Category: Personal

Shopping Nightmear

Juneau Alaska is a beautiful place with it’s mountains, forest, lakes, and oceans. I love seeing people walk outside our airport for the very first time. Everyone of them have this look of awe in their eye. It takes them a few moments to catch their breath and take in what they are seeing. People have fallen in love with this place and declared they where moving here after just stepping foot on the ground for the first time. I just wish I could have that feeling about every aspect of Juneau.

Customer service in Juneau is all but nonexistent. The frustration I have felt on a simple grocery store run to pick up a bag of ice for a barbecue is enough to cause someone to go on a homicidal killing spree! The inability for the local stores to keep an adequate number of employees working through out the day is the most apparent when you’re trying to check out. Don’t bother asking any employee for help either. You will just get a look of dumfounded confusion or a sigh of contempt as just the though that one of these fucking brain dead morons might have to earn a paycheck by doing their god damn job by helping a customer out.

I am not ashamed to admit that I love to shop. Even in a place like Juneau Alaska where the name brand stores in this city can be counted on one hand, I do enjoy going to the stores and seeing what new merchandise has arrived and what is on sale. When I fly down south to go on vacation or visit family I spend a fair amount of time checking out malls and stores to see what the real world has to offer me. It’s almost like traveling to the future and being told “While your here you can buy whatever you want”. I kind of feel for Marty McFly, in Back to the Future II where he wanted to bring back the sports almanac with him.

You have options and choices when you live in the lower 48 untied states. If you go to a store and an employee is rude or not helping you out, you can always speak with a manager and get him fired. Better yet, you can vote with your dollar and say “If your going to treat me like this I am going to take my business elsewhere”. One does not have options like that up in the great white north. Limited stores with limited products have a shocking effect on how much shit one will put up with.

Theft always seems to be the number one concern of these establishments to consumerism. I can’t tell you the number of times I have purchased a DVD, only to have the store alarm go off when I am try to exit the building. This would not have been an issue if the mouth breather that sold me the movie was not so lazy to just deactivate the anti-theft device.

Another gripe I have, always, without fail, is that you spend more time waiting in line to checkout than you did shopping. I don’t know how stores up here pull off this magical feet of annoyance for their customers, but it happens every time! I recall one particular time at Fred Meyer, I had a full shopping cart and I was waiting in line to checkout. The checkout lines on all 5 maned checkouts had at least 8 people in them waiting to pay. All 5 cashiers where showing as much enthusiasm for their job as a janitor would show after being told to clean up poocano explosion in a porta-potty. The red vest wearing, mouth breather manager supervising the checkout lines would walk from checkout stand number 1 all the way to check out stand number 28 and back again. Not doing anything else but walking back and forth. After literally 15 minutes waiting inline, watching the cashier go as slow as humanly possible and talking with the customer about each and every single purchase they where making I asked the mouth breathing manager “You think you could tell the cashier to speed it up a little bit?”
“Oh no, I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“If I do that they will quit. Would you rather have one cashier or no cashier?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Blinking the manager said “No”.
With that, my frustration grew to such a point that I just walked away from my cart and left the building.

And don’t fucking talk to me about the awesomeness of the self check out system. Fuck that shit. Trying to use that medieval torture device is akin to trying to pull yourself out of quicksand. If you have more then 5 items is seems like something always goes horribly wrong. You try and buy an age restricted DVD and the self check out computer in its robot voice tells you “Please wait for assistance”.

So you wait…

…and wait,

…and wait.

Trying to use a self check out to buy fruit is another god damn nightmare. Don’t even fucking try it. Just walk away. Save yourself the mind splitting annoyance and just walk-the-fuck-away!

Another time at Fred Meyer I was looking for a CD storage box. I buy these boxes to store my DVDs in. I remove them from their plastic DVD cases and put them in thinner jewel cases and then place them in the CD storage box. On this particular trip it appeared that the shelf which housed the CD storage boxes had not been restocked. I saw a Fred Meyer employee walking by, my luck!
“Excuse me.” I said “I am trying to find something.”
“What can I help you with?”
“You used to carry these CD Stor…”
“We don’t always carry the same things.”
“Thats fine and good, but do you have any mo…”
“If you don’t see it, we don’t have it”
“I want to speak with your manager.”
“I am the manager of this department”
“You have got to be fucking shitting me”.
“If you continue to use that language I am going to have to ask you to leave”
“Fuck you.”
I don’t get it. How can they think it’s acceptable (not to mention polite) to interrupt a customer? Then cop an attitude about it? This shit would not fly in the lower 48.

I am not sure where customer service fits in at the Juneau Fred Meyer. I think it’s somewhere between not gathering carts from the parking lot and not cleaning the toilets in the restrooms.

One more bitch I have about Juneau’s Fred Meyer. They charge you for bagging your groceries in their plastic bags. Are you fucking kidding me? Not only do I have to put up with the worst customer service ever, but now I have to pay for plastic bags? I often go to Fred Meyer and by one item. The receipt for that one item is always longer then my fucking arm. Here is an idea geniuses, just show what I bought on my recite. With all the money you will save by not wasting fucking paper on receipts maybe we could go back to giving your customers grocery bags and not pissing them off with the hidden charge. I say hidden because no one at these stores fucking volunteers the fact that you are getting charged for plastic bags now.

I was cashing out at Safeway one evening and was having trouble with my visa card. The cashier asked to see it.
“Oh!” she says “Your name is Joseph.”
“No, no it’s Youseph”
“No, it’s Joseph”
Thinking she just is misunderstanding me i said again and slower “No, It’s not Joseph, it is You – seph.”
“No, It’s Joseph.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Your name is Joseph, I know these things”.
“You know what? Fuck it. It’s not worth it. I know my own fucking name you no talent ass clown.” I grabbed my visa card out of the cashiers hand and walked out empty-handed.

My mom and I have an ongoing conversation about customer service and minimum wage. Will be on the phone and I will hear about a recent trip she took to McDonald’s.
“I went to McDonald’s today and the kid behind the counter messed up my order three times! He also could not count out my change properly. I spent more time teaching him how to count out change then I did ordering my food. When finally I got to my table i realized he forgot my fries! Going back to the counter to get my order corrected was another long snafu.” She said.
“You can’t expect anyone to take their job seriously when they are getting paid minimum wage.”
“That’s not right. He is getting paid to do a job. He needs to do it correctly.”
“I am not arguing that point mom. I am saying, you can’t expect anyone who gets paid minimum wage to care about their job.”
“Then he needs to get another job”
“Maybe, but if it also pays minimum wage he is not going to care about it either.”

You may or may not agree with me, but I think that pay has a lot to do with how people do their jobs. No one in Juneau that works at Wal-Mart, Fred Meyer or Safeway is getting paid minimum wage. They are all getting paid more than that. They are getting paid Juneau’s minimum wage. Living in Juneau costs more. Rent, utilities and food all cost more in Juneau. You have to pay your employees enough so they can live, but these stores are paying them just enough and not a penny more. As a result we have a bunch of people working in customer service who just don’t give a shit. Stores are under manned and over priced.

I find myself buying more and more of what I need online these days. I do take a lot of flack about that from locals because I am not supporting local businesses. To them I say, “Amazon.com does not talk back to me or treat me like a thief”. All of them pretty much just hang their head low and say “yeah, you’re right”. You’re god damn right, I’m right.

I Was On The Radio!

KTOO and KXLL Radio Station In Juneau
KTOO and KXLL Radio Station In Juneau

Last Tuesday I was invited by The Knife Ulu Mills, to join her on the radio. Ulu hosts her own two-hour radio show called Tuesday Night Slice where she gets to play some great music and do a bit of banter with her guests. The show in Juneau is on Excellent Radio KXLL 100.7.

I have never been on the radio before. I didn’t know what to expect, but I had been pretty excited about it all week. One of the things Ulu told me was I could bring in some music to play on the show. This was pretty exciting for me. For some reason songs just sound better on the radio and I could not wait to put together a set of songs to play.

Right off the bat I knew I was going to play Local H. My all time favorite band. How could I not play them? At first I didn’t know which song from their albums I was going to play ,but when it came down to it I figured this might be the only time I will ever be on the radio so I wanted to start strong. I went with Bound for the Flour by Local H.

Every song I picked after that was a painful process for me. It felt like making a mix tape for a girl you have a crush on in high school. Each song has to say the right thing and convoy the right feeling. I scrutinized way to long over the right CDs and songs to bring with me. I ended up picking 6 CD. The songs I had picked out where:

I did want to come with more than that. I didn’t want to give off an impression to people at the radio station that I was an over bearing music Nazi and this is what we have to play. I was also nervous that I didn’t pick out enough music either.

Cds
CD Library

Tuesday came and I drove over to the radio station at 7:30pm. It was an awesome day. The sun was out and it was warm. People where out and about driving in their cars. Ulu met me at the door where we said our hellos. She kept saying that I brought a lot of music with me and I kept thinking that meant I brought to much. We hadn’t even started and I already made a mistake.

CD and Vinyl Library
CD and Vinyl Library

We walked up a flight of stairs to the second floor of the building. The first room we stepped into was what I think was called the music archive. This room was stacked floor to ceiling with CDs and Vinyl records. It was very over whelming at first. Ulu let me know that I could use this library of music they had to pick out songs to play on the radio if I wanted.

Next, Ulu took me down the hall to the room we would be broadcasting from. Again this was somewhat overwhelming for me. She sat behind a long desk that was big enough for two people to sit on either side. In front of her she had four computer monitors which I believe where connected to four different computers. She also had her laptop hooked up. She showed me how we could use the computers to search for music that the radio station had digitized and how to add it to the on air play queue. I was also shown how to switch the music source, fade in an out, turn the microphones on and off, and a whole list of other stuff she went through that I have no idea how to do.

After she did her best to make me familiar with the equipment sitting in front of me, we started building a playlist for the first half hour of the show using the CD’s I brought and the music available at the station.

It all went by to quickly and before I knew it Ulu and I where on the Air. She introduced me and I said hello to the people in radio land. We chatted for about 3 or 4 minutes. She said she was excited to have me on the show and I thanked her for having me. It was a real easy back and forth we did with each other and it helped calm my nerves. Then just as quickly as we started Ulu told her audience that I had picked out the first song we would be playing that evening. I replayed with “Yup, the first song we will be playing is “Bound for the Floor” by my all time favorite band, Local H”. With that the music started up and Ulu and I where free to talk to ourselves again.

At some point early on we had the grand idea of make the show that night all about happy music. No music about losing your girlfriend or missing someone special. No, not for us and not for that night. We choose to seek out only happy music for the two hours we would be on the radio.

Making this decision meant that we had to go through our playlist and rebuild it. We quickly went through and replaced some of the not-so-happy songs with something happier. It felt like we no sooner got the playlist setup and then where back on the air. We told the people listening that we had come up with a theme for the night and we encouraged them all to call in and request some happy music. They did.

Through the rest of the night we got a hand full of call in requests as well as some on-line requests.

Ulu Mills
Ulu Mills

I was very impressed with how easy everything appears to function at the radio station. Granted, I still don’t fully understand how all the machines work but I think if I had more time with it I would figure it out easy enough.

At the end of the two-hour show Ulu and I got back on the air one last time to say good night. Ulu thanked me for coming on and said I should come back. I told her I had a great time and I would love to come back and do it again. So it looks like I will be back again on Tuesday Night Slice this Tuesday at 8pm.

Sugary Dr. Pepper Found In Juneau

Hannah and I went to our Juneau, AK Fredmeyer yesterday after work. We where on a mission to pick up a few food items for our weekly Wednesday movie night with friends. While we where at the store I saw my first display of real sugar Dr. Pepper. I gasped when I saw it and told Hannah we needed a cart.

I was pretty excited to find Dr. Pepper made with real sugar. I hadn’t drank Dr. Pepper in years because it had not been tasting right to me for some time. I don’t know if it was because of a change in the Dr. Pepper formula or a change in my own tastes for things. Regardless I picked up Six, twelve packs.

Later that night at movie night Hannah and I took a case of the real sugar Dr. Pepper with us. As friends showed up I told them to try some of this soda. I grabbed one myself, and it tasted so damn good! Everyone agreed that it tasted better than the “normal” Dr. Pepper.

For weeks now I have felt teased by Consumerist and Associated Press news articles about the pending release of Sugary Dr. Pepper. The Dublin Dr Pepper bottler in Waco Texas is celebrating it’s 125 birthday by temporally ditching High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in favor of something a little more natural. Sugar.

Pepsi Co did the same sorta of thing earlier this year by releasing Pepis and Mt. Dew Throwback. Sodas that were based on the original recipes containing sugar. Even Coke releases a Kosher Coke once a year. Both these companies found that sodas with real sugar where very successful.

The Consumerist article asks why if things like; if Throwback Pepsi and Kosher Coke are so successful why don’t they sell these products all the time? The editor of Beverage Business Insights thinks the cola companies don’t really want to know that customers prefer sugar over HFCS:

In some ways their worst nightmare is that this thing sells through the roof, because then that’s telling them something about how consumers feel about their product.

It’s statements like that which have me buying more than one box of real sugar Dr. Pepper at a time. Before to long this sugary soda is going to be gone forever, so I am trying to build a small stock pile to have it last as long as I can.

The Time I Got Inside Apple’s Headquarters

Back in September of 2003 I was working with my dad in Cupertino, California selling oriental rugs. We where staying in a condo apartment just a few blocks from Apple’s Headquarters. On one of my days off I decided to apply for a job at Apple and check out the company store. Below is a blog post I wrote on September 4 2003 about my experience from an older version of my blog that is no longer on-line. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did rereading it.

Labor Day Weekend was busy for my dad and I. We had a lot of people coming in to our store to pick up rugs. We sold some very pretty Bokhara rugs. These are rugs that are very shiny and soft to the touch. The wool that is used for them comes from the neck and chest of sheep because it is softer.

Ok, so this rug thing is rubbing off on me a little.

But it was a good weekend. Dad used to be a cook so when we come home from work around 8:30pm he starts cooking dinner and I will put on my jeans and a t-shirt and watch some Futurama. All in all things are going well. I miss Washington state and my friends., but I am having fun here to.

Yesterday fucking rocked thought! After I woke up I got dressed and headed across the street to one of the Apple offices and I dropped off my resume. It was a very quick process. but then I headed down a few more blocks to the Apple headquarters.

Let me tell you this place was elite. For one, all around the perimeter of the Apple Head Quarters where guards. If you took one step off the sidewalk in the direction of the Apple campus you would find your self face-to-face with one of the Apple guards and asked to show your badge. When you’re not able to present one, such as in my case you are asked to “please step back on the sidewalk”.

So I did as I was asked. Even though at this point I am just so happy to be this close to the main Head Quarters, getting shot by am Apple guard would just be plain cool.

So I walked around the campus. The street name is “1 infinite loop”. I came to the campus store. Which is for normal people to enter. So I went in and took a couple of pictures of the place. It was cool.

What made it a cooler than normal was that today was the first day that any of the Apple stores had the new G5’s to show to it’s customers. As I was checking out the new G5 so where Apple employees. I over heard one guy talking about the locking feature on the back of the case.

This is just plain cool how they did this don’t you think? I don’t get to see this kind of stuff in the prototype department. But you would think I would? Nope I have to wait for it to come out just like everyone else to see these little extras they add on.

I found out that this is also the only Apple store that sells Apple branded merchandise like Shirts, pens, caps, jackets, notebooks, etc. So I picked up a few little things. I asked the guy at the cash register if their was any way to get in to the main Apple building or get a tour. He told me no. I asked if it was ok to at least continue you my walk around the campus. He said yes. So I took my bag and started walking around.

Not long after I started, a man comes up from behind me.

“Hello” he says

“How you doing?” I ask.

“You still want that tour?” He asked me

“What? Really? Sure!” I say.

“Then come here” and I follow him up to one of the doors and he lets me in and gets me a visitors badge that I put it on my shirt. We went straight though another set of doors and where outside again. This time on the Apple Campus grounds. People are walking everywhere. Some are going from one office to another. Other people are having lunch, others where playing volleyball, some where even playing Frisbee.

We had a seat at the nearest bench and he told me what he did at Apple. Lets just leave it at, he works on hardware. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble since what he did for me, getting me in Apple was bending the rules a bit.

After that he took me to the main lobby where Apple employees sit and talk about work. This was a cool building. It is three stories with trees inside of it. On one wall you could see there Grammy award as well as their to Emmy awards for fire wire. their was also a free snack kitchen. On the other side you could see offices and some nice chairs people could sit and talk.

At this point I asked him if he ever sees Steve Jobs around the area. He told me that normally around this time you can find him in the cafeteria if he is even here today. He also told me that if I wanted to that I could take some pictures. I took one picture of the Emmy award but then sat back down to talk with him. We talked about what he did their and how restricted the place was. That he could not be in a different department than his own without good resin. Which is understandable. “They get in your face if you don’t have a real resin to be in a different department then your own”

At this point he told me that he had to get back to his office. But he told me it would be O.K. for me to just hang out in the inner lobby for a little bit. Just not to try and go anywhere other than leaving when I was done. I told him thank you so much. That this was so cool and that i really appreciated it. He just smiled and said, “Hey, i understand. I remember what it was like for me the first time I came in here”. And with that he left.

I sat down in one of the couches and looked around for about 10 minutes. I pulled out my camera and took three pictures before a security guard asked me to stop because they had a no photo policy. I was surprised he did not kick me out because I was by myself.

Another 5 minutes passed and I called my Friend Lyle. “Dude I’m inside Apple Computers!!!!” We talked for a few minutes and then I tried calling a few other friends but none of them where home.

Another 5 minutes passed… and then it happened. Steve Jobs himself walked in the main doors along with Jonathan Ive. They both looked at me for a second but continued walking past me talking, lost in their own conversation. They got on an Elevator opposite of me and took it to the third floor and walked cross the bridge to the side of the building I was sitting on.

I then noticed that the security was starting to really eye me down and they where getting ready to do something about me being their all alone. So with that I did not want to push my luck. I got up and left. But I was still questioned about how I got in and why I was their in the first place.

It was just fucking cool! It made my week that is for sure.

The only sad thing in all of this is that I have misplaced my USB camera cable. So until I find it again I will not be able to post any of the pictures I took. If i can’t find it soon I will go get a new cable.

Well as you can tell I did eventually find the USB cable to my camera and I was able to post the photos. It was quite an exciting experience for me to get inside Apple’s headquarters. One I will never forget.