Of Meetings and Webcams
“Are you Bob?”
“Well yes, I am.”
Judging by the confusion on Bob’s face, I wasn’t convinced that this is the guy I was set to meet.
“Are you expecting an 11:00 o’clock meeting with someone?”
“No.”
Did I mention that introductions can be tricky?
I’m a bit of a geek, and purchase electronics on regular basis. A chain of suppliers that shall remain unnamed – until later in the article – has hit my bad books over the years, but they are hard to ignore. Their stores are everywhere, and they have a lot of toys someone like me likes to play with. As such, once every couple of years I go in to see if their customer service has improved. My last attempt of this kind was a few days ago.
I was after a webcam, but couldn’t resist strolling the aisles to check out the latest goodies. It wasn’t long before I was approached by a ‘helpful sales rep’.
I’ve heard these guys talk. Most of them know shit all about the products they are selling. Sure, they come of as knowledgeable, but in the end they are just sales reps, not tech gurus. The store doesn’t hire gurus, because they are able to match customers with the products they need; The sales reps with limited knowledge push the most expensive products including the useless extended warranties.
After politely declining the assistance offered by the rep, I proceeded on my merry way straight into the face of another rep offering to help, and then another. Three reps in 10 mins.
I found what I needed without their help, and proceeded to the cash register only to find that the whole store has only two, and one of them was closed. The open one was doing a product exchange. While the reps assaulted me in the aisles, here I was stuck at the cash register waiting another five minutes for a single check out clerk to do her job.
Future Shop, get your damn act together. I’ve only been waiting for 10 years for you guys to get this customer service thing figured out. I’ll see you again in 2009, and hopefully by then you’ve finally got it right. I’m won’t hold my breath though.
“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”
“The reason organized religion merits outright hostility is that, unlike belief in Russell’s teapot, religion is powerful, influential, tax-exempt and systematically passed on to children too young to defend themselves. Children are not compelled to spend their formative years memorizing loony books about teapots. Government-subsidized schools don’t exclude children whose parents prefer the wrong shape of teapot. Teapot-believers don’t stone teapot-unbelievers, teapot-apostates, teapot-heretics and teapot-blasphemers to death. Mothers don’t warn their sons off marrying teapot-shiksas whose parents believe in three teapots rather than one. People who put the milk in first don’t kneecap those who put the tea in first.”