Like many people I know, I subscribe to internet coupon sites in hopes of grabbing a great deal every so often. Back in the day—like, in the time of Beowulf—the word “deal” simply meant “one’s fair share,” but sometime between then and now, the word took on new meaning as “a transaction or a bargain.”
Unfortunately, many of today’s internet deals are neither fair nor a bargain.
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In 2011, having heard of a good bargain, Alma and Raylan joined a few neighbors in purchasing a Groupon for window cleaning. For the neighbors, everything went swell. The windows were clean, no valuables were missing, and they saved a bit of dough. What a DEAL!
Alma and Raylan’s deal wasn’t so fair.
Chalk it up to lack of experience or outright deception, but the same company who cleaned the neighbors’ windows without fuss faltered when it was time to do Alma and Raylan’s more complex job. Perhaps it was the prospect of losing money by taking the time to clean hundreds of tiny panes of wavy glass (love that character!), or maybe they just weren’t experienced enough to know the windows didn’t need to be replaced before they could be cleaned (which is what they told our homeowners🤨).
Either way, Alma and Raylan spent $200 on a deal they couldn’t use and their windows were still dirty. But hey, at least the crew offered to power wash the house as a consolation!
If some Dickensian ghost were to scoop us up, he might take us to an alternate reality where Raylan and Alma, having never found KeyBright, couldn’t watch today’s late-season snowfall drift peacefully down because of the cobwebs clouding their glass (okay, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad . . . ).
Perhaps 20 years from now they’d be shut-ins, blocked from the outside world by the thickest layer of soot and and soil any window’s ever seen. Or perhaps more realistically, they’d grow tired of the dingy-seeming house and fork over a boatload of dough for those replacement windows, or maybe they’d just move altogether.
Without the knowledge of 20 years’ worth of cleaning windows, I wouldn’t have been able to help save them from that fate. Their neighborhood could have lost a piece of architectural heritage, or worse yet a great couple and their family.
However, because of the kind referral of their neighbors, Alma and Raylan can enjoy their shiny, happy house without having to wonder “what if???”
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