Cheers
For every friend's email address, we'll give you...
If you could just put your name and address here...
To win, we'll just need your phone number...

They all want my statistics. My age. My name. My occupation. My place of residence. They want it for their databases, for their credit cards, for their demographics. Usually I feed them. Have my name and email address so I can win a trip to New Zealand. Take my phone number and salary range so I can have get a trial subscription. Here's my address, now let me use your slot machines. They've all got it now. They can trade me like baseball cards, though some of them swear they won't. And mostly what I get in return is a chance, a hope...and more marketing asking me for more personal information. Are they trying to build a robot of me?

More often than not, I'm tired of it. It's not worth it anymore. Can't they just share with each other? I don't have the energy to fill out the little boxes. Free isn't free, 20 dollars isn't 20 dollars.

I had a 20 dollar Gap gift certificate, a gift from my mother, a Gap card holder. The certificate was in my hand and so were some designer skivvies, when I realized that I was going to have to fill out an application for a Gap card. With my new Gap card I could get 15% off and I could use the "$20" in my hand. I picked up an application and internally I sighed, the exasperated sigh brought on by marketing efforts. I asked the woman in front of me if she would be using her Gap card today. She eyed me suspiciously and said, "no. I don't want a Gap card."

"I don't either," I told her as she turned away trying to avoid whatever sales pitch I didn't have. I asked the woman in front of her the same question and she just glared at me. So I gave up, returned the skivvies, and left the Gap.

I was heading toward a mall exit when I realized that this "free money" was going to end up in a landfill. Surely someone could use $20 at the Gap, but for the life of me I couldn't think of anyone else who had a Gap card. I turned on my heels and marched back to the Gap. The smartly dressed young man (are there any other kind at the Gap?) at the counter beckoned me forward with a flip of his hand. I walked up and pulled out my certificate and handed it to him.

"I don't have a Gap card," I explained as he got that frightened look that accompanies the fear of both not knowing the answer and not knowing how the customer is going to react. "I don't really want a Gap card," I continued. He turned the certificate over and slightly shrugged his shoulders ready to say something sing-songy along the lines of "We're sorry. This offer is only for card holders, blah blah, blah, blah."

"So if you could just give it to the next person who uses their Gap card? Can you do that for me?"

"Sure," he said, quite unsure.

After I left, I imagine the two cashiers looked at each other and said, "Who was that?"

At least they'll never know.