Tag: sales

the “do not clue” list

Ever get one of those sales call-centre calls where you get some automated message before an operator picks up? We get a lot of those, and usually it’s fairly easy to tell they’re automated.

The one I just got was somewhat lacking in clues of configuration: “This is the default message for the live person message.”

I so hung up on them.

i didn’t throw the pebble

I walk through a Ford dealership every day to and from work. Last Thursday, going home, my eye was caught by a tiny round black pebble dropping onto the hood (= bonnet) of a nearby car.

A salesman was near, and saw the pebble. He yelled at me, asking if I’d thrown it. I said that I didn’t. He didn’t seem mollified. I better watch out for him.

ididn’tBook

For a truly soulless evening, take yourself down to the BestBuy at Scarborough Town Centre.

STC is a mega-mall, with the obligatory huge concrete and asphalt deadzone around it. Its current sales slogan is For what defines you, which must mean that its denizens are in a pretty parlous state, existentially speaking. Its only slightly attractive feature is its derelict KrispyKreme store, which opened as a flagship, then frazzled almost as quickly as a KK’s dextrose rush. Abandoned donut shops are Canada’s ruined abbeys; places of worship gone to seed.

BestBuy itself is an outcast from the mall, in an especially ped-unfriendly way. Perhaps the only defined route there is through a monster split-level Wal-Mart, but I didn’t have enough hitpoints to make it through that particular slough.

I’d checked their website, and it said that the store had iBooks in stock, at $50 below retail. Did the store have any on display? No. The Apple section was set behind the customer service desk, which was a scrum of slightly disgruntled shoppers. So I left without seeing one.

I wandered in a bit of a post big-box haze to McCowan RT, a weird little station at the very end of the rails. At least I was rewarded with a beautiful sunset over the 401 at McCowan; all boiling red and purple. That’s about the best you’ll get near STC, and for free, too.