Quiz Show

Sometimes that's what working the counter feels like. People will walk up, not say "hi" or "hello" but will get right to their question. "Where is the bathroom?" is far and away the most popular. I don't think it's because of humanity's fascination with feces, though I think it is. It's just one of those questions people tend to ask after they've gotten 2/3rds of the way around a store full of free food samples.
Other common questions are:

"I am having x number of people over, how much *insert item here* will I need?"
"Where is your parmesan?"
"Where is your fresh mozzarella?"
etc.

Some don't pose questions at all. Some make statements:

"A half pound of maple ham." Well. Aren't you friendly?

Yesterday, one of the people I helped was a nice old lady who was obviously shopping for someone else--most likely a grown son or daughter. At the end of our transaction, she paused and said, "Wait, I do need one more thing..." She held up a bag of coffee in one hand and a paper-clipped stack of small note paper in the other hand. "Are these the same?"

I...what? So I said, "One is a stack of paper and the other is a bag...of...coffee?" Hey, you never know when you're going to be on Candid Camera. That show scarred me for life.

It turns out that she had an old coffee bag label in that stack of paper. Which, now that I think about it, I should have known. Because I am a mind reader in my spare time.

Maybe I'm crazy, maybe you're crazy

When two Customer Service minions were leaving work on Saturday afternoon, they sang the Gnarls Barkley song "Crazy" as they left the building. Unfortunately, at that moment one of our long-time for-real crazy customers was coming in to shop. She overheard the two singing and assumed they were singing about her. She proceeded to chase them into the parking lot and yell "If I hear you call me crazy again, I will have you fired!"

Oh, how we laughed and laughed. Poor minions--they had no idea Madam Crazy was even present, much less within earshot.

Tell me--when you buy an iPod, is part of the price giving up your manners?

Friday night, a fellow walked up to the cheese counter and caught my eye. We stood there, looking into each other's eyes--not in a romantic way, but because a) I can't look away when a customer makes eye contact like they are about to ask a question, and b) this man obviously wanted my attention. I nodded and smiled, yet he didn't make a move or a sound. Why?

I'll tell you. He was wearing an iPod. He had both ear buds planted firmly in his ears. OK, when someone walks up to you like that, what do you do? I figure, the iPod must be on. So, I'm not going to do much beyond give a visual cue that yes, I can see you and yes, I am available to you for assistance if you would only take those cocking things out of your ears. Finally, he spoke. "Hi. I need some wine help." OK, then. We walked over to the big wall of wine. He told me he was looking for red wines that still retained some sweetness. He did not remove his ear buds. Not even one. For fuck's sake, it's an iPod. It's not like you're going to miss anything if you turn the fucker OFF to give someone a polite level of attention.

So I shouted every single recommendation to him, for fun.

The generation that will be taking care of you and I when we are oldies.

I can't even form a coherent sentence to say about this news story. I can't. From the AP:

Reports: Teen girls made pact to get pregnant

29 minutes ago

GLOUCESTER, Mass. - A pact made by a group of teens to get pregnant and raise their babies together is at least partly behind a sudden spike in pregnancies at Gloucester High School, school officials said.

Principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine in a story published Wednesday that the girls confessed to making the pact after the school began investigating a rise in pregnancies that has left 17 girls at the school carrying a child. Normally, there are about four pregnancies a year at the school.

Sullivan told Time that nearly half of the expecting students, none over 16, were involved. Sullivan said students were coming to the school clinic multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and "seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were."

Some of the girls reacted to the news they were pregnant with high fives and plans for baby showers, Sullivan said. One of the fathers "is a 24-year-old homeless guy," Sullivan told the magazine.

Superintendent Christopher Farmer confirmed the deal to WBZ-TV, saying the girls had "an agreement to get pregnant."

He said the girls are generally "girls who lack self-esteem and have a lack of love in their life."

Christen Callahan, a former Gloucester High School student who had a child when she was 15, said on NBC's "Today" show that some of the girls would ask her about her own pregnancy.

"They would say stuff like, oh, I think my parents would be fine with it and they would help me, stuff like that," Callahan said.

But she said she had no firsthand knowledge of a pact between the girls to get pregnant.

"They were just kind of like curious about it, they never actually came out and said it," Callahan said.

The first reports of the students' apparent plan to get pregnant were in the Gloucester Daily Times in March, when Sullivan said students were reporting that the girls were getting pregnant on purpose.

The rash of pregnancies has shaken the seaside city about 30 miles north of Boston. Last month, two officials at the high school health center resigned to protest the resistance from the local hospital to the confidential distribution of contraceptives. The hospital administers the state money that funds the clinic.

Are you kidding me?

#1. As soon as we opened this morning, I was summoned to maintain visual contact with a woman in SpongeBob SquarePants scrubs who was seen stuffing bottles of vitamins into her large purse. She knew she was being watched, eventually, but instead of the two normal responses to being observed* she continued to shop in a most erratic way for 30 more minutes. Bizarre. Also, just because your pediatric nurse/dental assistant wears cute scrubs, does not mean she is not a huge but inept thief.

#2 Just before lunch, I was called to Customer Service about a customer with a "credit card fraud" issue. Customer claims to have been double billed on his credit card from lunch on Friday. It's certainly within the realm of possibility, and I was all ready to investigate further, but...he didn't bother to bring in the receipt OR the credit card statement. OK, seriously? What can I do without either of those things? At least bring in the statement--with a little time and the credit card #, we can search for the transaction and get a new copy of the receipt. But to just walk into a store and claim to be overcharged..? Maybe I ought to try that some time. "I bought tires here but I was charged an extra $300. What are you going to do about it?" That's it! That's my elusive step 2!

#3 After lunch, I was asked to observe another customer. She was witnessed stuffing two large cookies into her purse. OK, Customer Service, how will I know which woman to follow? Oh, the one assisted by an OXYGEN TANK, of course, of course. *sigh* I found her sitting in our cafe, eating a plate lunch.

Me: Hello.
O2: Why, hello. Is my cart blocking the way too much?
Me: What? No. No, it's fine. I was going to ask you something else.
O2: What, dear?
Me: Do...you have a receipt for your lunch?
O2: Why yes, I do. (shows me a valid receipt)
Me: You were seen putting cookies into your purse. They're not on the receipt...
O2: Oh, these? (pulls out a bag of two cookies) I was going to pay for them after lunch.
Me: I see. I should tell you that in this state, concealment is shoplifting. You have shoplifted.
O2: Oh, my. I had gone through the line and paid for my lunch, but then changed my mind on the cookies. I had been waiting for a table to open up, so I took one as soon as I saw it. But I was going to pay for the cookies after I ate this.
Me: But this area is beyond the registers. It's not OK to take things you haven't paid for beyond the registers. Or to hide them in your purse.
O2: Oh, OK. I will pay for them.
Me: ...
O2: What, now?
Me: *sigh* That would be ideal.
O2: ...would you pay for them for me?
Me: No.

Of course, when I related the story later to other people at work, I told them that I had pinched her oxygen tube until she agreed to pay. I have to keep up my reputation, you see.

*
1. Confront the observer by yelling that you're being falsely accused (even though nobody has said a thing.)

2. Move quickly, ditch the stuff you were trying to steal, and leave the premises without making any purchases at all.

Salumitorium, or the one where I discover the italics feature

The news about Pamela & Tommy Lee made me temporarily forget my salami stories from yesterday!

A guy asked Zac about the different salami in the case. Zac went down the list and when he got to our latest additions, the Fra'Mani stuff, the customer asked if Zac would "pull it out" for him. The others behind the counter LOST it. The guy was oblivious. Zac held it together and did indeed "pull" the salami out for him. Honestly, I can't remember the rest of the details of the event. I know there were more questions from the customers that just got more and more sexually suggestive and yet the guy appeared to have no idea he was soaking my team in a creamy broth of double-entendre. It reminded me of the older man who asked Leigh Ann and I for parmi-gina (40 Year Old Virgin fans, I'm looking at you) cheese.

Then, later on, another person started asking for the salami list. Herbed, turkey, Genoa, hard, two kinds of soppressata, pepperoni...oh and yeah, some new stuff from Fra'Mani. Nostrano, Gentile, Piccante and a regular, dry Salametto. "What's that?" she asks. "They're aged and cured in the traditional manner, so they've got a natural casing on them with that funky white mold growing on the outside. Pretty funky stuff." Says she, "Oh...extreme."

WTF. NO. It's not extreme, you Gen X twat.

In Defense of Marriage

Tommy Lee, Pamela Anderson rekindle romance

By Alex Dobuzinskis Fri Jun 13, 5:29 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The on-again, off-again love affair between Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee and his ex-wife, actress Pamela Anderson, is back on again, according to Lee.

"Pamela and the kids have moved in with me," Lee told Rolling Stone in a story published on the magazine's website on Thursday. "It's awesome, man. It's definitely working. You can tell on the kids' faces -- they're happy when we're together."

Anderson's representative, Peter Asher, declined to comment.

Lee, 45, and Anderson, 40, married in 1995 and went through several breakups and reconciliations before finally divorcing in 1998. They have two sons together.

"We've only given it a try 800 times -- 801, here we go," Lee told Rolling Stone.

While apart, Anderson also married and divorced singer Kid Rock, as well as married then annulled her marriage to entrepreneur Rick Saloman.

She rose to fame as a model and actress on TV shows such as "Home Improvement," "Baywatch" and "V.I.P." She also has appeared in movies and posed for Playboy magazine.

Apart from playing in rock band Motley Crue, Lee appeared in the 2005 reality TV show "Tommy Lee Goes to College."

The pair also recorded an infamous sex tape that became public.

Reuters/Nielsen

All I can say is: thank goodness the gays aren't mucking up marriage in America. WHEW!

Seriously?

Man: (or Borg, hard to say...he was wearing a Bluetooth) I can't remember which of these I bought last time. Can I try them?
Me: Sure.
Man: It was fabulous with red wine.
Me: That's...neither of those really match well with red wine. Are you sure it was one of those two?
Man: Uh, no. Hmmm. It had little holes in it. It was pretty hard cheese.
Me: How about the aged Asiago?
Man: Yes! That's it. Can I taste it to make sure?
Me: Of course.
Man: I also want to taste this one...and this one.
Me: OK.
Man: And this one.
Me: Anything else?
Man: No, I think that's it.
Me: Alright, here's the Asiago and the Montasio.
Man: (hands me a piece of Manchego) I want to taste this one too.
Me: ...

It's time for this guy to keep a notebook of what he's tried and not tried. Nobody needs to try 7 different aged cheeses inside of 5 minutes, for real.

I'm not cheating by cutting and pasting NY Times articles

I'm behind on my link-reading this week. This article was recommended by NancyF.

Few things burn my biscuits more than thinking about fiscal irresponsibility. Now, I am no financial brainiac. I have the genetic benefit that 25% Scottish blood brings. Not only did my mother and maternal grandparents set the example of frugality and thriftiness, they drilled it into my head. Scared me to death, you could say. So I am totally aware that I am not being fair when I throw up my hands and wonder WTF are people thinking when they borrow, borrow, borrow, not understanding how compound interest works, what APR means, what a good rate is, and then spend that borrowed money on frivolous things that don't (in the long run) help to create more wealth. No, it's more complicated than that. As the guy below will say better than I can, there are far more factors. Number one is the consumer culture in which we live. Number two is the despicable practice credit card companies have, of setting up tables on college campuses and signing virtual children up for credit. People talk about predatory lending and think mainly of the mortgage crisis we're in. Unfortunately, it starts with credit cards in the hands of the newly legal adult. I wish all public high schools would have compulsory personal finance classes. Just one semester could do it. Of course, I also think there should be a required class before people exercise procreation, so don't mind me. I love tests.

I like how he passes on the term for state lotteries:"the tax on the stupid." Ah, I've bought a few in my day. LOL.


June 10, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

The Great Seduction

By DAVID BROOKS

The people who created this country built a moral structure around money. The Puritan legacy inhibited luxury and self-indulgence. Benjamin Franklin spread a practical gospel that emphasized hard work, temperance and frugality. Millions of parents, preachers, newspaper editors and teachers expounded the message. The result was quite remarkable.

The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and frugal.

Over the past 30 years, much of that has been shredded. The social norms and institutions that encouraged frugality and spending what you earn have been undermined. The institutions that encourage debt and living for the moment have been strengthened. The country’s moral guardians are forever looking for decadence out of Hollywood and reality TV. But the most rampant decadence today is financial decadence, the trampling of decent norms about how to use and harness money.

Sixty-two scholars have signed on to a report by the Institute for American Values and other think tanks called, “For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture,” examining the results of all this. This may be damning with faint praise, but it’s one of the most important think-tank reports you’ll read this year.

The deterioration of financial mores has meant two things. First, it’s meant an explosion of debt that inhibits social mobility and ruins lives. Between 1989 and 2001, credit-card debt nearly tripled, soaring from $238 billion to $692 billion. By last year, it was up to $937 billion, the report said.

Second, the transformation has led to a stark financial polarization. On the one hand, there is what the report calls the investor class. It has tax-deferred savings plans, as well as an army of financial advisers. On the other hand, there is the lottery class, people with little access to 401(k)’s or financial planning but plenty of access to payday lenders, credit cards and lottery agents.

The loosening of financial inhibition has meant more options for the well-educated but more temptation and chaos for the most vulnerable. Social norms, the invisible threads that guide behavior, have deteriorated. Over the past years, Americans have been more socially conscious about protecting the environment and inhaling tobacco. They have become less socially conscious about money and debt.

The agents of destruction are many. State governments have played a role. They aggressively hawk their lottery products, which some people call a tax on stupidity. Twenty percent of Americans are frequent players, spending about $60 billion a year. The spending is starkly regressive. A household with income under $13,000 spends, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, about 9 percent of all income. Aside from the financial toll, the moral toll is comprehensive. Here is the government, the guardian of order, telling people that they don’t have to work to build for the future. They can strike it rich for nothing.

Payday lenders have also played a role. They seductively offer fast cash — at absurd interest rates — to 15 million people every month.

Credit card companies have played a role. Instead of targeting the financially astute, who pay off their debts, they’ve found that they can make money off the young and vulnerable. Fifty-six percent of students in their final year of college carry four or more credit cards.

Congress and the White House have played a role. The nation’s leaders have always had an incentive to shove costs for current promises onto the backs of future generations. It’s only now become respectable to do so.

Wall Street has played a role. Bill Gates built a socially useful product to make his fortune. But what message do the compensation packages that hedge fund managers get send across the country?

The list could go on. But the report, which is nicely summarized by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead in The American Interest (available free online), also has some recommendations. First, raise public consciousness about debt the way the anti-smoking activists did with their campaign. Second, create institutions that encourage thrift.

Foundations and churches could issue short-term loans to cut into the payday lenders’ business. Public and private programs could give the poor and middle class access to financial planners. Usury laws could be enforced and strengthened. Colleges could reduce credit card advertising on campus. KidSave accounts would encourage savings from a young age. The tax code should tax consumption, not income, and in the meantime, it should do more to encourage savings up and down the income ladder.

There are dozens of things that could be done. But the most important is to shift values. Franklin made it prestigious to embrace certain bourgeois virtues. Now it’s socially acceptable to undermine those virtues. It’s considered normal to play the debt game and imagine that decisions made today will have no consequences for the future.

Things happen in threes.

I'm posting for the third time today. I guess I should have started this blog years ago.

I'm actually only here killing time while the count out person finishes up today's books. Nothing much happened at work tonight--a few people made some receipt-less returns. What made them uneventful is: they brought things back that clearly were faulty in manufacture. One lady did try to return $40 worth of vitamins, but she is one of our habitual returners and she knows the rules--any return worth more than $20 requires a receipt. We offered to trade them out, but she wanted cash. OK, come back when you find the receipt.

We did find a $7 candy bar that was half eaten and abandoned on the shelves. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Our store is CRAWLING with clearly labeled employees, and our company is famous for being very liberal with the sampling. I mean, hello, $7 candy bars! Who wants to risk putting that kind of money down for something they may not even like? So we offer to open anything and nearly everything (clever alcoholics with $50 bottle addictions, I'm looking at you) to be nice. Isn't that nice? I'm not going to lie to you--giving out free samples of crazy things saves us a lot of minor headaches. So yeah, anyway. The $7 candy bar. If that person had only ASKED to try it, we could have done it in a sanitary way and used the rest of the bar to let OTHER people try it too. Instead, they greedily stole half for themselves with their dirty, dirty mitts and now the other half ended up in the trash. Wasteful bastard.

I don't particularly care for Ben Stein

I thought he was funny and smart when he had that game show on Comedy Central, but in the last few years, he really bugs. Oh well. So imagine my surprise when I read his little thing in the NY Times and found myself agreeing with it. O, you brilliant kids:

June 8, 2008
Everybody’s Business
When You Weren’t Looking, They Were Working
By BEN STEIN
MOST business journalism is about investments and the people who make them, usually on a large scale. Or else it is about the big dogs who run the mighty earldoms of American business and the agencies that regulate them. This is fair enough. As Calvin Coolidge said, “The business of America is business.”
We all want to read about money and how it’s made and lost. But for young people who might have no idea of what business involves, or even what work beyond flipping burgers or selling DVDs might mean, here is a little primer on what it is and why it means something as Father’s Day approaches.
A few days ago, I came across a draft of a memoir my father was working on before he entered immortality in 1999. After reading it carefully, I realized that I knew almost everything in it except for one huge thing: how hard his work — his “business,” as one might say, for it surely kept him “busy” — had been for a number of years in middle age.
To me, as a child and as a teenager, in Silver Spring, Md., he simply got up in the morning, packed his briefcase and went to a fine office at Connecticut Avenue and K Street in Washington — or, if he had business in New York, he packed his suitcase and went to the train after work. When he came home, he had stories about the elegant restaurants he had tried near his office, maybe Duke Zeibert’s or Harvey’s, or, if he had gone to New York, about his room at the St. Regis at 55th Street and Fifth Avenue and how outrageous it was ($30 a night), and how his sleeper car on the train had not really allowed him much sleep.
He never, and I mean never, talked about making money, and he always seemed to have enough of it for a middle-class or maybe upper-middle-class lifestyle. So, frankly, I just assumed that he was having a good time down at his office and was secure and happy in his work.
His memoir told a different tale. There were arguments and power struggles at the Committee for Economic Development, where he was research director. (It was and is an organization of high-ranking business people who put out papers on social and economic issues. My father, for about 20 years starting in the mid-1940s, was the author of many of these papers.) Yes, my father was able to socialize with the heads of the major corporations in America and live on an expense account the way they did, but it was always clear who was the boss. Yes, he got to fly first class, but it was always a struggle to be shown some respect by certain of his colleagues and he often considered quitting.
He also wondered, if he quit, what he would do next and how he would pay the bills, and he did not want his children to have to worry about money, as he did when he was a child of the Great Depression.
I think of this as I shlep through the airport security line with my heavy bags (Willy Loman style), as crazy people sit in front of me on the plane, trying to break my nose by throwing their seatbacks onto me, and as I wake up early to travel to the next destination. Then, as I look at all the other middle-aged (and sometimes older) road warriors in the security line, on the plane or checking into the hotel, I think of our children in school.
I picture our kids bravely taking moral stands on global warming and the polar bears, refusing to “sell out,” get a job or learn anything useful. I think of what I could write to them about their parents’ work. I would start with a short phrase from Hart Crane, the genius poet.
“O, brilliant kids, I was a fool just like you. I was in my mid-40s before I properly thanked my father for his decades of hard work — paying for me to laze around in the cars he bought me, to get drunk in the frat house whose dues he paid, to spend the afternoons with my girlfriends looking at trees and rivers while Pop worked and got so anxious that he took up smoking three packs of Kents a day.
“O, brilliant kids, you get to put on the garments of the morally righteous and upstanding while your parents work — because mothers work now and always have worked — and your parents must say, ‘Yes, sir,’ or ‘No, sir,’ to those who hire them. O, golden children, you get to talk about how you’ll never ‘sell out,’ and meanwhile your parents stay up late in torment, thinking of how they can pay your tuition. Because, brilliant kids, work (business) involves exhaustion and eating humble pie and going on even when you think you can’t. And you are the beneficiaries of it in your gilded youth.
“Be smarter than Ben Stein ever was. Be a better person than I ever was. Right now, today, thank your parents for working to support you. Don’t act as if it’s the divine right of students. Get right up in their faces and say, ‘Thank you for what you do so I can live like this.’ Say something. Say it, so that when they’re at O’Hare or Dallas-Fort Worth and they’ve just learned that their flight is canceled and they’ll have to stay overnight at the airport, they will know you appreciate them.
“Get it in your heads that if you throw away your moral duties to your parents, you are thieves. You were born on third base and your parents put you there, and you think you hit a triple. It’s not true. It’s time to give back.
“ `Attention must be paid,’ as Arthur Miller said. So start now, and make it a habit to be grateful to your parents. Say you’re grateful and mean it. Do it now, however young or old you are. Do it on Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, every day.”
How I wish I had done more of it. Now it’s too late — but it’s never too early.
Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com

Anyway. I think I'll go stand on my front porch and yell at the neighbor kids now.

Stupidity is not a valid defense.

Yesterday, I had to deal with a woman who wanted to return 4 small dead plants for a refund, with no receipt. She claimed that the plants had just up and died.

It had been over 100F for the previous week, and the plants looked suspiciously dry. She claimed she had watered them twice a day, along with her other plants that were all flourishing--and that these 4 were only dry because once they looked dead to her, she had put them in a plastic bag outside. Upon further conversation, she told me that she wasn't completely sure that she had bought the plants at my store; AND that she had kept these small, 4" potted plants in a southeastern exposure: in other words, in full sun. Because the tag on the plants said they liked full sun.

Well, yes. They like full sun when they are larger and planted and not in tiny, tiny plastic pots that dry out in an hour. Young plants should not be in full sun in 100F heat. The customer was shocked to hear this. I was shocked that it wasn't common sense, especially for someone older than me. She still insisted on a refund.

I looked closer at the plants. Two of them were still alive, but heat stressed. The customer was also surprised to learn that when a plant still is fleshy and green at the stems/branches, it's still alive. It would take some good care, but the plant might survive. Still, she wanted a refund.

Then the person working the customer service desk turned to this same customer and handed back a jar of black bean dip. It seems that it wasn't in our system--which means it did not come from our store...or any store of ours in the multi-state region. I'm sorry, but it has always boggled my mind when people who are so particular and have the highest of standards, can't seem to be particular about where they return their products. AT LEAST REMEMBER WHERE YOU BOUGHT YOUR STUFF before you try to return it. I don't think it is unreasonable for me to point out that this is fraud. This customer actually got annoyed at me for refusing to refund her money on a product we don't. even. carry. The hell? She turned the subject back to the plants. "So you're not going to give me a refund?" No. Hell no. No receipt, no care taken for them...stupidity is not a valid defense when you are returning products for refund. And all you get when you then let loose with "This place has CHANGED" and "I mean it, you all have changed" and "I'll just take them back to your other store, they'll give me my money back" and "I'll be taking all of my business to that store from now on, too" is a small crowd of people looking at you like you're off your nut. Don't make a scene. Accept that you got caught lying and move on quietly.

*sigh*

Sometimes you break things, or ruin them. Life sucks that way. It must suck that your parents or guardians didn't teach you to take responsibility for your actions. It really sucks that you're OK with blaming other people and entities for your mistakes. You're making the world a very crappy place for the rest of us, and I wish you would stop it.