If you see me as a blur...

So, I've been a little busy lately.

I'm moving (again). This time to a lovely old house that needs to have it's floors refinished before I move in. I've spent the last couple of weeks repainting, removing carpet, refinishing floors. Thanks to Wendy and her brother John for doing so much grunt work.

And yes, Wendy and I are planning on moving in together into this new place. It's odd how fast romance moves after 40. Won and I dated for 18 months before marrying. Wendy and I have been dating since November.

As to what else has kept me busy...

First there was the West Coast Rapture RAM conference at which I was a speaker. I got to meet a lot of my favorite Podcasting atheists. (I have photos!)

After that I gave a talk at the University of Phoenix for the class on Western Religions.  I think I may have had a first there too.  I'm not sure, but I may have seen a lapsed Catholic turn into an atheist.  You can listen to the recording from that link and judge for yourself.

I'm also getting ready to be a counselor at Camp Quest West.  I've been working with the camp director, Chris Lindstrom to develop a short course on "Ancient Technology".  This seems to have several people in the Camp Quest organization somewhat excited.  And I have to admit, the idea is pretty good.  For example, do you know that the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth was Eratosthenes of Cyrene?  He also proved that the Earth was round, and he very accurately measured the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

As part of getting ready for Camp Quest, I'll be taking an Archery Instructor Course next month.  I'm also going through the Camp Quest training materials - although my talk at the UoP clashed with one of the conferences I needed to take for Camp Quest.  (Have to make that up).

Next month I plan to be at the Fresno Pride festival along with other CVAAS members.  We will have a booth there.  We need to be prepared - it will be our first advertisement of the Heretic's Barbecue for this September.

July I'll be at Camp Quest for a week, and I'll also go camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains with a bunch of my friends.  I'm really looking forward to both.  I used to go to Church Camp every year - Camp without the Church part and with extra science will probably be even more fun!  (Reminder to self -bring my telescope!)

Last month's fossil hunt went well for me - not so much for others in CVAAS.  I went on my own and met up with a heretic from LA (hello Larry!).  Came back with some good Trilobite cephalon fossils.  Didn't find the elusive Anomalocaris again.  I think I'm in the wrong formation for them.

 

I'm really doing a lot these days, and enjoying the heck out of everything.  There is so much to do too.  Like this blog for instance... it needs a major overhaul.  That will take me several hours of work that I can't afford right now.  And even when I move into my new place, I need to set up my new garden, and get my woodshop online.  It's been so long since I made heaps of sawdust that I'm going through withdrawel!

Oh, I also got interested in beekeeping - but found out that Fresno classifies bees with other dangerous beasts like lions and tigers and bears - and won't let anyone keep them within the city limits.  (sigh)  Well, I didn't need a new hobby anyway.

To top off everything, I plan to start taking classes again at the university this fall.  Maybe I can add a beekeeping class to my schedule of courses...

 

Office Depot in Clovis CA - how to get rid of customers

I used to like Office Depot - but now I can see why they've had to close some stores - and I certainly understand why their stock has been dropping.

Apparently Office Depot doesn't care about it's customers.

I went in to find a serial to USB adapter (I know - who uses serial anymore? But it was for a specialized device for my work.)

While shopping, I saw that Office Depot had this neat Kodak EasyShare C143 12.0-Megapixel Digital Camera on sale for only $49.00. And it was red too! They had a standing cardboard floor display, filled with these cardboard cards that the customer could grab and take to the register. The floor display had about 30 of these cards sitting in individual card slots on the display.

So I grabbed one, and took it to the register. The cashier rang me up while another cashier ran to grab the camera.

But they didn't have any cameras. None at all.

I blew up. "Why," I asked the cashier, "don't you have cameras? You're advertising that you have cameras!"

She quickly grabbed Chris, the store manager. Chris assured me that they could call around town and ask if another store had the camera, or he could order one for me.

"No. That's unacceptable. You are advertising that you have cameras in stock right now. Why are you doing that?" My language may have been a bit stronger than that.

Chris told me that it was a big display, and they couldn't take it down.

"I don't buy that. Come here." I dragged Chris over to the display. "Look, these are cards in the display - each card is equal to one camera."

I pulled a card out of the display and handed it to Chris.

"Do you have a camera for this card?"

"No." Chris admitted.

I pulled out another card and handed it to Chris.

"How about this one?" I pulled another card, "or this one? Or this? Or this?" I loaded Chris up with all the cards from the display.

"No. I think you know we don't have any cameras for these cards."

"How could I know that Chris? How? I'll tell you how..." I pointed to the cardboard camera display, now empty of pull cards for cameras. "See? No camera cards. That's how I know you're out of stock. I won't bother you about them, and your cashier won't be ringing me up for something you don't have!"

"But that's not what corporate wants. They want these on display. I'm just doing what I'm told."

I'm afraid I saw red then... and not the nice red of a new $50 camera...

"So you're telling me that if I walk back in here tomorrow, and walk over to this display, there will be pull cards for this camera in this display?"

"Yes." Chris had gone into robot mode - just waiting for me to leave.

"And you won't have any cameras in stock?"

"No. Probably not for another week."

"But that's a stupid way to run a business Chris! That's really fucked up! You're going to give me a refund on my purchase, and then I'm going to complain. Probably to the BBB, and to your corporate."

Chris stood there for a moment, then realizing that I wanted a refund, he scrambled to make that happen. Anything to get this loud, annoying and complaining customer (Me!) out of the store as fast as possible.

At the end of the refund I asked Chris if he thought what he was doing was good customer service.

"It's what I was told to do by corporate," he answered.

"Chris, the company I work for was built on customer service. If we treated customers the same way that Office Depot treats them, I would have been out of a job a long time ago."

One of the other cashiers, behind Chris, started laughing quietly and nodded her head in agreement. Apparently this has been a problem.

So here's the deal. Office Depot sucks. It is my understanding that they put "pull tags" on display for products that are not in stock. This is the first time this has happened to me, but in the last hour I've run into 3 other engineers in my company with similar stories. It would seem that their MO is to ring up the sale, then order the product to be delivered for pick up. This is bullshit of course. The reason why I wanted that camera was because it was a good deal, and I was ready for an impulse buy. The promise they offered - in stock cameras - was a lie. Is it "bait and switch"? I don't know, but it smells perilously close to me.

My future office supply business is with Staples from now on. And with the local mom & pop office supply stores. They can't afford to treat their customers like marks.

Update: 18 May

I've updated my twitter account, Facebook, the BBB, Reddit, and of course I sent a complaint to Office Depot about their dishonest policy.

Here's some links you might enjoy about how badly Office Depot sucks:

• More Office Depot Employees Report Lying to Customers, Changing Price Tags
• Office Depot Sucks
• Office Depot sucks - eopinions
• What do employees think about Office Depot?  It sucks!
• What about Office Depot's customer service?  Yea, it sucks too!