Tag Archives: retail

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Customer service. On Tuesday morning, I drove an hour towards Baltimore expecting to transact a not insignificant amount of business with a well reviewed small local retailer. I originally planned to go in on Monday, but noted on their website that they were closed Sundays and Mondays. No harm no foul. Of course their site didn’t make any mention of the fact that they were also going to be closed on Tuesday this week. So I wasted two hours and burned half a tank of gas driving around north eastern Maryland on Tuesday for no apparent reason. As much as I’ll be the first to tell you that keeping up with a website is a pain in the ass, it seems to me if you’re going to bother to have one, it’s probably worth keeping the information up to date. Otherwise, as in this case, you’ve thoroughly annoyed a cash customer before they even walk through the door. I’ll probably still do business with this outfit because they’ve been recommended to me so highly, but it wouldn’t take much in the way of less than excellent service at this point to send me down the road to the next closest competitor.

2. Email. If anyone is wondering how I spent my first day at work after almost two weeks off, it was largely dedicated to reading, responding to, filing, or deleting 127 emails that rolled in over the Christmas-to-New-Years window. That’s not an exceptionally heavy load – it would have been far worse if I had taken off two weeks in say the middle of the spring. Look, I think it’s cute that there were a few people out there trying to get something done over the last two weeks, but since I wasn’t one of them, it’s going to take me a day or two to get back up to speed. Especially since I wasn’t exactly spending a lot of time pondering what important bit of email I was missing while I was away. Trust me when I tell you that sending me a follow up email the day I get back isn’t going to improve the response you’ll get. In fact it’s just going to make the process work more slowly for both of us. Now that I’m back in the saddle, it’s safe to assume I’ll work your issue in whatever priority it’s given by those elevated to positions higher than mine. In the meantime, have a cookie and get off my ass.

3. Attention span. I don’t know if it’s me or my surroundings, but lately my attention span feels like it’s all of about 37 seconds. That’s great for some things, I suppose, but I’d have a hard time listing what any of those might be. For purposes of reading, writing, or really trying to get anything done with any semblance of speed, it’s really kind of a hassle. I’d hoped that the new year would bring some kind of renewed focus. Unfortunately, it feels a lot like 2013: Part Two in that regard. As always, I’ll muddle through until the glitch works itself out.

Jeffreytharp.com is pleased to announce…

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Jeffreytharp.com is pleased to announce the arrival of a a bouncing baby book. What Annoys Jeff this Week: 2013 in Review was published in the pre-dawn hours of December 30th and weighs in at WAJTW 2013458 KB and approximately 79 pages long. It’s now available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords for the low, low price of $.99.

It’s said that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. After two full years of writing WAJTW, I’m beginning to get an unsettled feeling that there’s nothing to be done against the rising tide of stupid people, awkward situations, and the the general sense that the whole world is going to hell in a handbag. It’s like global warming, except instead of new beach front property, all we get is rising blood pressure and an increased desire to run away and live in a shack in the Montana wilderness.

Still, when life hands you lemons, the only thing to do is try reselling them at a reasonable profit to those who don’t have any citrus of their own. With all new commentary, corrected for spelling and grammar, and jam packed with the snark and sarcasm that you’ve come to know and love, WAJTW: 2013 commiserates over the year that was and looks forward to the inevitable annoyances of the one to come.

What to get for the guy who hates everything…

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If I may be so bold as to make a Christmas shopping recommendation for everyone, I’ll take this opportunity to remind you that books make excellent gifts… and I’m not just saying that because I want you to give my books to Coverpeople. Although, if you choose to give the gift of Jeff, you can pick give the electronic or paperback edition of Nobody Told Me: A Cynics Guide for New Employees from Amazon. If you’ve gone all electronic or just want to stick it to Amazon, the ebook is also available from Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.

I know there are a few of you who are always looking for a deal, so in that spirit if you purchase your ebook from Smashwords, I’m offering a $1 discount from now until December 25th. Enter CW57P when you check out and you’ll receive the promotional price of $1.99.

Let’s face it, Nobody Told Me: A Cynics Guide for New Employees, is just about the perfect gift for the guy who hates everything.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Color commentary. I hate people who feel the need to share at every opportunity… and nothing fills me with more homicidal rage than listening to a nonstop stream of running commentary about how the day is going from a few desks away. This didn’t work. That didn’t work. I just had to reboot for the 100th time. AnnoyingYes, look, we all know the network is in a bit of a snit. Most people are experiencing the same issues… and rest assured, those few who aren’t experiencing your issues are having issues of their own. In times of crisis, my best advice is to sit down, STFU, and try not to aggravate the ever-loving hell out of those around you. John Madden’s commentary may have been obnoxious, but at least that meathead came with a mute button.

2. Spam (the electronic kind, not the gelatinous potted meat or the song). If you’re a business and you have my email address – my real address and not a junk account I set up to catch wayward marketers – you already have products or services that I like and use on a regular basis. The best way in all the world to convince me to never purchase anything from your business ever again is to flood my inbox with “helpful” email. I’m already a customer. I don’t need to be reminded. When I need a refill, a reorder, or a new product, I know where to find you… and even if I forget, there’s a better than average chance Google will be able to track you down.

3. Sleep. Every now and then I convince myself that I’ll get along perfectly fine on four hours of sleep. Usually those occasions revolve not being in a good place to stop reading or wanting to “catch the end” of some 50 year old move I’ve seen dozens of times already. Very rarely they’re the result of just plain old not being able to fall asleep on schedule. Regardless of the cause, the result is always the same – by 2:30 the next afternoon, I’m poring coffee down my throat in Big Gulp sized quantities and still barely manage to keep my head from slamming into the keyboard. I’ve grudgingly accepted that sleep is an inconvenient necessity. I think in fairness sleep should concede to me at least one day a week where I can get less than five hours of it and still feel mostly like a human being.

Misplaced outrage…

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I keep seeing how “outraged” people are that stores are opening ever-earlier on Thanksgiving day. Facebook and Twitter are full of posts demanding that retailers stay closed and calling boycott at every opportunity. That’s fine. Whatever helps you get your jollies.

One thing you can trust on is that stores like Macy’s and Kmart aren’t opening because their CEOs are philosophically opposed to Thanksgiving. They’re opening because there is growing consumer demand that they be open. If people didn’t want to start their shopping before the bird gets sliced, none of these stores would think anything of leaving their doors closed for the duration of the holiday.

Growing up in a rural, out of the way community I can remember a time when you were hard pressed to find a store of any kind open on Sunday. Later, most places had “limited” hours on Sundays, say noon-5:00 PM. Today, Sunday is just another day in retail. That’s not because the stores are evil, it’s because it’s what the consumer demanded. Despite what anyone thinks of its merits, culturally speaking Sunday isn’t generally considered a “day of rest” by anyone I know. It’s just the second half of a 48-hour weekend where we’re all trying to get done what we need or want to do.

I’m not sure why anyone thinks it would be any different with Thanksgiving. If you don’t want to be part of the crass commercialization, by all means stay home until 12:01 AM Friday morning. If you think you have a Constitutional right to observing a holiday on the day of the holiday itself, you might want to consider work that isn’t involved in a customer-service related field – oh, and don’t be a cop, or a nurse, or a soldier, or work for a power or water company, or, yes, in retail. I’ve had plenty of jobs where work rudely intruded on my days off, and while that sucks, sometimes it’s just plain unavoidable.

So maybe instead of railing against how “unfair” retailers are being, look around and see how many of your friends and family members are going to head to the stores before or after dinner on Thanksgiving Day. If the answer is more than “none,” go ahead and enjoy living in your glass house… and give it some thought next time you want to buy that discount mattress on President’s day or get the deal of a lifetime from the car dealer on Labor Day, or when you’re going to see a movie on a Sunday afternoon ensuring that some poor employee has to give up their Sabbath to sell you a ticket, make your popcorn, and fire up the projector on time.

Let’s be blunt for a moment: If you are legitimately thankful for your family and friends, does it make a tinker’s damn worth of difference whether you’re all sitting down for a turkey dinner at an appointed date and time or whether you nosh on eggs and bacon at the local diner at 3AM on any other random Thursday? I’m just having a tough time seeing the “so what” of all the commotion.

Millions and millions sold…

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Everyone expects “revolutionary” from Apple. The truth is they only really do revolutionary once or twice in a decade. Once they set the market it’s all about making evolutionary changes. Evolutionary is precisely how I’d describe the iPhone 5s. It feels exactly the same in hand as the 5. Aside from the new color options, you’d probably never know it was a new device until you fired it up and saw what was “under the hood.”

The 5s, not surprisingly runs iOS7 like a champion. It’s a very snappy performer at every task I’ve thrown at it in four days. The new camera is the real game changer for me. I think they’ve finally improved it to the point where I won’t even be tempted to drag along a stand alone point and shoot camera when I go somewhere. For you photogs, it’s obviously not SLR quality, but hey, it’s a phone and not a $1000 camera, so there’s that. The OS itself is starting to grow on me. It still feels a little too colorful for me, but I have to admit the interface is very slick once you get use to it. There are plenty of toggles and options to control how iPhone behaves, but at the end of the day you’re still in Apple’s walled garden so some options are limited. Fortunately, most of us don’t by iOS or Apple products because we want to tinker with the innards.

Apple issued a press release today that cited over 9 million iPhone 5s and 5c variants sold over this past weekend. I have no doubt that’s how many were ordered since early Friday morning, but there’s no way that’s how many phones they put in hands over the last three days. The buying experience has really been the only blemish on what I otherwise consider a pretty remarkable phone. Whether you blame rolling out in too many countries, over estimating demand of the 5c models, or manufacturing challenges with the fingerprint reader, Apple had far fewer “flagship” models available in their retail stores than they have in past years. My best estimate is that they had no more than 400-500 on hand at Christiana Mall on Friday at launch. Of course that only matters if you’re committed to getting your hands on a phone on day one. Fortunately for me, Best Buy stepped in and filled the gap left in Apple’s own retail supply chain.

The bottom line? It’s a great phone, a solid performer, and absolutely the best phone I have ever owned. I have no regrets upgrading from the 5 to the 5s. If you’re sitting on a 4s, it’s probably a “must have” upgrade.

The wee small hours of the morning…

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Unbidden, I woke up at 3AM this morning, as if my brain were hard wired to Apple’s central hive in Cupertino. It’s iPhone launch day… sort of. It’s pre-order day for the iPhone 5c – the new polycarbonate-shelled, mid-priced successor to the iPhone 5. Even though I’m not in the market for the “c” variant, my internal clock still managed to rattle me awake in the wee small hours of the morning. Sadly that means being in for a long Friday with way less sleep than usual to get me through to the weekend. C’est la guerre.

It shouldn’t be a particular surprise that I’m holding out for the 5s, the new glass and aluminum Apple flagship. In previous years, this morning would have been pre-order time for it too, but some combination of marketing, constrained supply, and production factors mean that the only options for its first day of ability are buying directly from a retail store on the 20th or ordering online that morning and waiting (if all goes well) until the middle of the following week to take delivery. My plan for next Friday remains a footrace between my dislike of crowded spaces and an equally strong attraction to having a new toy at the first possible moment.

So for next Friday, my choices seem to come down to this:

Option #A – Wake up at 2:30 AM, drive to Delaware, get in line in the pre-dawn darkness and hope that the local Apple Store has stock on hand by the time I get to the front of the line; or

Option #B: Wake up at 2:30 AM, direct my browser to http://www.apple.com, hit refresh until the site comes back online, complete the order process, wait for a confirmation email, go back to bed until 5:00 AM, go to work, and then wait for four or five days for the FedEx truck to back down the driveway; or

Option #C: Waiting until the supply chain is refilled from the early adopter rush, walk into the local Apple Store and buying a phone a month from now. It also involves about a month’s more patience than I have on tap at any given time.

So really, it comes down to A or B… Both bad options in different ways. Option A is a roll of the dice regarding whether they’ll have the unit I’m looking, whereas Option B is an exercise in at least minor amounts of patience. Unfortunately, because I’m upgrading a current line, these options are also mutually exclusive – meaning I don’t think there’s any way to order one online at 3AM and the go try getting my hands on one a few hours later from the retail store.

With a week to go, I remain decidedly undecided.

Lines, lines, everywhere there’s lines…

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So, Apple… listen… you’re a big, multibillion dollar international corporation with a supply chain that wraps around the globe. So I have to ask… What asshat in your marketing and sales department decided that not offering pre-orders for your new flagship phone was a good idea? I know you want the faithful to line up and cram the stores because that’s a great PR image that every news outlet is going to cover, but let’s face it, people are going to line up regardless of whether you have preorders or not. I’ve been on both sides of launch day; waiting in line at Saddle Creek and Christiana and sitting at home waiting on FedEx. Both served me well in the past, but I always had the option.

You know I want your shiny new phone on launch day and you know I’m going to be sorely tempted to schlep over to the Apple Store and get in line, but the fact is I’m older now and less willing to put up with the jackassery of standing around in lines waiting to give people my money than I once was. It’s not that I’ve gotten any more patient. I’ve just grown increasingly intolerant of large groups of people that I can otherwise avoid. As much as I want your new toy on its first day of availability – the day that I’ve had my greasy little hands on every previous model – I think I’m going to have to ride this one out until I can have one left on my doorstep or until your supply chain catches up and I can walk into a retail store and pick one up without getting into a knife fight in the parking lot.

I wish I could point to this as a sign of becoming older, wiser, and more responsible… the reality is probably that it’s just a sign of me becoming even more of an antisocial hermit as the years roll by. Then again, maybe it’s just the same concept expressed in a different way.

Recycling…

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If you spend any time reading the recommendations about “how to be a bestselling author in 978 easy steps” one that they come back to time and again is how important it is to get new material in front of readers as quickly as possible. That sounds well and good until you really start to think about the sheer amount of time and effort that goes into something as seemingly simple as publishing a “short” 150 page book. The reality is that I don’t see any way to do it in less than 18 months that doesn’t involve either giving up my day job or not sleeping. While one of those options would be temporarily awesome, it would inevitably lead to poverty and starvation. recyclingThe other would probably lead to some kind of REM-deprived psychosis. Neither is an option I find particularly attractive for the time being.

There is another option I’ve been kicking around for the last few weeks. I’ve got a blog just sitting here with seven years worth of more or less untapped material. Most people read a post once, maybe twice if it’s really epic, and it’s never seen again. With a little editorial effort, a few thousand words of fresh content, and some flashy layout, I could conceivably have two new books set to press in short order. It’s extraordinarily tempting, if for no other reason than it buys me time to work on something completely fresh while I’m editing these together.

It’s an idea still very much in its infancy, but I’m starting to outline two lines of effort:

1) What Annoys Jeff this Week: 2012 was a Bitch. This would be an anthology of 52 weeks of what is generally the most viewed posts I publish each week. Some I’d freshen up and expand a bit from what appears on the blog, but mostly they could be plucked root and stem and used shamelessly for retail purposes. It has the decided perk of also being a self-licking ice-cream cone – as long as Thursdays each weak feature WAJTW, every year I’ll have popping fresh new material for the next edition.

2) Epic: The Best of jeffreytharp.com. Over the last seven years I’ve posted more than a few epic rants covering everything from work to neighbors to random people at Home Depot. I haven’t dove into the research yet, but I’m betting that there’s more than enough here to turn into a respectable ebook maybe something in the neighborhood on 25-30,000 words. It’s definitely going to require some polish – if you haven’t been reading the Sunday archive updates, take my word for it; some of the early work is pretty rough hewn. Still, I think there’s plenty of meat on the bone.

So will either of these ideas come to pass? Honestly, I don’t know yet, but it does seem like a waste to sit on what’s got to be upwards of half a million words of content and not do anything with it. It would be like running my own personal recycling program… and that’s a good thing, right?

The moment you’ve all been waiting for…

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Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to tell you tonight that the moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. My first book, Nobody Told Me… The Cynic’s Guide for New Employees, is now available through three major retail partners – Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

For the low, low introductory price of $2.99, you can enjoy (and critique) the fruits of my labor… so act now to lock in the introductory price before it goes up to full retail. Until I learn more about the printing side of this business, Nobody Told Me will be available as an ebook only.Cover

This has been a fantastic project and I’ve had a lot of help getting to this point – without naming names, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has had a hand in editing, provided material, or just let me talk though the ideas when I needed to. It would never have gotten done without your help.

To those of you who are considering laying down your hard earned money for this book, I want to thank you too – not just for supporting the notion that an independent writer has a shot at getting his work in front of people – but because you’re going to get a chance to look at the first edition. Even though it’s been through many, many cycles of editing I’m absolutely sure there are places where things can still be better. I want everyone to feel free to make recommendations, provide feedback, and have a hand in the process. I promise I won’t take it personally; not to mention once changes are made, you get to download the updates for free… and who doesn’t like free?

In conclusion, buy my book. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

P.S. Don’t forget to become a fan of my new “official” Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/official.jeffrey.tharp,