Did you know that you can get your very own wake up call service without even checking into a hotel?
It’s true. Wakerupper, Snoozester and Wakeupland are just three businesses who deal in getting you out of bed in the morning.
A typical one-time wake up call with five complimentary snooze intervals costs $1.49.
Or you can subscribe to monthly packages. If you hit the ground running, clean underwear in one hand, toothbrush in the other, then a bronze package will give you a daily wake up call for around $49 a year. If you tend to fall asleep afterwards, but only need one “snooze call” to get you up and sniffing for coffee, then you’ll need the silver package for $77 a year. If you’re a chronic fall-back-to-slumber-land person you will probably have to shell out $109 a year for the gold package which offers up to three “snooze calls.”
I guess the service is for those people who have yet to figure out those new fangled gadgets with a built in alarm, clock and radio. What do you call them? Oh yeah, alarm clock radios. OK, that was a tad sarcastic. I mean, who hasn’t managed to mess up setting their alarm clock radio at least once? And there is always the chance of a power outage during the night. Maybe subscribing to a wake up call service means you’re responsible, not stupid.
Can you imagine working for a wake up call service? I guess it could be a dream job or your worse nightmare depending on your personality. For the person who enjoys human misery, pulling sleepers from dreamland into their work day worlds could be extremely satisfying. Or perhaps you could look at it as doing your part to keep the world running smoothly.
For me it would be like going back to when my boys were teenagers times a thousand. I could only handle the bronze packages. I’m pretty nice the on the first wake up call; I even recall saying things like, “Rise and shine like the big golden sun!” I never understood why they found that so irritating.
I get far less sensitive on the snooze calls. “Get your lazy butt out of bed or I’m coming up there to dump water on your head” probably isn’t what the wake up service encourages their representatives to say. And here’s a thought — who wakes up the wake up call person?
The sad truth is the whole thing is computerized and you don’t get a live person waking you up at all.
However, Snoozester does give you a choice of five voices and even provides a character sketch for each one. Lisa is the girl next door. She keeps herself busy reading, studying and participating in school debates. During her 20 minutes of free time each week she entertains herself by playing sports, waking you up and helping old ladies cross the street. She does have a naughty side — apparently last week she returned her library books two days late.
Harbajan is from Piplinagar, India but now resides in the U.S.A. He enjoys cricket, tennis, Bollywood movies and, of course, waking you up every morning.
At 18 months old, Max is the youngest character but as anyone who has ever had a baby knows, infants are better than a rooster at waking you up in the morning. His favourite colour is blue and his favourite food is apple sauce.
If you choose Max you can cry together every morning.
Captain Snooze is a pirate who takes time out from swashbuckling the high seas, forcing people to walk the plank, looting and plundering to wake you up. According to Snoozester he sounds intimidating at first, but once you get to know him, he’s a nice guy, for a pirate.
If you can’t decide which one to go with, you can hit random and let every morning be a surprise.
Or if you want to hear some middle aged woman say “Rise and shine like the big golden sun” send your money to me and I would be happy to wake you up. Just don’t hit snooze.
Shannon McKinnon is a humour columnist from the Peace River country. You can visit her online at www.shannonmckinnon.com