There are almost always good reasons to find any week terrible for ethics reasons, and this week is no exception. I, however, am talking about a terrible week from a personal perspective. For example, my “improved” DirecTV service broke down completely, and it took the company an unprecedented four days to get a technician here. Desperate to save the expense, a representative called me—after I had spent over an hour two days before trying every “troubleshooting measure,” given a rep a live video of my TV, and endured the usual aggravation of DirecTV’s horrible website, customer service line, its vocal fry-infected AI, multiple “one-time codes,” barely understandable script reading live agents from Sri Lanka or Tierra del Fuego, and the worst on-hold music in the history of the universe. The woman who called blessedly had an accent that was usually decipherable, but what she made me do to try to fix the problem the service had already concluded was unfixable reminded me of this bit from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (it starts at the 2:35 mark.)

Another low-point: a close friend on whom I was depending on helping me with several tasks that she had offered and committed to assisting with suddenly stopped answering phone calls, texts and emails, finally sending me terse message that she “didn’t have space for me” in her life right now and not to contact her. No explanation, no discernible reason. I did have a warning of sorts, as she had been gratuitously remote, hostile and cruel for about three weeks.

I have never treated anyone like that in my life, and can’t imagine a circumstance where I would regard it as appropriate conduct. Who does that?

But enough of me. In other ethics developments…