A few days ago, I had a phone conversation with one of our new vendors. The person on the other end of the line was trying to explain why they couldn’t accomodate what I felt was a very reasonable request. During the call, she made several ill-advised statements, including: – “I just work here.” – […]

My favorite breakfast place in Chicago just opened a new location that’s much closer to my apartment, so I decided to try it out over the weekend. Aside from a few minor hiccups, everything was great. Well, except for one thing: they could only accept Visa and MasterCard, since their Amex account hadn’t been activated […]

Different food products come in different sizes of containers, which is why grocery stores typically include the cost per ounce right next to the price of the whole container. Even online stores like Amazon show unit costs in this fashion. But I’ve noticed a few weird exceptions. Instead of showing the cost on a per […]

For the most part, the music that you hear in retail stores, restaurants and other venues tends to skew towards the conservative side of things. After all, why risk pissing off the majority of your shoppers just to have a small segment of customers think you’re cool? But sometimes a store decides to throw logic […]

Let’s say that you’re browsing the floor of a retailer that displays men’s and women’s clothes in one big area, rather than in separate departments. You’re looking for pants, and the colors and styles are quite similar for men and for women. Plus, some types of women’s pants use sizes like 29, 30, etc. that […]

I recently contacted a company’s tech support department via email. A few minutes after sending my request, I got an auto-response that said I should expect to hear from them in “24 business hours”. Since most people would define the standard business day as 8 hours, I interpreted this to mean that I would get […]

While I was in a clothing store over the weekend, I noticed a nice-looking leather jacket that they had on display. It was fastened onto a mannequin, and the price tag was well-hidden — if it even had a tag at all. I looked for a rack containing the jackets, but it appeared the floor […]

For whatever reason, I’ve always assumed that elevators have a safety feature that prevents the doors from crushing people. In other words, if someone gets in the way of the doors while they’re closing, the doors will open up to avoid the obstruction. But how much force does it actually take to trigger this safeguard? […]

Ever buy a bulk pack of something, sock it away in the closet, and then find that it’s basically petrified by the time you’re ready to use it? This happened to me recently, even though the product was nowhere near the expiration date — if it had one at all. Apparently, I would have needed […]

A few months ago, I dropped a water glass while I was in the process of drying it off. The glass shattered into what seemed like a million pieces, and it took a good 45 minutes to clean up the mess. By then, I had finally had it with easily-broken glasses. Without further delay, I […]