Finger Pointing

when shopping for lights (or anything else for that matter) customers often bring along a relative or friend to bounce ideas off. usually the relative isn't too bothered about shopping and wants to get out of there asap, so quickly finds a shop assisstant to help their wavering friend. they will point at you and say in a loud confident manner: he's over there, or there's a guy that'll help you with bulbs. if the shopper is moving away from the friend they dragged along on their shopping expedition, the friend's voice is not always as loud and confident and will sometimes tail off as they say there's a guy... but the pointing is usually there.

a lady today pointed at me, i wouldn't have minded at all, if she wasn't right next to me!

there's a guy...

and she looked away at her faraway friend, but the finger stayed up. some people say that it is rude to point. a friend a few years back said that she thought that pointing at someone was quite a violent gesture, and it was mostly men that did it. i don't know about that but there i was, face to face with a female pointer.

what did i do? well just for the hell of it i pointed right back at her with a blank expression. her locus of attention shifted back to me and we stood there in our mexican standoff for what seemed like 2 seconds. there was look of absolute bafflement on her face, before i broke into a smile and saying only kidding! :D

i was tempted to quote Bruce Lee, in enter the dragon:

don't concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all the heavenly glory.

but the poor woman didn't deserve that. it's just too bad that my hands didn't have fingers that light up.

Bawbag #2

or how to lie about a customer and ruin their reputation.

having been on the receiving end of thousands of questions from customers wanting lighting advice, over a period of years, many of them the same question, you get an idea how customer service works. like bawbag #1, bawbag #2 is a little confused as to how customer service works.

in this case, however, i was the customer. i've been buying a few comicbooks from eBay lately, and for the most part they have been great. every one of them filled with great art, sketches, colouring, shading, dynamism and wonderfullness that brings me back to my childhood. i love comics.

3 graphic novels by Grant Morrison (another Scot) were up for auction. i wanted these, and bid on all 3. i only won # 2. having been outbid on books #1 and #3, i noticed that the second place bidder in my winning auction won the other 2, i thougth that the courteous thing to do would be to offer #2 to the winner of #1 and #3, and keep the 3 books together.

i offered the seller 3 options.

1. offer my book to the winner of the other 2 books.
2. i take all 3 books.
3. we carry on as is and i take book #2 and the other chap takes books #1 and #3.

also so that the seller would not be out of pocket, i offered to pay the amount that he would lose offering to a an underbidder out of the goodness of my heart. you can't say fairer than that.
well, apparently you can say fairer than that, because the feedback i received stated:



unfortunately (for me) the seller must have had a poor memory as i was awaiting a response from him.

I have offered the book to the second placed bidder. and am awaiting a reply. I will let you know when I get a response.

instead of letting me know he gave me negative feedback. it's a lot of complaining over nothing i know but it's annoying to be knocked off 100% positive feedback when you follow all the rules. some people give a body swerve to anyone with dodgy feedback because there are so many scammers on there these days. you try and do someone a favour and...

Bawbag

the customer is always right.

not always. whoever wrote that was probably a customer and did not have to deal with the general public. a gent at the weekend was annoyed that his kitchen light was faulty. fair enough. he was given a refund and wanted a replacement.

unfortunately the whole store is undergoing a refurb and the lighting department has shrunk to about 25% of it's normal size. only the top sellers are available for the next couple of weeks. that meant we sell more of what is out on the shelves, and consequently we were out of mr angry's light. doubly unfortunately, someone in another department told him that we had them in stock and he was of the opinion that if the computer says they are in he wanted one "today".

there are ways of being assertive and there are ways of being a bawbag. no prizes for guessing which this guy was. i told him the way the system works (products replenished at nighttime, forklifts can't come out during the day). he wasn't interested and wanted to speak to a manager. i got him a supervisor (he couldn't tell the difference) who told him the same information.

what bothered me most about this chap, apart from his inability to deal with me as a human being instead seeing me as something to use to get what he wanted, was his inability to listen to any advice i had to offer. asking him did he check the fuse in the transformer was met with the curt reply "how would i do that?"

opening your eyeballs and looking would be a good start. a little investigation might have revealed that all he needed was a fuse but we will never know. instead he prefererred to queue on a busy sunday afternoon, return a light to be thrown into the rubbish, expect a light to be there for him, and get into a strop when it wasn't. Bulbgirl was shopping in the store and witnessed the huffyman as he stormed by her on his way out so it wasn't just me who thougth that he behaved like an overgrown toddler.

narky people when they can't get what they want sometimes repeat the same statement over and over again. his was i have bare wires in my kitchen! normally i am sympathetic but due to his nature and my newly aquired comfy footwear, while his tirade was washing over me the thought that kept entering my head was: i feel like i am wearing batman boots. :)

man did without light for thousands of years so a couple of days without an overhead light isn't going to kill you, at least not unless you touch the bare wires. you could use a flashlight, or most cooker hoods these days have built in lights.

some people just don't deserve good kitchen lighting .