You may have read the widely-reported news that The Walt Disney Company is paying refunds to all people who purchased their Baby Einstein, Baby Shakespeare, or Baby Mozart videos since 2004 “that did not make children into geniuses.” Here are a couple of sample Customer Service Line complaints recently received by the company at their Burbank, CA headquarters…

Phone rings at the Customer Service Department, The Walt Disney Company.





“Good morning, Customer Service. How may I help you today?”

“Yeah. I want to return these Baby Einstein videos of yours for a full refund.”

“What seems to be the problem, sir?”

“The problem? The problem?? The problem is, I feel like I’m stuck in a pre-Einsteinian time warp when the Universe was static and governed only by Newton’s Law of Gravity and Maxwell’s Law of Electromagnetism. Only the problem is, it’s my Universe that’s static, my Universe with my kid! I bought your videos because I had this kid who I suspected was a bit of a dud when he popped out, just kind of lying there uninterested in anything, y’know? I mean, rattles, keys, everything, and nothing cranked his cranium! So I parked him in front of your videos to make him into a genius just like you said and you know what? After months and months of watching, even after I offered him ice cream if he could tell me that Newton said mass and separation distance was what determined gravity and that there was a force called Action at a Distance that made everything attract and that Einstein came along with a new theory of gravity which posited that space gets bent by energy and how that changed our whole conception of the Universe – even for ice cream, he still couldn’t get any of it! None of it!! Nothing, man!!! Nada!!! He’s a dud!!! Still!!! In fact, I think he’s actually more of a dud now than the dud he was before we watched your stupid videos! He’s duddier! Yeah, that’s right! Duddier! Is that even possible??? I mean, really! Look, I want my money back! All of it!”

“Sir, how old is your child now?”

“Two.”

“That’s a lot to expect of a two-year-old, don’t you think, sir?”

“Hey, genius, it’s a do-it-yourself home genius maker product, isn’t it? That’s what you guys pretty much advertised, didn’t you? If you’d advertised cake making videos and we bought them and couldn’t make a goddamn angel food cake you’d give me my money back, right? You gotta watch Baby Einstein to make Baby Einstein, right? That’s what you said and that’s what we did! And now my little ‘genius’ can’t even account for those 0.011 degrees that Newton’s Theory of Gravity neglected! My little ‘genius’ can’t predict, or even begin to understand, even as a simple solution, the entire existence of black holes! So yeah, I’m pissed!!!”

“We’ll provide you with a full refund right away, sir.”

“Good. You should. And you should change the name of your product to Baby Dudstein while you’re at it!”

Click. Customer hangs up.

Phone rings at the Customer Service Department, The Walt Disney Company.

“Good morning, Customer Service. How may I help you today?”

“I bought your Baby Mozart series of videos? I’m afraid my baby is a musical moron.”

“A musical moron? Are you sure, ma’am?”

“Well, I’ve tried everything. Humming to her, singing to her, playing the accordion to her–”

“Ma’am, don’t you think the accordion would turn anybody off music?”

“Oh? You really think so?”

“Oh yes, ma’am. I think the only thing worse than the actual accordion itself is actual accordion music. And the only thing worse than actual accordion music is polka music. Now, you didn’t play polka music on an accordion for your baby now, did you ma’am?”

“But, but… there isn’t much else you can play on the accordion!”

“Oh my God! You’ve done the musical equivalent of feeding your baby raw mercury for breakfast! This is terrible, ma’am! Your baby could be damaged beyond saving!”

“No! Noooo!! Oh, please don’t say that! Can’t you do something?!!”

“Oh, jeez, ma’am, I don’t know. These accordion cases are never good.”

“Please, oh please! I’m begging you! This is my baby!!”

“I don’t know. Accordions and polkas are like virulent invasive pathogens – once past the myelin sheath protecting the nerves of the brain, the affliction is nearly irreversible! I’ve seen grown men move and spin around like weird dancing puppets, legs uncontrollably akimbo, once exposed! It’s an awful thing to see, ma’am, truly awful. A tragedy.”

“Oh, what have I done?? I’ll never forgive myself!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll try to help her, ma’am. Let’s look on the bright side – this is definitely the answer! This is why your baby appears to be so moronic!”

“Oh, thank God!!! Please help us! Please!”

“For sure! Now, stay with me on this: we call it Baby Mozart for a reason, ma’am. We didn’t call it Baby Accordy-on Moron, now did we?

“No…”

“And we didn’t call it Baby Beer Barrel Polka, now did we?”

“No…”

“Good. Stay with me now and maybe your baby can be saved. First, get her off that accordion and polka stuff right away! Place her immediately in a sterile and isolated barium chamber until her brainwaves return to normal.”

“Got it. I’m doing that right now.”

“Excellent! Now, start her on a daily regimen of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony along with his Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute operas now! Once every hour, around the clock, you must expose her to something wonderfully Mozartean! With fluids and rest in between, she may, I repeat, may, recover, so long as the damage isn’t permanent. If so, she could be fully musical in a few days!”

“Oh, thank you so much!”

“I have to ask – why’d you do it, ma’am? The accordion, I mean. And the polka music. It’s… it’s… borderline… I hate to say it, but… torture.”

“You don’t understand. I live on the Upper East Side. The Upper East Side for a young Jewish mother like me is a viciously competitive jungle of savagery and early death. I’m just trying to get her into Fieldston or Trevor or the 92nd St. Y Preschool, the top top top preschools, and the most fiercely competitive. I just want her to have a chance! You’ve given us that chance to survive the entry requirements! I can’t thank you enough! I– I’ll… never forget you!”

“You are most welcome, ma’am! Any way we can help, we will!”

“Any chance I can still get that refund?”

“None.”

“Okay.”

Click. Customer hangs up satisfied.

Phone rings at the Customer Service Department, The Walt Disney Company.

“Good morning, Customer Service. How may I help you today?”

“Oh. Hello. I bought your Baby Shakespeare videos and I want you to know I am not happy with the results. Not at all.”

“How’s that, sir?”

“Listen, I’ve spent hundreds of hours with that kid watching those things and I can tell you, she doesn’t know Macbeth from McDonalds!”

“Are you sure you’ve assessed her correctly, sir?”

“Assessed her correctly?? Assessed her correctly??? Let me tell you… I ask her to tell me about the ethically inadequate object of Macbeth’s ambition and do you know what she does? She sits there staring at me!! Drooling! Where’s the freakin’ genius in that???”

“Sir, we don’t actually guarantee that–”

“I say to her, ‘Honey, you think that Macbeth is a great play about an immensely ambitious man who feels compelled to do things that he knows are politically and morally disastrous, don’t you?’ I mean, I practically give her the friggin’ damn answer to the damn question and she still doesn’t get it!!! Your product sucks!!!”

“Sir, how old is your daughter?”

“One and a half.”

“I see.”

“What’s that got to do with it? She’s supposed to be a genius after watching these videos! You said! I mean, isn’t she supposed to have at least a tiny little bit of insight into Macbeth’s anguished brooding about the impulses that are driving him to seize power by murdering Scotland’s legitimate ruler??? Jesus Christ, lady! I invested hundreds of hours watching them with her, hundreds of hours I’ll never get back, and what do I have to show for it? I don’t have a genius! I don’t have Baby Shakespeare! I don’t have anything even remotely close to a Baby Shakespeare at all!! I have Baby Drool Baby!!! Here’s a new marketing slogan for you – watch these videos and turn your kid into Baby Drooling Fucking Imbecile!!! How’d you like to see that on the shelves of your grocery store? Baby Drooling Fucking Imbecile! How many Baby Drooling Fucking Imbecile videos are you gonna sell then, tell me? Hey honey, what should we get the kids for Christmas this year, huh? Oh, how about a couple of those Baby Drooling Fucking Imbecile videos! Okay! Yeah! They’ll love them! Let’s get them today! We’ll all watch them together so we can become the Swiss Family Robinson of Drooling Fucking Imbeciles! What do you say?”

“We’ll mail you a full refund today, sir.”

“Thanks for nothing!”

Click. Customer hangs up.