Thank You SOOO Much for Your Unsolicited Marketing Email!!!!
I really enjoy receiving your unsolicited marketing emails! I look froward to them everyday and can't wait to read your next riveting piece of marketing communication!!
Welcome to the 19th edition of This Nick Writes. A newsletter that delivers one creative work of prose in your inbox once a month.
Do you ever get tired of receiving marketing emails?
My work email receives several a day. It’s become a plague in my inbox, and I’m sure many of yours, too.
I had such a visceral and annoyed emotional response to one sent to my personal inbox that I started pondering what my response would look like. Naturally, some sarcasm and darkness came out that I thought might be funny and interesting enough to write, which I did.
My goal was to get them published on McSweeneys, which is a fantastic humor site, but alas, I didn’t make the cut.However, that now means I get to share it all with you.
Enjoy the response? Think they would catch the sarcasm? Let me know in the comments.
To: Our Esteemed Member
From: Healthplan Provider
Subject: Nicholas, You don’t want to miss this!
You’ll be amazed at what you can do on our new Care From Home App!
Care From Home is a great solution when you have a cold or flu. You can also use it to work with a health coach, talk to a therapist, ask questions about your medications, and more.
To: Healthplan Provider
From: Your Esteemed Member
Subject: Re: Nicholas, You don’t want to miss this!
To Whom It May Concern,
I apologize for taking a moment out of your precious time to thank you for your timely marketing email. I had no idea how AMAZED I would be by the new service your esteemed healthcare organization is offering in your very expensive yet poorly designed app.
I’ve spent so much time trying to navigate its shitty interface my daily total screen time has jumped 25%! AS IF I WASN’T DEPRESSED ENOUGH!
It was a wonderful experience waiting thirty minutes to see a doctor from the comfort of home, only to be told to visit them in person. I trust that I’ll continue to receive the same level of indifferent, half-assed care whether I enter one of your facilities or Facetime you from my phone.
Consistency is key.
After speaking with one of your mental health professionals, I remain unsure of my exact diagnosis. However, I will give credit where credit is due. The amount of drugs they have prescribed me has enabled me to feel like an entirely different person! The dark thoughts and crippling anxiety have been replaced with dissociation and an inability to get it up in the morning. Do you think it's a good time for me to buy a gun?
I’m ecstatic to report the bill I received for my out-of-pocket expenses has caused me to consider bankruptcy, and the recent denial of coverage for a cancer screening has assuredly guaranteed a stage four diagnosis by the time I’m 45! I couldn’t be more enthralled with the investment you’ve made in making my mental and physical health more impersonal and distant from your bottom line.
However, I will concede it may be unfair of me to believe that healthcare should be a human right. After all, it was your fine hospital system, a part of your monopoly, that helped my mother bring me into this world. It’s only right that you have a say in how long and healthy I can live within it.
PLEASE congratulate your fantastic CEO and the rest of the leadership team on their 45% pay bump this past year. Knowing you compensate the individuals most responsible for my well-being handsomely gives me peace of mind. If it were not for the tens of millions spent on them annually, I would not be afforded the most advanced and expensive care required in a free society! I pray their leadership and insights continue to grow the value of your institution and the ballooning of your endowment!
I honestly cannot believe what my monthly investment of $1,000.00 buys! What a privilege to be alive and exist in the greatest nation on earth!!!
Sincerely Yours,
Advocate For Your Nonprofit Status
From: Your Loan Servicer
To: Our Loan Bitch
Subject: Congratulations on your Success!
Congratulations, Nicholas! You’ve paid off all your loans!
You've done it. What a huge accomplishment! We celebrate your success and wish you all the best in the future.
From: Your Loan Bitch
To: My Loan Servicer
Subject: Re: Congratulations on your Success!
To Whom It May Concern,
Honestly, you just made my day! I wasn’t sure I was going to make it until I read your thoughtful and personalized email. It’s nice to see someone has recognized all that I sacrificed to pay back an unscrupulous organization such as yours.Without your trust and belief in me, I would have never been able to attend the now-defunct for-profit institution. I hope their debts were forgiven in bankruptcy and leadership was able to land other high-paying yet low-profile gigs that give them the opportunity to continue to scam millions of Americans. God Bless them and their families!
I’d like to think this is a moment of celebration and for the recognition I’ve long searched for from my friends, family, and employer. Though their reactions have been timid at best. I only got one like on my instagram post about this recent achievement. Fucking Algorithms, right?!
My father was unimpressed. All he said to me was, “It's about time.”
I guess since he paid off ⅓ of my loans within five years of my graduation, taking fifteen years to pay off my share doesn’t appear to be much of an achievement. To be fair, I was never informed it was a competition. Not that it would’ve changed much.
I think he still believes my MFA in writing was a poor choice as a major and an even poorer choice as a career. He still doesn’t believe one can make money as a writer. You’d think after fifteen years in the industry, that would have changed by now. I understand I paid my loans off with money earned working retail, but I write every day. It is my career. I just haven’t been published yet. But, when I do…yes, when I do, I think he’ll finally get it.
And who cares if I only make $20,000 while the publisher makes a million? My handsome, intellectual-looking mugshot will be printed inside a book! How fucking cool is that?!!
If he just took a sliver of time out of his day, once a week, to read something I wrote, I think that’s all I would need. And if I’m lucky and he likes it?! Maybe then he would “get it,” and maybe that will be the true sign that I’ve made it when I do.
Anyway, I appreciate your words and continued effort to thwart any kind of loan reform for future generations in Congress. I was glad to see your case before the Supreme Court, and I couldn’t agree more with their decision to strike down student loan forgiveness! We, the student debt-burdened, needed the lesson. It’s our responsibility to pay back our debts and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps! Because if we don’t, corporations, banks, and esteemed financial institutions like yours will not be able to enjoy the subsidies and bailouts that keep you afloat!!
I hope you have a great day and THANK YOU for your email!!!
Sincerely Yours,
Free of Debt but Not of Misery
I LOVE the venom in these! And you're right on the money!