Netflix--a source of conflict?

If you read my last post you'll know that I don't like people feeling they deserve something or their entitled to it, when they haven't done anything to earn it. I'm guilty of this attitude too though. I am ungrateful for a lot of things, including things like nice computer labs and technology resources across campus, the use of our church building's basketball court, relatively well kept roads and a free country. If any of these things were changed, I would probably be unhappy about it, even though I am not really doing much to deserve a lot of those things. Well, I want to write about another experience with something that was "free", but actually caused some temporary hard feelings between my wife and I.

My wife and I receive a Netflix ad in the mail probably once every month or so (not to mention all of the Internet ads for them). The ad offers a free trial of Netflix for a given period of time (two weeks maybe?). If you cancel your trial after that time and return any video you have then you don't have to pay anything. Well, my wife signed up to do this awhile back and she ordered a DVD to be sent to our house. Neither of us our big movie fans, but I especially have a hard time not feeling like I wasted my time when I watch a movie. Most of the time I watch movies is because my wife wants to watch something with me on a weekend night. But we probably only do this once a month or so.

The way the free trial works is that you can order any movie they have to be sent to your house in the mail. As soon as you watch it and send it back to them they will send you the next one you order. You can do this as many times as you want in the two week trial period. They are pretty fast to respond. I think we got our next movie two days after we sent our first one back in. Well, with this program you could watch several movies for free if you wanted to or had time to watch the movies and return them soon after you received them. However, I didn't feel like I had more time to watch movies just because they were free. My wife, however, motivated by the "free"ness of the movies, wanted to get our "trial's worth" of movies. When I told her I felt like I didn't have time to watch more than one movie per week on the weekend, she had a hard time. She wasn't too happy that I wouldn't make more time to watch free movies with her, and I wasn't happy that she was expecting me to. I thought it was interesting that this media promotional could become a source of misunderstanding between us. We had different expectations I guess about how we were going to use the free trial. I have since sworn off of free trials (just kidding, but I am a little wary of them).

Disclaimer: I hope this doesn't sound like I'm criticizing my wife. It's really not meant to. I tried to be open and honest. My wife is great--seriously.