Is Life Just Take It or Leave It? Not Necessarily

When we were bringing up our kids, I found myself frequently repeating a saying picked up down South.

“Them’s the breaks,” it went, and the suggestion to the kids was: “This is the way it’s got to be. So don’t fight it, just accept it.”

It wasn’t a sentiment we applied to things that had to be resisted, however intractable--real evils, like bigotry, for example. Usually, in a journalist’s family, it was more like, “Dinner is going to be two hours late tonight.”

Even now, I’m sometimes prone to use the phrase with readers who telephone or write me, urging a crusade against some business or government institution.

Sometimes, I’m willing. But other times I caution the reader that doing what they suggest simply would amount to butting our heads against a stone wall.

Sometimes, it turns out this is good advice; sometimes the readers prove me wrong.

For instance, Dick Hansen, a Conejo Valley man in the motion picture business, called not long ago, most irate.

The company providing his pager had gone out of business, and he seemed to be faced with a need to get a new pager and notify all his customers and associates of his new number. What an inconvenience! He thought I should do a column.

I tartly informed him that America was a free country, and anybody can go out of business any time. “Them’s the breaks,” I said.

But now Hansen tells me he contacted the Federal Communications Commission, and through the frequency number on the back of his pager he was able to go to the FCC’s Web site and find out just who controls that frequency now. The Internet address of that Web site, by the way, is https://www.fcc.gov.

“So I found out who had purchased my number from the firm that went out of business,” Hansen said. And, to make a long story short, he is still able to use his old pager number.

It would have been nice had his old firm notified its customers directly of the name of the replacement firm, but through modern electronic systems, it turns out very detailed information can be traced.

On the other hand, “them’s the breaks” turns out to have been more appropriate advice for John Goldbach, a Hollywood resident who called me about a parking violation.

Goldbach said he had received a citation for illegal parking during street cleaning hours. The sign beside his car had been torn down, but the parking authorities weren’t understanding of this excuse.

Where was the nearest such sign, I asked. “Three or four car lengths in front,” he responded.

“Them’s the breaks,” I told him. “You have to be observant enough to notice a sign a few car lengths away.”

I checked, however, after the conversation, with Michael J. Inouye, administrator of the Los Angeles office of parking management, just to be sure I was right.

Inouye said that actually state law requires only one sign per block, “but we customarily put up three. We over-comply.”

So, in his mind, there was no question Goldbach was in violation.

When I re-contacted him, Goldbach said he had learned that “when I park my car I ought to walk up and down and be sure there’s no other sign. They don’t make that point. That’s what I think is unfair.”

Inouye, incidentally, told me that of approximately 3 million parking tickets issued in Los Angeles every year, about 120,000 are contested, and of those that go to a formal hearing, 60% are actually overturned.

Finally, so many months ago that I’ve lost the caller’s name, a Santa Clarita Valley man protested to me about the practice of some groceries issuing special “club” cards allowing frequent customers discounts on certain items.

The man said he resented having to provide personal information to obtain such cards and he thought they were discriminatory in any event.

I disagreed, telling him that while I don’t use such cards myself, it seems to me it’s the right of any business, if it chooses, to treat frequent customers in a special way. “Them’s the breaks,” I concluded.

Checks with some of the groceries revealed, however, this is a hot issue in their industry.

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Terry O’Neil, a spokesman for Ralphs, which issues a club card, said the market chain is sensitive enough to those customers who feel their privacy is being invaded by the questions asked that the stores waive the questions, except for the customer’s name, when they are asked to do so.

“We’ve taken great pains to simplify the process,” O’Neil said. “And even when they are willing to give more than their name, we use the information we obtain only internally.”

O’Neil said about 6,000 of the 30,000 to 40,000 items in a Ralphs store are discounted for those with the card, and they get the savings right away upon signing up.

Lucky and Vons are among other stores with such programs, but Stater Bros., Albertson’s and Gelson’s don’t use them.

Jack Brown, chairman and CEO of Stater Bros., told me, “We give our low prices to all of our customers, not just those who have a card. We receive 15 or 20 letters every week from customers complimenting us for not having a program and hoping we never will.”

Brown is one of the few CEOs I’ve encountered who insists on coming to the phone himself and making every statement for his 112 stores when the news media calls.

In an aside, he said he has long been curious just what is behind the wave of mergers in the grocery business.

“I’ve said it tongue in cheek,” he observed. “There’s one chain behind all this merger mania, and in about 10 years there will be one big store left, and then I’ll know who it is.”

Is this a case of “Them’s the breaks?” Or can something be done about the grocery mergers?

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Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventure at (213) 237=7060, or by e-mail at ken.reich@latimes.com