There's A Screenplay In This Somewhere...
This past weekend was spent in the company of friends, family, a lot of mosquitos and more than a few vices. Though there was (sadly) no Tequila present for me to indulge in my favourite alcoholic vice, I did discover a few fascinating vice-related things. Like how it feels to be the person who has to hold back someone's hair while they pay their tribute to the porcelain god.
Good times were had regardless...at least for those of us who didn't suffer a hangover the next morning. Though it saddens me to say that at the bonfire celebrating my sister's birthday, I lost no less than 3 marshmallows and 2 hotdogs to said fire.
I blame it on my sticks. They all caught fire and broke off, taking my hapless and delicious meals down with them. And now I've apparently been banned from selecting or using sticks to cook hotdogs/marshmallows over the fire ever again. Geez, you'd think I'd been trying to put an electric kettle onto the fire or something...
Anyhoo, it's the week before school starts, and thus far I'm please to report I haven't been forced to kill any silly-arsed customers. Yet. The week is still young, of course. Mind you, we are considering setting up a betting pool regarding our signage. Currently we have a promotional deal, and the sign advertizing for it says:
Buy any backpack or postman, and get 20% off any pencil cases, lunchbags or binders
This isn't the exact font size of everything, since the "20% off" bit is large enough to line up with both ends of the two sentences, but I think the point can be delivered with this. Despite the rest of the stipulations for this sale being in fairly large, easy-to-read white letters set against a blue background, we have had no shortage of people coming up and saying, "So the backpack's twenty percent off, right?"
I swear, you put any sort of percentage-off or Sale words in a store, and the ability to read plummets for about a twenty foot radius. Is it that hard to actually read all those funny letters and words on the rest of the sign? Do you truly believe they are in fact irrelevant or some sort of gibberish coding that accidentally got printed on the borders of the sign?
So yes, a betting pool was considered. We'd all put a dollar or two in, and see how many people asked a silly-assed "20% off" question. (And they're almost always the aforementioned one.) Then whomever guessed the closest number of...let's just call them Asking Asshats who came up and made the query, could take home the pot.
All we'd really need was a sheet of paper near the till with a "?" on it. And we just had to add a little tick each time the question got asked. Granted, this does lend itself potential abuses with people adding more ticks just to get closer to their own bet, but hey, it's just a concept at this point.
Perhaps it's because of all my time being trapped in the retail trenches that I'm inherently skeptical now, but whenever I see a sign proclaiming any sort of sale, I immediately search the rest of the sign for the fine print, requirements and other such limitations. Then again...this does help further my belief that everyone should spend a "tour of duty" of sorts in the service sector for at least a required 4-6 months. Perhaps then people will tone down their asshattery.
It's either that, or I revert back to the
Customer Appreciation Amazing Pancake Maker.
Today's Lesson: sometimes the smell of bong wafting through the balcony window can smell a lot like dog poop.
posted by Phillip at 8:50 PM
