleached my curtains. I had just purchased them a few weeks before and had paid $35.00 for them on sale. What would you have done? I did what I thought was the right thing to do and contacted the McCormick company. I told the lady, who was the one answering my call, about my problem and she practically told me I was nuts, but if I would be so kind as to send the empty package to her they would run a test on it to see if there was anything that they deemed responsible. Well, that was a dumb thing to do as there went my evidence, but I had already mailed it before I had given it some thought. My recourse was to high tail it to the grocery store to get another package and test it on another piece of colored material. It was only a day or two between times, but SURPRISE!! It had been pulled off the shelf. I immediately went to three other stores to find there was none on their shelves either. All other McCormick sauces were there, but not the Country Herb Chicken Sauce. All of them had been pulled from the shelves. What would you think? Of course they contacted me and said they had ran a lot of tests and found nothing to be wrong, and I must have spilled something else on my curtains besides the chicken sauce. Remember, I told you there was nothing else I was preparing in that space. The purpose of this blog is to tell you to NEVER be stupid like I was and get rid of your evidence that would prove your case. I was not asking for a huge settlement from them. I only wanted back the $35.00 I had spent on my curtains, which I had to replace myself. I am on a fixed income and extras like that, are sometimes an extravagance. Be wiser than me my friend. I am adding the letter I sent to the McCormick Company so you can see I was not trying to get more than what was coming to me. That was in 2004 and it still bugs me that a large company like that, can be so deceitful, untrustworthy, and irresponsible. O.K. Cheap too!
July 7,2004
Attention Jodi Davis:
McCormick & Co.
211 Shilling Circle
Hunt Valley, Maryland 21031
Dear Ms. Davis;
Enclosed please find the Country Herb Chicken sauce blend empty packet that you requested. If you need the portion of the curtain that was damaged, I will be happy to send it along also. I appreciate all the help you are giving me on this. I realize it is not an earth-shaking incident, but it is stressful for me when I have to replace something at my own expense, which is not my fault. Again thank you for any future helps you might give me.
Sincerely,

A Hunting We Will Go...Or Not!

When I first married my husband, Bob, he wanted me to go wherever he went. That meant I must accompany him on his hunting trip to Reno. I was not required to carry a gun (whew!) or expected to shoot anything. I do not think I could have done that anyhow because of my love of animals. I was not too happy knowing he loved to hunt, but knowing he came from a family who lived on a farm, and his father taught his boys to hunt, I knew it would be hard at this point to get him to not love the sport. Anyway, off we went to Reno. My first challenge in this adventure, was to get up a very steep hill, because that was where the deer would probably be.I started climbing behind him, but was not doing too good or making too much headway. "Grab a hold of me" was my instructions from Bob. "Grab a hold how?" was my thought. I needed my hands to grab a hold of this huge mound I was trying to get up. I decided on linking my fingers into the backside of his jeans. Great idea. He scrambled up that hill like he was born to it, and I was pulled along like I was flying. No sooner did we land on top than I hear "bang, bang, zing, zing!" "Hit the ground," Bob says. "Get down and stay down!" I see a pretty doe leaping fast across the hills. She was scared to death and running for her life. I knew then, I did not like this. When everything was finally quiet, Bob tells me some hunters are crazy and shoot at anything that is moving. They do not wait to see if it has horns or not, or if it is human. How sad! We scoured the hills, or at least Bob did. I hunkered down by a tree and waited for him to do his thing and come back to get me. He returned empty handed. (Thank you Lord).
We went back down the hill, I slid most of the way, and were about to cross this field where Bob thought there might be something. The green growth was quite high and Bob went ahead of me and told me to be careful and just step where he stepped. So I did. At least I thought I was doing that. I watched his footsteps fall and stepped where I thought his foot had been. He was doing just fine and must have had eyes of an eagle because nothing happened to him, while I stepped and oops! My foot went deep into the ground and up to my knee in water. I was cold, tired, nearly shot at, and wet! I wanted to go home, and so we did. I never wanted to go hunting again. However, I did. It was a scary adventure as well and it ended my hunting days forever. Bob took the boys on an outing only once and Brent fell into a creek carrying the rifle over his head, and Cary was more interested in finding fossils and old skeletons of animals. Bob went back to hunting with his buddies and let us happily stay at home, warm and cozy!