Tonight I’ll be in Goldsboro, doing an inventory at one of the stores in my district. First inventory in a while, the first since January. It’s going to be different from the way I’m used to doing inventories. Since the merger half the company’s stores have continued with their standard inventory cycles and procedures, whileContinue reading “On Performing Inventories”
Tag Archives: Work
On the PlayStation 3 Launch
For a few months now at the store we'll get a few–sometimes one or two, sometimes ten or more–phone calls a day from customers wanting to know when we'll start taking pre-orders for the PlayStation 3. My best guess for the longest time was that, at some point in the immediate aftermath of the E3Continue reading “On the PlayStation 3 Launch”
On Corporate Marketing Madness
The X-Men 3 game releases today. It's not directly based on the film; rather, it fills-in-the-blanks between X2: X-Men United and X-Men 3: The Last Stand, and features Wolverine, Iceman, and Nightcrawler as playable characters with Hugh Jackman, Alan Cumming, and Patrick Stewart lending their voices to the game. Corporate sent stores a box ofContinue reading “On Corporate Marketing Madness”
On Customer Craziness
Two work anecdotes to share, both from customers who came in the store today. A woman came in early this morning. “I need that new Smackdown game,” she said with an uncertain tone in her voice. “Smackdown versus Meat.” “Smackdown versus Meat?” I repeated, not quite sure what I’d heard. “Would you possibly mean SmackdownContinue reading “On Customer Craziness”
On a New Name Badge
I am a font whore — I have CDs with hundreds upon thousands of fonts. Sometimes the hardest part of sitting down and writing is deciding which nifty-keen font I should use. For the name badges the staff wears at work I used a Doctor Who font for the names. It was large, it wasContinue reading “On a New Name Badge”
On a Pointless Conversation
The phone rang at work this morning. I was in the midst of rearranging the PlayStation 2 games, put a stack of games on the top of a gondola, and answered the phone. I rattled off the current phone spiel. “Is there anyone there that plays Star Wars games?” the guy on the other endContinue reading “On a Pointless Conversation”
On Life at Work
Today. Today was, in a word, hectic. Oblivion, the long-awaited role-playing game for the XBox 360 and computer, went on sale. People needed Oblivion like junkies need a fix. It was that bad. I knew it would be. The phone calls yesterday, from customers wanting the game right then, right there, ranged from sullen toContinue reading “On Life at Work”
On the Road
It occurs to me that I’ve written nothing here about my recent vacation. Every summer I attend Shore Leave, a science-fiction convention held a little north of Baltimore, in Hunt Valley, Maryland. There’s a sort-of-matching winter convention, held in the same location, called Farpoint, and though I’ve attended Shore Leave regularly the last few yearsContinue reading “On the Road”
On Life in General
Jesus. Fucking. Christ. Today has been something of an emotional roller-coaster. Someone whom I hired, someone whom I used to work with day-in and day-out, someone whom I consider a friend, called me today to talk about his future. And it wasn’t an optimistic conversation — I couldn’t really give him a good reason whyContinue reading “On Life in General”
On Customers and Entitlement
Sometimes, only sometimes, customers annoy me. A guy had bought, for his son for Christmas, a Nintendo DS, the special red Mario Kart edition. It was a limited edition, like the teal blue Nintendogs edition, and once it was gone it was gone. We offer a replacement warranty on the systems we sell, though weContinue reading “On Customers and Entitlement”