I spuddle.

Dear Samsung,

I hate you.

Let me backtrack a bit. I know you’ll be interested in how this day began, and who wouldn’t be? Well, let me tell you. It started off fine. Just. Fine. We got up at 7. Watched some TV. (Yes, I let my kids watch TV in the morning.) (Would you like to make something of it? Because I am RARING FOR A FIGHT.) (So bring it, dude. Just bring it.) (I’m serious.) We did some crafts and drawing and generally made a mess. It was OK. It was fun.

Then it started to go downhill, Samsung. It did. For one thing, I wanted to have a shower. Now this part is not your fault, but I blame you anyway because I blame you, Samsung, for all bad things. It’s a nice change because I used to blame Jason Mesnick. Jason will be relieved that he’s now off the hook. This “wanting to have a shower” coincided exactly with my stepson’s announcement and immediate departure for the park. Which would be fine, but while he’s at the park, the door must remain unlocked as he has no key. But leaving the door unlocked and then having a shower is like hand-writing an invitation to The Bun and The Birdy to go outside and play with the passing bus traffic, which is to say “Not a go”. We all waited for The Stepson to return, which he did an hour later, much too late to have a shower and still get to the Future Shop to purchase a Samsung LCD monitor for my mum for her birthday gift, which I then planned to install on her computer to replace the flickering, blurry box she had been using up until now, and so it would be a surprise when she got home from out of town tomorrow.

The purchase itself went surprisingly easily considering it was the Future Shop, which I’ve long considered to be the mouth of hell. They never have stock, what they have they cannot find, they don’t know anything about it, and they hate you AND are busy with someone else who doesn’t have toddlers dangling off her like those fish that swim around the mouths of sharks to pick up the detritus from their feeding frenzy. In this case, the salesman was nice, he had your monitor, and the purchase took ten minutes, tops.

My mood, at this point, was still OK, Samsung. I was a little irritated about the shower, but nothing I wouldn’t get over. Then we went to the park. The park was OK, a little crowded. It went downhill when the baby scaled a ten foot ladder and began crossing a twelve foot bridge that I couldn’t reach unless I was, you know, 12 feet tall. Then a much larger boy decided she was in the way and decided to remove her from the equation by pushing her through one of those convenient and random openings placed along the bridge so kids could fall to their deaths. She managed to not fall but I did not manage to have a myocardial infarction. That may have set us up, Samsung, for what happened next. Which was that I couldn’t get The Bun to get off the bridge, either, and he was oblivious to the same bullying bigger boys jostling and shoving until he also nearly fell and my myocardial infarction killed at least half of my heart.

I managed to lure them to the car with a promise of McNuggets. I figured a bit of junk food wouldn’t matter much in the bigger picture, i.e. in a world where Mummy was in ICU. Finally, at around 1:30, we arrived at my mum’s to install the surprise monitor. Which, given the wonders of technology, I figured would take an hour, mostly because the ad said it would take five minutes. I budgeted an hour, Samsung. And seeing as there was only one page of instructions which included translations into twelve separate languages, I figured it was set up to be “simple”.

This is where things went bad. Very bad. I would just like to say, Samsung, seriously, WTF? First of all, that disc that you include with the monitor? Is supposed to contain the drivers, Samsung, so that the PC can understand what the hell you are trying to install. It is not supposed to simply autoload a Samsung logo onto your screen that simply sits there, has no clickable access point, and freezes your computer. It’s not. And then when you delve into the files on the disc, why they contain things such as “cream” and “mckinley” is a complete mystery. I don’t want to know what is in those files, Samsung, but I can report that the autoexec file, when loaded manually, launched the arrival of a different Samsung logo that — guess what? — did nothing but sit there in the middle of the screen like — as my dad would say — a bump on a log. Thanks for that. If by “thanks”, I mean “____ you”.

After an hour or two of playing around with different settings, I discovered that your single sheet of instructions that indicates that a screen will come up to advise you what to do next is a blatant lie. It does NOT. There is no amount of tapping that stupid menu button that begets this information. In fact, NONE of the screens on your single sheet of information have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with the monitor that the sheet of paper was included with. NOT ONE. I must tell you, Samsung, that I began to wish I could speak TURKISH because maybe your TURKISH TRANSLATOR did a better job with the instructions that the obviously drunk, cream-lovin’ guy named McKinley who you fished out of the gutter to write your English instructions. NOT ONLY DID THEY MAKE NO SENSE, grammatically, THEY ALSO DID NOT WORK. MCKINLEY NEEDS TO BE FIRED. NOW.

So I did what any determined customer will do. I went to the website. Are you KIDDING ME WITH THIS WEBSITE, SAMSUNG? I AM SHOUTING NOW BECAUSE I THINK I MAY HAVE BURST AN ANEURYSM. THIS WEBSITE IS APPALLING. IT IS THE WORST, LEAST CLEAR, PIECE OF CRAP I’VE EVER RUN INTO IN ANY CONTEXT. After twenty minutes of clicking THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN, I managed to find a driver which may or may not have been for the monitor that I purchased because the model number you refer to on THE BOX and ON THE MONITOR ITSELF did not apparently exist without a series of other letters next to it WHICH ARE KNOWN ONLY TO YOU or are PERHAPS WRITTEN IN LEMON JUICE AND REQUIRE ONE OF THOSE BLACK LIGHTS TO SEE.

By now, Samsung, the kids — who had wanted to go to Nature House, which closed at 4 — were getting difficult. And I’ll admit, my fuse was getting short. I shouted at them, Samsung. I did. I WAS REALLY REALLY CROSS. No one would listen. The Bun was listening to some KidzBop version of Van Halen in his headphones so loudly that it was beginning to give me liver damage. The Birdy was inconsolable. The Stepson was just keeping his head down, hoping to stay out of the line of fire.

I felt bad. I did. I was Shouty McEvil, and I admit it. I took them to another park. I put a bow on the monitor. I hope my mum likes it, Samsung, EVEN THOUGH I CAN’T SEEM TO MAKE IT WORK.

I HATE YOU, SAMSUNG, I REALLY DO.

I hope this doesn’t kill me, but if it does, you can blame yourself. I already do.

Love,
Karen

Filed under: Shopping