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Should I remove Shutter Island from my grandma's Netflix queue?

Asked by wildpotato (15224points) April 10th, 2010

I bought my grandma a few months of Netflix for Hanukkah a couple years ago, right after she decided to give up driving. She’s 84 years old and she doesn’t use computers, so I have been entering her requests in the queue. It’s been a really great service for her, and she decided to continue the subscription indefinitely after my gift months were up. The problem is that she can’t keep track of what movies she’s asked me to put on. Also, she decides what she wants to see based only on whether a movie got at least three stars in the Philadelphia Inquirer. So sometimes she ends up watching movies she dislikes, and forgets that she asked for them in the first place. She’s gotten this idea that Netflix will send her movies arbitrarily if her queue isn’t full, and forgets that we just put a whole bunch of movies in there recently. So she’s writing the poor people at Netflix, telling them to stop sending her the “trashy, pornographic” stuff or she’ll cancel her subscription, and she gets really upset about it on the phone to me… you see my problem.

I have explained the way Netflix works many times, but it just doesn’t seem to take. And she won’t keep a written list around – I’m not sure why. Last time we spoke she had me add Shutter Island to the queue. I said, “Bubbs, are you sure? This is a horror movie. You hate horror movies.” She told me to go ahead. I persisted: “This is one of those movies you’re going to think they sent you without your request. Remember how we talked about that? I guarantee it, you are not going to like this movie. It’s bloody and gory and scary. I will remind you that you asked for it when you tell me you didn’t.” She made an “Eh” noise and continued the conversation in a different vein.

So I put it on the list. But I continue to wonder if I should just take it out – she definitely won’t remember that she asked for it, particularly if they just never send it. And I just know that this is going to give her a not terribly excellent movie-watching experience. Is the only reason to keep it on at this juncture just to prove my point to her? That’s a bad reason; I don’t want to be petty. This isn’t terribly annoying, just slightly exasperating. And it probably wouldn’t be an easy point to make, either, since she will have forgotten our earlier conversation about adding the movie. On the other hand, I want to do what my grandma wants, after all, and she did repeatedly confirm that she wanted to get this, a horror movie, sent to her. I’m really torn here. What would you guys do?

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