And I’m back.

Between work and school and other personal stuff I haven’t had a whole lot of chances to write posts on here, but things are starting to calm down a bit and so I’m once again able to regale my wide audience with more of my unique and witty writing.  I’m sure the three of you are ecstatic.

One of the things I’ve been hoping to do is come up with a pen name to start writing under, so that if people I know but who I don’t want to know about this blog happen to come across it, they won’t know any better.  I’ve decided on Michael Maxwell.  If anyone else has suggestions, feel free to make them, but unless theyre absolutely amazing I’ll probably stick with this one.  From now on, all of my entries will be by Michael Maxwell.

On to some actual content.  Valentine’s Day is coming up, and while I don’t place a great deal of value on a day where you’re supposed to show your significant other that, even though you treat them like crap for any of the other 364 days of the year, you still love them more than anybody else loves their significant other, I can never help but be caught up with the whole idea.  It might be the notion that there are lonely girls everywhere around this time of year driving up sales of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and fueling the movie rental industry that make me think that this is the largest opportunity of the year to go find myself one of these girls.  My ideal world would have a listing of all of these girls which lonely single guys such as myself (and vice-versa) could browse through, looking for matching or complimentary interests and levels of depression.

Then I realized that not only does eHarmony already exist, but popular opinion pegs it as a festering pile of shit.  And so those like myself are stuck at this time of year asking friends what they’re doing for Valentine’s Day.  Most of my questions seem to be met with negative answers, if any answer at all, and so this year, Zoey gets to be my Valentine.

Nobody can handle a gun quite like you can.

- MM

So the government of Ontario is attempting to pass new legislation regarding “teenage” drivers.  This legislation stipulates that:

• drivers between the age of 16-21 must have a blood-alcohol level of 0
• drivers between the age of 16-21 will have license suspensions between 30 days and 90 days if caught speeding
• drivers between the age of 16-19 may only have one other teenage passenger with them in the car

So let’s go over these.  Aside from the fact that young people are no less resistant to alcohol than older people, the proposition in its current state is, sadly, just plain stupid.  Instead of imposing it on, say, drivers who have already been convinted of a DUI, or, and this is just a shot in the dark here, everyone, they seem to have pinpointed a small percantage of drivers.  The reasoning on this one is still unclear to me.

The second point, in more detail, states that a first offense would see a 30 day suspension period, while a second offense would see a 90 day suspension.  A third offense would carry the penalty of either being dropped back down to a G2 licensed driver.  Since teenage G licensed drivers now have the same restrictions as G2 licensed drivers, there is no change here (take note, fellow teens, if you’ve been caught speeding twice, go nuts for the third time, it’s a better deal!)  I’ll point out that a cop having a bad day could, in theory, pull you over for going 1kph over the speed limit and automatically suspend your license.  Again, fellow teens, take note - whether you’re doing 1kph over, or 100kph over, the penalty is essentially the same.  Sure, your car gets impounded, but hey, you can’t drive anyway!

The third point, and winner of the mind-numbing award, states that drivers 19 and under can only have one other teenage passenger in the car.  Carpooling be damned, whether it be to go to work, school, church, or your weekly wiccan gathering.  Going to a movie with two friends?  Sorry, one of you has to walk.  Want to double date?  Better hope the other couple has a car too.  Angry about the number of vehicles and teenage drivers on the road?  Too bad, suddenly there are a lot more.  Oh wait, what was that last part again?  The part where teenage drivers, scourges of the road and killers of babies, are going to be out in more cars because they can’t carpool?

For those of you that don’t know, I’m 19 (approaching 20) and have been driving for a little over three years now.  I have never been in an accident, nor have I ever been pulled over by the police.  I don’t plan to change the way I drive, whether the legislation is ratified or not.

</RANT>

So last weekend was Thanksgiving weekend up here in Canada, which means I took a break from my blog.  This week it’s just late.  My apologies.

Every so often when I go out to purchase something, I decide to deviate from the standard “buy your stuff and leave” mode of thinking and stray into one that borders on the insane.  I’ll end up doing things out of the ordinary just to see how ordinary people react.  Interestingly enough, the reactions are more often inordinary than they are ordinary, which ordinarily makes me laugh a little inside.  But why be selfish?  I’ve decided to share my stories of social experimentation with readers, recording instances when they happen instead of just forgetting about them a week later.  Who knows?  Maybe you’ll get a kick out of them too.

Today’s experiment takes places at the Great Canadian Superstore.  For you Americans who don’t know what that is, think Wal-Mart Superstore.  Then think bigger.  Yeah, it’s huge.  Anyway, my shopping list consists of three bags* of 2% milk, a 2L carton of lactose-free milk, havarti cheese, and some Cracker Barrel cheese slices.  I will do my best to give an accurate representation of the entire half hour this took place in as it unfolded.

I enter the store through the east entrance, walk directly to the back of the store, and pick out just two bags of milk.  I then immediately turn around and walk to the self-checkout aisles further towards the west end of the store.  The girl attending takes a mild interest in me, possibly because of my stunningly good looks, or possibly because I’m purchasing eight litres of milk.  Regardless, I scan them through, put them in bags, pull a $20 out of my sweater pocket, pay, get my change, grab my bags, smile at the attendant, and walk back down towards the east entrance of the store.  I drop the two bags off in the trunk of my car and return for round two.

This time I enter again through the east entrance, though I am now consciously aware of my facial expression.  I am also consciously aware of the uncomfortable look I am forcing myself to wear, the kind of face that signals “I feel sick.”  With that, I return to the back of the store, pick up the third bag of milk, as well as the 2L carton of lactose-free milk.  I wander aimlessly for a few minutes before returning to the self-checkout aisles at the west end of the store.  Again, the attendant takes note of my presence, but this time looks over a little more often, possibly because I look even sexier when I look sick, or possibly out of concern for my health, or just maybe confused as hell.  I make sure that the side of the carton that says “Lactose-Free” is in clear view for her to see.  Once again, I scan, bag, pay for, and grab the goods and leave, this time with a slight sense of urgency.  I cast her a fleeting glance as I pass.  The look, which I can only describe as “what the fuck is going on here?” makes me smile as soon as she can no longer see my face.  Again, I return to the east entrance, put the milk in my car, and return for the third and final time.

Again, through the east entrance, but this time with a slight limp and an expression of deep concern on my face.  I travel as fast as my limp can carry me to the processed cheese, grabbing my beloved Cracker Barrel slices, before heading over to the delicatessan for the havarti.  A number of infuriating minutes later, I find the havarti and return, once again, to the self-checkout aisles at the west end of the store.  This time there’s a line up, so I stand inbetween the two sections, waiting for someone to finish.  I try my best to look impatient because the attendant, once again, is glancing worriedly in my direction.  At the first sign of another customer leaving, I limp in at top speed, furiously scanning the cheese and throwing them in a bag as quickly and haphazardly as possible.  I fumble around for some more change and feed it to the machine, making exact change.  I rip the receipt out of the machine and cram it into the bag as I yank it off of the counter, turning and again limping as quickly as I can past the attendant, this time without acknowledging her.  Turning my head slightly after I passed to see the reaction, I see her standing at her counter, debating whether or not to follow me, then calling to a supervisor.  Time to go.

Did I mention the cute looking girl I passed on the way to the aisle on the first trip?  No?  There was a cute looking girl I passed on the way to the aisle on the first trip.  She looked at me the first time, for a few seconds trying to figure out why I was carrying two bags of milk around, then making eye contact and looking away embarrassed.  This is the same girl I see in front of me at this point, aiming to leave the store through the east entrance.  I limp by quickly, bag of cheese in one hand, Blackberry in the other, look of deep concern still on my face, bumping into her.  I apologize quickly and continue limping off in a flustered hurry.  I vaguely hear her inquire “what the hell?” to her mom, walking beside her.  My work here is complete.  I threw the last of my bags into the trunk of my car and drove off.  As an added bonus, driving out of the parking lot she crossed in front of my car.  As she looked over, she made eye contact once more, and as it dawned on her who she was looking at, my eyes widened in terror and I sped off towards the exit as soon as she was out of the way.  I’m not sure what the reaction to that was, but I’m sure it was awesome.

-Mike

I apologize for the late post.  Unfortunately this weekend was hectic and involved me coming perilously close to losing various extremities.  Let’s delve into that for this post, shall we?

When one thinks “retail sales associate,” most people would assume that it involves little more than selling a borderline useless product at an insane margin to people who don’t need it with consummate skill.  Indeed, this is most often the case, and I’d say that maybe 90% of a sales associate’s time is spent doing exactly that.  The other 10% is spent rearranging product, working under the theory that if a given product moves around every couple of weeks it will sell better (if there are merchandisers in that store, the extra 10% is instead spent moping around in a constant state of depression caused by considering the other 90%).

My particular store doesn’t have merchandisers, so I fall into the first group of associates who spent the extra 10% rearranging product.  Except that I work for Intertan.  For those of you who are unaware, Intertan used to be the Tandy Corporation’s (read: RadioShack) international (read: Canadian) arm, which operated the retail store in the Great White North.  When that got bought out by Circuit City, RadioShack in Canada became The Source, products shifted from small electronics (transistors) to consumer electronics (digital cameras), and any shred of a vision for the company’s was immediately quelled.  In short, dickery ensued.

What does that have to do with what I was talking about earlier?  Surprisingly, a lot.  With the vast amount of funds available at their disposal, Intertan went about hiring people to fill upper management positions with astonishing vigor, including merchandising and marketing divisions that make up for their lack of numbers with a lack of competence.  Unfortunately, nobody was aware that in the real world, instead of making a positive, two negatives make a big fucking mess.  As I said before, the main operating principle of the (and I expect anyone who has ever worked retail to cringe at the following term) “plan-o-gram” is that, if you move shit around enough, people will buy more of it, maybe because they’ve forgotten that they already bought it in a different section of the store; those of you with short term memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease may want to start considering a class-action lawsuit right about now).

For most organizations, this involves changing stack outs to display promotions that may be going on at the time, or making certain products more accessible, or fixing problems with an existing setup that someone else’s incompetence created to begin with.  Thanks to Intertan’s merchandising and marketing divisions, the scope of their plan-o-grams often include things such as rearranging entire sections and making no fucking sense.  Imagine for a second that you walk into Best Buy every few weeks to browse around, maybe pick up recordable media or grab some music CDs.  Then one day you walk in and the recordable media has been moved to the home appliances section.  Once you find them and go to peruse the music section, you find that an iPod display has taken the place of the Country genre in its entirety, which is now soundly stored away inside a washer/dryer combo that was inexplicably relocated to the car audio section.  What the fuck, right?

Okay, it is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.  The last major setup consisted of rearranging approximately 50ft of shelf space making up the computer section.  This involved several extra hours of work, inhaling cancer, and physically moving approximately 50ft of shelf space.  This doesn’t include the minor setups that we get about three times a month.  Or the extra time they have to pay employees for to do the setups, instead of using the money to.. oh, I don’t know.. lower the insane prices of the products they carry.

But what do I know, I’m just a retail sales associate.

-Mike