New Media

Normally I like to keep customer service rants to myself – mostly because I just assume NO ONE CARES. But since none other than media master Tod Maffin has chosen to take a shot at the genre with an excellent hit job on London Drugs, I feel entitled to vent about an experience that took place shortly after the New Year began.

I walk into Best Buy, pick out a computer mouse for $15 and head to the cash register. The price comes up as $20.

ME: “Oh, um, could you run a quick price check on that?”
CASHIER: “Uh, well, you can see the price is $20.”
ME: “Yes, I see that’s the price that comes up on the register, but I think it’s the wrong price. Could you just check that?”
CASHIER: (Hesitates, then wanders off to the hardware section. She comes back five minutes later and looks at me with a shrug). “That’s the price. The computer says its $20.”
ME: “Uh, OK.” (I pay the higher price, then head back to the area where I found the mouse. Sure enough, the listed price is $15. I head back to the cashier.) “You know, I went back and the price is really $15. Could you give me the lower price?”
CASHIER: “I’d have to go to that department and get approval from a manager.” (She shrugs again and taps her foot impatiently).
ME: (After another 10 seconds) “OK, then… Look, I don’t mean to be a jerk over $5, but could we do that?”
CASHIER: (She shrugs again and wanders back slowly to the hardware department with me in tow. She locates a sales guy – not a manager, and explains the process).
SALES GUY: “So, the computer says it was $20? Well, it can’t be lower, then. We are already selling it at cost. Maybe you saw the Boxing Day sale price and it didn’t get taken down.”
ME: “Look, I got the mouse right over here…” (Ten feet away, I show them the SKU sticker on the shelf. CASHIER stares me down as I show him.) “I’m sure $20 isn’t the cost price if they were selling it at this price for Boxing Day. I’m sure they weren’t losing money on it then, I mean. Uh, you know, I don’t mean to make a big deal over $5…”
SALES GUY: “Yeah, well, that is the price in the computer…”
CASHIER: (Flags down a manager) “This guy says he saw a lower price on…”
MANAGER: “Sure, go ahead, give him the lower price.”
CASHIER: (In a whining voice) “But I’ll need your code…”
MANAGER: “Sure, go ahead. I’m just dealing with someone…”
CASHIER: (Turning back to me) “You’ll have to go to the returns line and get it returned there. Then you can buy it again.”
ME: (Looking at the line of 25 people taking back holiday merchandise) “Uh, well, ah… okay.” (Head bowed in defeat, I go to the returns line.)

Twenty-seven minutes later, I emerge with a mouse for $15 and a better understanding of the futility of hoping for something better from people who just don’t get paid enough to care.

Taking a page out of Vancouver uber-blogger Miss604’s playbook, here’s what’s going on around our gleaming city at the edge of the world:

Marketing Ruined My Life’s Jeremy Lim serves up a classic burger… commercial.

Media maven Michael Klassen on Barack Obama (well, on a link to Barrack, anyway).

Carol Browne tells us it’s the Year of the Rat (a year late, according to one commenter). This is actually a good thing, apparently.

Sean Orr takes pity – sort of – on guilty Vancouver cop. Who knew Morning Brew’s author was such a softie? He must have written this before actually quaffing his morning brew of broken glass and dry roast. Sean, you’re all heart.

John Bollwitt has located a new copyright widget for RSS feeds. All of us west coast geeks are grateful.

Covenant Zone’s peeps are proud to be Canadian. Free Ezra!

Wired Cola introduces Charlie the Cockatoo. Um, yeah.

And of course, Miss604 and a host of other Vancouver bloggers will be flying to Toronto without me because the CBC just forgot to call. I have to keep telling myself that.

Clearly, Vancouver’s blogging community is an eclectic and diverse bunch.

Canadian bloggers facing the same threat to free speech as geeks in the Middle East’s famously liberty-starved kingdom? A report by the Vancouver blog Downtown Eastside Enquirer gives the update on a Twilight Zone-rated farce involving Vancouver City Hall bureaucrats, police, allegedly improper behavior by employees at a Vancouver Downtown Eastside community centre, a homeless blogger and the intangible yet irrevocable principle of free speech in Canada.

There are excellent backgrounders both here and here. Not quite sure how I missed this the first time around.

Weird, wild stuff.

Fiction used to bore me. Of course, that was before I decided I wanted to write it. Now this writer is reading anything and everything to get inspiration for that special piece of work that will take the literary world by storm.

My own fiction writing tends to stray into macho, uber-violent, Hemingwayesque territory. Probably its a sort of intellectual rebellion against my totally risk-adverse lifestyle. But I do appreciate fiction that can take on topics in a tough-guy voice – particularly when it’s with a humorous bent. “Special” Forces, by Mark Fournier, is a masterpiece of this kind of fiction. Read on, and enjoy.

An excerpt follows:

Colonel Thomson:

What have I gotten myself into. I have 22 men who take best of three tries to get their pants on, and I’ve given up on getting them to put the fly in front…

Special stuff, indeed.

As regular readers of this site will notice, West Side Tory is no more. “Currents” is the new title for this collection of intelligent observations by yours truly.

Why the name change? Mostly, it had to do with alienating readership and clients from the 63 per cent of Canadians who seem to equate uber-Tory Stephen Harper with Faust.

My politics are firmly in the Conservative camp right now and will stay that way as long as I believe that Harper and his ilk are on the side of the good. Indeed, I fully expect to work for my local Conservative candidate in the coming federal election.

But that affiliation isn’t burned into my DNA. I couldn’t in good conscience represent myself as a true-blue partisan when my politics could very well change just a few elections hence.

That said, I think West Side Tory is a fine name for a blogger with a little more partisanship in their heart and a rough geographic proximity to Vancouver Island. I hereby relinquish any connection to the West Side Tory name. Hopefully, someone a little more hard-core Conservative will come along, use it and make a million bucks off website advertising. Cheers.

My other reason for the change? As you can see from the Youtube video above, Max Power was already taken. Damn those TV writers.