C'est Non Un Blog

I have a disease. It’s called procrastination. I don’t know why I do it, but if there is something I can procrastinate on doing, that’s what I do (or don’t do). My entire life has been one giant procrastination. It boggles my mind, I don’t understand it. Throughout life I’ve found that there really isn’t much of anything I can’t do, and yet anything that seems like it might take a little effort I put off until the last possible second. I’m not sure if it something where I like the rush of coming in right under the gun or like maybe getting caught doing it, or if I fear failure, or some combination of all of the above. Things never get done around here though. And yet I never get caught, I never get called on it. It’s a weird sensation. I have no idea where this will take me in life.

Well, good news all around. First my tape deck in my car is getting more and more finiky by the minute. Yesterday it took me 15 minutes to get it working in the morning. Today 25. Stupid piece of shit.

No worries though. My iPod doesn’t work anymore anyways. Today I dropped it. Not like, out of a moving car or off the top of a tall building or anything. From like waist height. It seemed to be working right, and then about 10 minutes into using it it just freaks out. Making all sorts of weird noises. You can’t play with the controls. Nothing works. I’ve pretty much given up on it. It’s junk now.

Man, good thing I work where we sell these things. Hello click wheel!

One thing I just realized today: I don’t ever have to worry about someone stealing my car. I mean, now that my door is all smashed up, who’s going to want anything in my car? It’s a 1990 Chevy Lumina Euro–you know every gangbanger is dying for one of those sweet rides. The busted door will scare any would be robber away. Anyone stupid enough to procede further would notice that my stereo sucks and my rims are pieces of shit. There is nothing IN my car. I could leave that piece of shit unlocked in the middle of the City and no one would touch it.

Sweet.

You know, every fricking week NBC and Trump advertise next week’s episode of the Apprentice having THE BEST BOARDROOM EVER!!!!!! that you tend to stop caring. The boardroom was great, yeah, but best ever? I don’t know about that. Not EVERY week. I mean some weeks just aren’t going to be as good as what came before. That is life.

So let’s just say I don’t really put much stock in NBC’s advertising department. That fact only made me that much more floored by tonight’s episode. HOLY SHIT! I did not see that one coming.

For those of you who didn’t see it, the best player on the team that lost goes into the boardroom with EXEMPTION from getting kicked off because he was the project leader on the team that won last week. He can’t go home. These two other girls fucked up big time. Their ass is gone. Then he mentions that he’s so confident in his abilities that he would voluntarily wave his exemption to show the team that he’s with them all the way. Trump just thinks this is an extremely bonehead move though. So despite the fact that these other girls are worse (and he did the best) Trump fires him just like that. The guy didn’t even pack his bags. I was blown away. Damn that was good reality TV.

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In other news, for some reason I walked into my room just now and it smells like a locker room in here. This boggles the mind. Where the hell would this smell come from? I don’t do anything that even remotely looks like moving.

Oh and also, we just hired another person today! Our first full-timer since the last bonehead left started Tuesday, and a new part-timer starts Monday. This will officially be the most people we’ve had working at the store since I started working part-time. I’m like a hard seasoned veteran now, it’s weird. To think I didn’t even start working there that long ago.

Of course I haven’t had more than a day off a week in FOREVER. I won’t know what to do with myself when I get two days off, much less what I’ll do the first weekend in October when I have not only a weekend off (which I haven’t had off since I started working at Bose) but FOUR days off in a row! If you want to do anything that weekend, let me know, maybe I can drive out.

The other day I had my first customer try to pull a fast one on the store. And by fast one I don’t mean your basic “I live in New Hampshire so I don’t have to pay tax” scam or your “I bought more than one item so I should get, like, a thousand dollars off, right?” scam. This black guy comes in and I greet him. He looks pretty well to do and I ask him if there is anything I can help him with. He says that he’s looking at the 321 but he wants to look around first. OK, that’s cool. I let him. He then makes a very quick trip around the store where he pretty much looks at every price sign in the room and then comes back to me asking me about the Acoustic Wave. “Can I hear this?” Sure you can, sir. “Wow, that sounds great. I can hook it up to a TV, right? I’ll take it.”

[Just to give you some insider information here, the Acoustic Wave box is much smaller and lighter than the 321 box, but is also much more expensive (1,079 to 899). Both are items you could carry out of the store yourself, although it is a whole lot easier to carry the Acoustic Wave.]

I took the Acoustic Wave up to the cash wrap for the guy, but then asked him if he wanted to look at the 321 at all, since that was what he came in to look at. Nope, he insisted he had a small apartment and this was all he needed. OK, fine. Don’t argue with how stupid the customer is.

So I scan everything in and he hands me his credit card. First of all, this card has an expiration date for 2007, and yet the card looks all beat to hell. Anything with an expiration date that far into the future has to be a new card. Next I swipe the card to scan it. Nothing. No beep, no resistance even as I pass the card through. I’m not sure, but the black swipe bar even looks bigger than it is suppose to to me. So I manually type in the credit card number. Then we have to put in that little three-digit CVV number you have on the back of your card where you sign your name. There is absolutely nothing on the back. You can’t even tell if there were numbers there once that just got smeared. It’s just blank, and the whole back looks rubbed to hell. Of course his signature looks brand new though. I tell him I can’t use the card without the CVV #.

If this happened to most people, they would probably curse. Most have a second card, so they would start rummaging through their wallet. You’d get excuses, “try the card again”, blah blah blah. This guy just took his card back and said, “I’ll go get my wife’s card,” and walked out the door.

We never saw him again to pick up his Acoustic Wave.

I got into a nice little accident tonight on my way home from work. Smashed the hell out of my driver’s side rear door trying to pass a construction crew pickup truck on the right while he was making some bizarre voodoo right turn in the left lane with no blinker on. There were two choices one could have made in such situation, and I made the WRONG one. In too much of a hurry I thought I could easily pass him since he wasn’t going that fast. Instead I got to wait a half-hour for the State Trooper to arrive. I’m fine and the car is mostly fine, but that door is just FUCKED. Won’t open or anything. Luckily I didn’t get a ticket for something that honestly could have killed someone had we both been going faster. Although as much as it was my fault, he was really at fault too. God knows what the fuck he was thinking when he was making that turn. All signs pointed to him turning left, not making a quick turn right. Fuck me though. I know I’m going to be paying for this mistake for a while yet.

OK, I’m really pissed off right now. Really fucking PISSED.

[REDACTED]

Because you’ve ordered The Film Noir Collection and The Alfred Hitchcock Signiture Collection in the past, we thought you’d like to know that The Alfred Hitchcock Signiture Collection is now available for pre-order…

Uh, yeah, I know. I preordered it. You seem to know this. Hmmm….

Could someone please see Open Water and tell me how the fuck the movie ends?

I saw the movie tonight, and the movie ended at a logical point. The film fades to black. Then suddenly the film just stops and the lights come up. No credits, no nothing. Everyone looks around, confused. A few of us go out to the main desk and ask if that’s how the movie really ends. A woman comes out and insists that that’s how it ends. I didn’t really believe her. Could someone please see the movie and tell me if I should ask for my money back?

Today has been such a bizarre day. All the crazies were out in force. Had this one guy who calls as soon as I get in. He wants to know if we have a Lifestyle and some speakers in stock. Fine. I check. We do. Do we have these speakers too? Yes. How much? What about these speakers? How much are those? It just kept going. I asked him, “Sir, do you have internet access?” Yes. I’m there right now.

…

Uh, all of our prices are right there. Really? Where? Uh…did you even click on anything? Dumbass.

Then we get our truck. For some reason people tend to have a hard time understanding that we are actually, you know, busy sometimes. One dumbass comes in demanding to know if we’ve fixed his 321 yet. (Little did we know that this guy’s wife hasn’t even brought the damn thing in yet, as she’s at a doctor’s appointment.) Jim tells the guy that we haven’t looked at it yet, since we’re “kind of in the middle of a truck right now.” The guy says, “Gee, I don’t see a truck in here.” Yeah, that’s right asshole, we normally just drive the truck through the wall to unload it. I mean that does mean you don’t have to walk as far, right?

I get a call while all of this is happening. I go through the same greeting we always do (“Good morning, thank you for calling the Bose Factory Store in Manchester. This is Ben.”) and admittedly I was doing it a little half hearted. We were busy. So I get this mumbly response. What? Again, I have no idea what he’s saying. A third time this asshole asks me if I’m new there. Uh no, why? It sounded like you were practicing answering the phone. Well, thanks. This dickhead then asks for Rachel (not in) or another MOD (manager on duty). Since we were the first store to get the new registers everyone now calls us (specifically Rachel) when they can’t figure something out. This is something I probably could have walked him through myself, if I cared to. Not after he insulted me though. No one else was free, so he got no help. “I kind of need to know now, as I have the customer right here.” Oh well. Tough luck for you. The other really annoying thing he did was never identify himself. When I say, “This is Ben,” you’re suppose to say, “Hey Ben, this is [blank] from the [blank] store.” I had to ask the guy what store he was from. This was at the end of the call. Jackass.

This old woman comes in with her brother and the first words out of her mouth are: “Do you have a chair?” Uh…no? “There’s nowhere to sit?” Well, there are seats in that back room, or in the theater, thinking she just wants to rest her feet. Nope. She wants to shop in style. No we don’t have a fucking chair. How many stores have chairs for you to just chill in while you shop? Anyway, this woman was CRAZY. I mean a real wackjob. To try to put this interaction in words would never actually give you an idea of what it was really like (maybe I could do it in person). To sum it up, this woman wanted a pedestal for her Wave Radio and had no idea what that actually was, even though they had both seen one in action. As I started to explain how it worked she through up her hands and said it was too complicated, and started to walk away. This whole thing was hilarious, and I had a smile on my face the whole time I called her back and calmly explained to her that a monkey could figure out how to set this thing up. For some reason the brother even decided to buy it for her for Christmas, which I think she thought was like, the greatest gift ever.

This one guy shuffles in, and I swear he’s retarded. Turns out he’s just from the City 😉 What a pain in my ass he was. He would ask about something and then ask about a completely different product. He would complain about our house station (the radio station we set up in the store because our reception sucks ass) and then when we listened to it on another product, complain that the same some wasn’t playing. Uh, it’s a radio station sir. Could I play something classical for you? “No, I like this song.”

For some reason, people are always arguing with you over the size of their system or more likely, their speakers. For some reason they always look different when you put them in your own home. You would be amazed at how many people ask if the Wave Radio used to be bigger (or smaller). Uh, it’s always been the same exact size. Always. Anyway, retarded guy’s wife tells me she has a 321. But she insists that it is a 321 GS, AND that she paid less for it than we are offering it. I tell her flat out that that is impossible, but she doesn’t believe me. Fuck her. Believe you have the better system if it helps you sleep at night. We both know you got the cheaper one. The worse part is that the two of them were probably doctors or something.

Did you know that diplomats get diplomatic immunity…from taxes? I did not know this. Anyway a diplomat came in from Columbia today, and insisted that we not charge him for taxes, even though it is our store policy to charge you if you have tax exempt status and then send you a refund check. “In the 7 years I’ve had exempt status I’ve never once paid taxes.” Well, maybe true, might be a lie, but hey, that’s how we do things here. Meanwhile, his 3-year-old daughter is practically ripping the place apart.

I’m suppose to get out at 5:30. At 5:10 I approach this guy whose first question is: “Do you guy’s have a catalogue?” Uh, no. (Dumbass, check out the website.) Is there anything I can help you with? “Well, I have a weird shaped room and I’m wondering where I should place my speakers.” I flat out tell the guy that there is no pamphlet or catalogue in the world that is going to tell you where to place your speakers. That’s MY job. Anyway, I tell him about the show and put him in. As I come out I tell Jeremy flat out that I’m not going home on time today.

Turns out I’m right. Despite the fact that I’m half-assing my presentation and trying to answer every question this guy has as quickly as possible, something clicks and the guy ends up buying. One of our most expensive systems. I was shocked. I don’t know what the fuck I did, but I have a knack for this sort of thing or something. People just buy from me. I have no idea why. It seems the less I care, the more likely they are to buy. So despite the fact that I left late, I did have a killer sale to show for it.

So that was my day. INSANE. Just insane.

Driving home from the theater I was reminded of a time in college when a casual friend from NYC wondered out loud what the high beams in a car were for. He thought they were just for flashing at other drivers. I found this extremely hilarious.

MSN just popped up one of those random news stories they are prone to do, and this one in particular caught my eye: 30 Best and Worst Crime Cities. Now is that a list of cities that a best and worse to live in, because of their crime record, or the best and worst cities to commit a crime in? Come to think of it, they are one and the same, aren’t they?