29 October 2014

Social Disgrace: Rat of God

It's been a couple of months since I've done a Social Disgrace post. That doesn't mean things have improved. If you aren't on Facebook you've missed a lot of AncestryFAIL posts on Barking's Facebook page. Ancestry's social media team really outdid themselves yesterday. The post was so bad it had to be deleted but luckily a friend was able to grab a screen capture for me.

Ancestry.com DYK our Sears, Roebuck and Co. Historic Catalogs span 1896-1993 and have some, shall we say interesting and spooky items for sale including this headstone with what we think is a rat or opossum on top? Take your best guess!
[Ad copy] THIS BEAUTIFUL TOMBSTONE with a sleeping lamb on the top is furnished at the heretofore unheard of prices of $11.65 in Acme Blue, Dark Vein Vermont Marble, and at $12.88 in White Acme Rutland Italian Marble. 

A rat or opossum? Seriously? "Sleeping lamb" is right in the ad copy. And I doubt anyone who has bought a headstone for a child would appreciate the stone being called "spooky" like some cheap Halloween decoration. We won't even go into the disastrous grammar.
An Ancestry.com employee commented with a non-apology apology. Of course once the thread was deleted so was her comment.

Juliana Szucs It is definitely a lamb as it says in the ad, and we meant no disrespect, but in all honestly [sic], when I look at the advertisement I see an opossum. We just thought we'd share it for fun. Apologies to those of you it offended. For those of you who want to browse, the Sears catalogs are here: http://bit.ly/hsD5nm

Got that? If you were offended she apologizes but no apology for offending you. No apology for creating the post. No apology for making light of grieving parents. No apology for their lack of reading comprehension. No apology for their lack of basic cemetery knowledge. Unbelievable.

Thanks to Madelyn for the screen caps!
The title of this post was taken from one of the comments in the deleted thread. Thanks, Jane!



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