Kvetchees

1.
KVETCHEES
By Paul Diamond
Ever since I was early retired (i.e. fired) several years ago I have
looked for an easy way to make a lot of money and I think I may have
hit on the answer. It came to me after I had bought myself a new
computer/word processor and found that the first three documents I
wrote on it were letters of complaint. The first was to the makers of
the computer because half the software they were supposed to supply
with the machine was missing and most of what they did send didn't
work. The next was for my wife to a famous shoe manufacturer
complaining that they had stopped making foot shaped shoes for her foot
shaped feet. The third was to a well known theatrical impresario who
had sold us two expensive seats for his hit show from which it was
impossible to see the stage .

It occurred to me that many of the conversations I have these days are
with people who are moaning about something. The New Yorker would call
it kvetching. For those not up in American slang, to kvetch, the
Yiddish for to squeeze, means to moan, to whinge, to complain
endlessly. I seem to spend a lot of my time being kvetched at about the
failings of others. I am, in fact, a kvetchee and I am doing it for
free. This is totally against the spirit of the times. If people want
to use me as a sounding board for their hang-ups they should be
prepared to pay.

"Why not" I asked myself "Set up a telephone chat line where
subscribers
can get rid of their frustrations by kvetching to a sympathetic
listener for 48p a
minute in peak hours and 36p a minute off peak?" The listeners in
this
sub-Samaritans enterprise will be specially selected for the concern
they can put into
their telephone voices and the veracity with which they can fill every
pause with
astonished sympathy - "Never!", "Get away!", "They didn't!", "The
swine!", "I'd do
something about that!" and the Sybil Fawltyish "I know!" Victor
Meldrew's "I don't
believe it" would be a touch too strong. The voices I envisage are
those of the people
who sell life insurance to senior citizens in the TV adverts. I must
avoid the Tracys and
Barrys who 'phone regularly to sell me double glazing. They are
altogether too
cheerful.

All I need now is the backing of some entrepreneur with the vision to
put thirty thousand quid or so into Kvetchees Inc. and I could go
ahead. But wouldn't you know it? Nobody in this country encourages
enterprise. If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times.....