Marty Barrett: The Flight of the Mavervorl

--6.19.2008--

How to sell me stolen property

I work in an office building full of well-heeled and industrious businesspeople. My office, in fact, is the worst-heeled among them. We play the radio loud, we swear, we keep unconventional hours, there's all sorts of characters around.

But years of working for the Man and a natural inclination to avoid conflict have instilled in me a sense of Good Customer Service.

The other day as I was eating lunch a guy in sunglasses walked in to my office suite and started talking. He had a catalog folded open to a page with stereo speakers on it.

"I've got this whole system and I'll give it to you for $290," he said. "This piece, this piece, these pieces ... "

Up until then I thought he was some Hollywood weasel (wearing sunglasses inside) coming to visit my Hollywood weasel-wannabe officemates. But he had some stolen speakers to sell me.

"Hold on a second," I said. "Who are you?"

He said his name was Jim. I asked him for his card.

"I don't have a card," he said, and then uttered the Best Line Ever. "If I had cards, I wouldn't be able to give you such a good deal."

At no time did either of us say out loud that this potential transaction involved stolen property, and it was only in that regard that Jim succeeded as a salesman.

I am not averse to receiving stolen property. As a carnivore, I feel like I receive stolen property every day. Unless the cow, chicken, little baby cow, horse, pig, dog, cat, or Soylent willingly says "Hack me up for meat," I am receiving stolen property in my mouth.

So it wasn't the provenance I was worried about, it was the presentation.

Knock first. Jim just walked right in.
Take off your goddamn sunglasses. It didn't work for Corey Hart at night, it won't work for you indoors. I don't care if your pupils are dilated; I need to see them.
Introduce yourself before you start talking. Even Jehovah's Witnesses introduce themselves before going into their pitch. Even Jehovah's Witnesses.
Prepare your presentation materials. The best restaurants wheel out the dessert tray. Jim could have hauled the speakers up the elevator and played Dokken (rhymes with "rockin'") down the hall to pique my interest rather than offer up a grimy catalog.

I said, "Sorry, Jim, I can't afford it."

He said, "For you, I'll give them to you for $190 right now, cash."

Never begin to haggle with the words "For you." Consumers have evolved to the point that they know to disqualify that phrase as a sign of preferential treatment. Instead, they distrust you more. It is like beginning your job interview with "I'm not a racist, but..."

I said, "I can't afford it."

Then he uttered the Second Best Line.

"Well, do you know a Korean guy on the second floor?" he asked. "He said to come by his office when I saw him outside."

"We're in Koreatown," I said.

Never try to discredit the choices of a potential client, even after you've lost the sale. You think I'll jump to buy your speakers now that you've told me an anonymous Korean is interested?

"OK," he said, and walked out.

Always thank the customer for his time, whether you've made a sale or not.

That said, what I really need for this office is a refrigerator; all my veal is spoiling.

Labels: consumer, customer service, work

--12.14.2007--

I didn't buy an iPhone

The iPhone is one of the coolest gadgets I have ever seen, and yet the only thing I can imagine it would be good for is displaying baby pictures.

Just today somebody showed me his iPhone picture of a file cabinet he wanted to put in his office, and last week my friend Jenny showed me pictures of what she cooked for Thanksgiving.

(To be fair, the iPhone also has a built-in ringtone that simulates an analog phone. That's pretty cool.)

The iPhone comes with a high resolution screen that is a logical successor to a wallet full of snapshots. Its built-in camera would be great for taking a picture of your car's position in the mall garage in case you forget. Otherwise, for 400 bucks, what does it do better than anything else?

Since long before June 29 I knew I would be wise to resist a first-generation Apple anything, and when launch day of the Jesus Phone arrived I asked all my friends about it. Most had taken their lumps with Verizon's $175 early termination fee to be the first in line at their respective Apple Stores to buy an iPhone.

Then it slowly dawned on them that they were now AT&T customers and would be talking less to their friends and families from now on.

My friend John bought a 4 GB iPhone late on June 29 because he had to have an iPhone, even though he really wanted the 8 GB version. A week later he went back for the 8 gig model because he had to have that. I used to talk with him more often when he had another cellular service provider, but it's different now.

I called him as he was ascending Laurel Canyon from Sunset Blvd.

"I'm going over the Hill," he said.

"I guess I'll talk to you later," I said, just as his phone cut out.

He came by my office.

"How's the iPhone?" I asked (people with iPhones tend to make excuses to brandish them, and he is a friend, so I saved him the trouble).

"I took some pictures of my new TV" he said.

And you know when you're about to be connected to someone on an iPhone because, just as the phone is ringing, you can hear static on the other end.

Sure you can surf the web and synchronize your calendar and contacts with a Mac, but you could do that just as easily with a less expensive device that has a better type pad. And you are also surfing the web with a tiny window that is only an improvement over those of other handheld, web-enabled devices because the iPhone's is slightly bigger.

I get the feeling that people want this device to be wonderful so much that they forget that it isn't. They bend over backwards to overlook its shortcomings.

Why is love unconditional when it comes to technology but not to human beings?

"You're not one of us," said my friend Wayne.

No removable memory, 8 GB of storage space for music and movies (as opposed to ten or more times that on other iPods), and suffering from lousy phone reception, the iPhone is more "i" than "Phone". And the i isn't even a capital.

Every January I go to the CES and AEE conventions in Las Vegas and I write about them for sundry web and print publications. Each year I resolve to get a device that will allow me to leave my computer in my hotel room and do my web-based work from the show floor. That never works. I've tried smartphones like the Treo but the workarounds take as long as getting a shuttle back to the hotel room.

Then I settle for finding accessible areas where WiFi can be had. Usually press rooms are a long walk from the convention area, but CES in particular had excellent amenities for press last year.

Still, what if I wanted to stay on the floor? To stand right in front of the Toshiba display and file my reports from there?

Once I decided - with real reluctance - that the iPhone was useless (the iPhone Touch, on the other hand, is almost a worthwhile toy. It's like a more expensive Palm Pilot without a camera), I looked for Verizon products (they are my cell carrier and I already pay them enough without dumping an additional $175 for the privilege of leaving them - I feel I understand how people can justify being the victims of spousal abuse now) that sweaty, sullen, goateed Verizon store employees were trained to say would be iPhone Killers.

The LG Voyager looked so good in the catalog that I took time off on my birthday to look at it. It has a keyboard with raised keys, it has not one but two tiny screens but, as opposed to the iPhone's nice OSX browser, had a proprietary and restrictive web browsing system. That the Voyager is posed to look like an iPhone in catalog pictures is pretty misleading.

And neither have word processing programs.

I realized that, like Jeff Lebowski's, my thinking had become uptight. What I was trying to do, Reader, was to make a phone work like a computer, and to cut the phone as much slack as possible, which would be made easier by the phone's other qualities.

But the fact is I want the interface and superior functionality of my computer and I want it to be online all the time. I don't want to pay for Internet at Starbucks or in a hotel room or in an airport, and don't want to be stuck without it anywhere else. And I don't want to try to convince myself that my phone is my computer.

Some day phones will be our computers, with innovative input systems, mass storage, multiple-input recording capability, wireless access to remote servers, high-res media players and projectors, point-to-point purchasing devices, navigation systems, portable smoke detectors, bar code scanners, laser pointers, flashlights, and - why not? - guidance systems for vehicles. they will be personalized and encrypted. People will say that the time of the Apocalypse has arrived, but it will be pretty cool.

So finally I upgraded my simple phone to a slightly sleaker model that will take a better picture of where in the garage my car is, and with removable memory that will allow me to change ringtones without having to pay for songs I already own.

I also bought a broadband USB modem with a data plan. It allows me to get online at a little faster than dialup speeds (no matter what Verizon tells you) and I've only had to reconnect twice in the three hours I've been using it. But that is a workaround I can live with.

Labels: apple, consumer, faulty technology, phones, travel, verizon

--12.08.2007--

Bladder control

Breakfast (the most important meal) comes with something like 20 gallons of Coca Cola at Jack in the Box. No wonder I wet my bed and suffer from childhood obesity. I initially used the soccer ball to provide a comparison, but then i ate that, too.

Labels: consumer, food