Michael Haren’s Wassupy Blog

Hey Zoo Membership Dude: A Letter from Tammy the Tamarin

Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
3900 Wildlife Way
Cleveland, OH 44109
aspacher@clevelandzoosociety.org

Dear zoo membership dude! What’s up? I’m one of those tamarins you have over at the Rainforest.

I like to think of myself as a modern mammal. Sure I’m street smart and totally rocking the Bieb on my chin but more importantly, I follow this guy named Seth Godin. He’s like Vinny Chase’s manager, Ari Gold, except he’s real, into marketing, a genius, and not excessively vulgar. Maybe it’s not a great comparison but we’re getting off-topic—the point is we’ve got a problem.

You see, according to this Seth guy, you’re supposed to be “treating (your) best customers better”. With that in mind, let me tell you about a family that came to visit me on Sunday.

These guys, we’ll call them the Harens (Sarah and Michael). They love the zoo and visit all the time. They have these two adorable little girls who find me absolutely enchanting. I’m not even exaggerating—I dropped a carrot and they went crazy. I scratched my tail and I thought they might be having seizures they were giggling so much.

The problem is that they can’t come so often anymore because you changed the rules on their membership. They hang out with my pals over at Akron, too, and this past year got a companion-plus membership there. They’ve been using that 100% reciprocity thing to visit me until recently when that policy suddenly changed. Now only two-thirds of their membership is covered at 50%.

Changing the terms midway through the membership? That’s monkey business¹!

So in short, what they thought was going to be a fun free day at the zoo was actually a $19 day at the zoo. It’s not a lot of money, but it was an unexpected expense for a budget-conscious family and will probably be enough to keep them from driving an hour to see me, which is hardcore lamesauce if you ask me.

I bet you can fix this if we put our opposable thumbs to good use.

Yours truly,
Tammy the Tamarin

PS: here’s a picture of one of my fans dressed up as a marsupial. It seemed relevant since I’m a animal.

1 comment

Sarah said on 2011-02-21

Dear Tammy,

You are amazeballs. I normally wouldn’t use that word and would probably roll my eyes if Michael said it, but it really seemed to fit here.

Your forever fan,

Sarah

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