Tag Archives: shopping

That Moment When You Realize the Customer Service Rep Doesn’t Really Want to Talk to You

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I was in a gas station today, buying some milk. I’ve been in this gas station so many times before that I’d forgotten when I didn’t used to go to this little convenience store. Anyway, the cashiers are generally tolerable, meaning that they say hi and that’s generally about it. But they don’t act rude or anything like that. So it’s just one of those normal places that you shop where you wouldn’t consider it to be the best place in the world to shop.

Anyway, when I went to the cooler to get some milk, I happened to notice that the milk was all “Meijer” brand. I was kind of surprised by that because I tend to buy most of my milk at Meijer and didn’t expect a gas station to stock it as well. Well, much to my surprise, right then and there I discovered that the gas station I’ve been frequenting for years is actually a Meijer gas station, although it isn’t as marked as some of the other ones you see in town. So I was kind of surprised by this and started a conversation of that nature with the clerk.

What I experienced was one of those moments where you realize the person you’re talking to wants to do anything but actually talk to you. A few seconds into the “conversation” I was actually feeling kind of stupid, realizing that I wasted a lot of energy trying to engage this woman in conversation and only got the most brush off of a talk I’ve ever had. It wasn’t like I was asking for a date. Strangely enough, I walked away from that store thinking, wow, I don’t ever want to go back to that convenience store again.

I hadn’t really given a situation like this much thought over the years because most of my interactions with people tend to be quite positive. I’m a sociable kind of guy who likes to talk to people, and as a result, I find a lot of people who are quite conversation in return. But this was the first time in a very long time that I ever came up to someone who I really felt wanted to be in any place but a place where I happened to be standing in front of her.

At least I got my milk. But I’m not sure I’d want to get it from that place again.

The Amazon Kindle Fire…first impressions

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Over the weekend, I went to Best Buy to purchase a new keyboard that I didn’t actually need. It was to replace a gaming keyboard I have that works great, but I decided that because their new gaming keyboard (by the same company) was on sale, I wanted to buy it. It does absolutely nothing new that the old one doesn’t already do, nor is it more stylish or have any extra buttons the old one lacked. But it was on sale, and it was new. So I went and bought it. Yes, I am aware that I am Best Buy’s proverbial wet dream of a client, and I understand that.

To make matters worse, I found my keyboard I didn’t need, started walking to the register and then decided out of the blue that I was going to buy a brand new Kindle Amazon Fire. Already owning a Kindle and having the Kindle app on my Ipad 2, I obviously didn’t need one, but it was there at the store, staring at me, so I felt I had to buy it. So I did. And then I bought the extra pack with it, that cost me an extra $100 for a $50 Amazon gift card, a case and ear phones, all of which I didn’t need either. But happy with my purchase, I took it home.

I’ve had the weekend to play with Amazon Kindle Fire, or the Kindle Amazon Fire, or the Amazon Kindle on fire, or whatever it’s actually called, and I can say that it’s kind of cool. It lets you access the Internet, like my computer and Ipad 2 already do. It lets you download your music library, which Amazon first forced me to upload to its “cloud” first, taking about a day and a half to do so. But then I got to download my music, which I already had on my computer and Ipad 2 in the first place. I mean, convenience knows no boundaries, right?

Then I downloaded some of my books which I had already bought on the previous Kindle and put them on my new Kindle so I can ignore them and not read them there, much like I did with my original Kindle. Then I sat down and read a hard copy book (Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running) that didn’t need the Kindle or the Ipad 2 at all.

Joking aside, the Amazon Kindle Fire is kind of nice. Negatives: It doesn’t have 3G, so you have to use it over wireless only. Kind of a down side. It also makes it difficult to do certain things, like add my Amazon $50 gift card. I had to actually sign onto Amazon with my regular computer to have that $50 gift card registered. There really should have been a simplistic way to do it on the Fire, but there wasn’t. Granted, there may have been some convoluted and difficult way to do it on the Fire, but that sort of defeats the purpose of having the convenient device in the first place. I certainly couldn’t figure it out, other than using their web browser, which isn’t really the greatest browser of all time, even though they called it Silk.

Positives: It can finally read comic books on the Kindle. I downloaded several issues of  Y: The Last Man and was pretty satisfied with it. Down side to that? Yeah, the text is really small because of the 7 inch screen, so I had to really struggle to read the text on the screen. Not a very comfortable way to read a comic book (or graphic novel), but sometimes you get what you get.

Overall, I think it’s pretty cool if you don’t already own an Ipad 2. If you do, then the only real advantage is that there are some magazines and newspapers that refuse to release on anything BUT the Kindle Fire, which is a travesty of an economic plan. In the end, it’s going to kill those magazines because people aren’t going to buy the Amazon Kindle Fire just because Macworld refuses to let Amazon release it to the Ipad 2 Kindle app (which CAN read it just fine). Again, the biggest draw back to the whole Amazon Kindle model is that book publishers aren’t playing along. I refuse to buy a book published by a major publisher that plays games with the Kindle at their outrageous prices of $14.99 and up. Instead, I often choose not to buy the book at all, which is why I haven’t bought the new biography of Steve Jobs, even though I wanted to read it. The publisher is being a complete asshole to readers, so they can go screw themselves, and I’ll buy it when it gets released as remainder issue stock.

Instead, I’ve been buying books that are showing up at the below $9.99 price, unless I can find it cheaper as a paperback, like is happening with The Girl Who Played With Fire, which is still being priced as if it’s a brand new hard back book for the Kindle. As long as publishers refuse to do proper business with Kindle customers, then I say they can go screw themselves and their legacy models. Instead, I bought four other books that were decently priced, and I’ll avoid reading them (due to laziness)  instead of the books I would have bought and avoided reading as well.

For me, Black Friday is Just the Day After Thursday

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I noticed that retailers are starting to send me their “Black Friday” advertisements, telling me of all of the great savings they will be offering on the day after Thanksgiving. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I don’t care. Black Friday is one of those “holidays” that comes once a year that I completely ignore as much as possible, no matter how much hype keeps coming my way concerning the pseudo holiday. You see, I’ve discovered that over the years almost always one of two things happen with a Black Friday sale for me: It’s either sold out by the time I get to it, or it wasn’t really much of a deal to begin with.

The first problem is easy to understand. There are people who stay up late at night and rush the store the second it opens. People fight each other in the aisles, trying to get at that on sale sweater that they never would have bought on any other day, but they’ll kill you for the chance to get that sweater to the cash register. Sure, every now and then you hear about someone getting a “great deal” on something they bought, but for the most part, every person who raves about Black Friday to me usually tells me about some red and green sweater she bought “for only five bucks!” or some electronic item that they managed to pry from the dead hands of a child they beat like a baby seal for the pleasure of paying for it. And I nod, like I’m supposed to do, and I think about how I’m so glad I didn’t have to deal with the crowds that day.

You see, I hate crowds. Especially the kinds of crowds that come out on a Black Friday. These aren’t people watching crowds, flocks of friendly people partaking in holiday cheer, or even underfed supermodels who might be interesting to stare at as they shop for diet Yogurt, but these are crazed, ravenous creatures who seem to equate sales with a necessity on Maslow’s heirarchy of needs, and I just don’t buy into it. For me, dealing with hellbent people who are after sales is a lot like fishing with zombies. It might be interesting to experience in theory, but I’m not sure I’d want to spend the day throwing a line into the water around a bunch of people who want to eat my brains.

So, this year, when Black Friday comes around, I’ll stay at home and do something different, like anything that’s not shopping. For the rest of you, good luck on finding your sales. I’ll listen to your fascinating stories of beating up a school kid who was after that pair of shoes you just had to have, but that doesn’t mean I really care.

Make Coupons Optional Plz!

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I shop at Meijer’s stores for groceries. I really like it. It’s one of those grocery stores that have pretty much everything you need, and I’ve been happy with it. Unlike most supermarkets in California, this one actually sells everything. And I’ve learned to like it.

What I haven’t learned to like is how they want to force coupons on me. I’m not a coupon kind of person. I just don’t like cutting them out and bringing them in. I’ve also come to the conclusion that coupons force people into buying products they wouldn’t normally buy anyway. I might buy a package of Charmin, but just because I have a coupon for it doesn’t mean I really want to go shopping for it. If it was convenient, I might think about it, but cutting out coupons, storing them for future use and remembering to bring the right one just seems like a waste of time. Sure, you save money, but sometimes convenience of peace of mind is much more economical than actual cost savings.

But I can’t get Meijer to stop handing me a handful of stupid coupons that I don’t want. And they’re rarely for anything I’ll ever buy anyway. They’re always for things that are kind of like the thing I bought, but not exactly it. In other words, they’re trying to intice me into buying things I don’t normally buy. And I don’t play that way.

So, I’m stuck leaving Meijer each time I shop with a handful of useless coupons that I then feel guilty for having to throw into the trash can. And I don’t do it immediately because they wrapped those coupons around my final receipt, so that receipt goes into my pocket, and then a few days later, it gets pulled out with a gob of useless coupons that end up on my counter, and they accumulate because they join the other coupons I’ll never use. Basically, Meijer is contributing to more and more trash that I end up having to throw out of my house, adding to landfills in a way that wouldn’t have been necessary if they would just give me an option at the beginning that says: “Paper or plastic and coupons or no coupons.”

Simple as that. And we’d all be happy.

I’m just saying.