Hollywood Riot

Let’s just say I’m not the world’s most frugal guy. When I buy something, I normally pay the sticker price and rarely barter. There are people out there who can instruct you on how to glean pennies off of every purchase, but that’s not my bag. I don’t use coupons at the grocery store, although I do always look for the Savings Club deals.** I merely want to get what I came in for, at the price I was expecting, and be on my way. Sometimes, companies will try and give you the ol’ screw job because they believe you are either too ignorant or too lilly-footed to challenge them. I don’t know about you, but I try very hard to be neither of those things. I don’t like seeing people being taken advantage of.

Recently, I had to buy a new cell phone. My old RAZR (and if you take anything away from this post, take this: don’t ever buy a RAZR) was disintegrating before my eyes. Just imagine the worst drive thru speaker you’ve ever encountered, then imagine trying to make complicated vacation plans with your deaf Aunt Heloise through it, then (just for fun) imagine doing all of that while standing on a trapeze wire with two trained chimps juggling bowling pins inches from your head. That is a close approximation of what it is like to use a brand new RAZR phone. I had mine for over four years. 

I start a new producing gig this week, which involves a lot of emailing and talking, so it was definitely time to upgrade. I know my service contract expires soon, but I had just read about an amazing offer on a Blackberry Curve and I decide the huge rebate justified signing another 2 years with the provider in question (as opposed to wasting a second more of my life thinking about this purchase.) Once I arrive at the phone store, find the right model, see that the price is the same as their online ad, check out some accessories, circle the store aimlessly, look at the exact same accessories again, and tie my shoes twice, the sales clerk is quick to help me out. He rings me up as we make small talk. I make sure to mention this new job and how handy the phone is going to be. He asks me what my new job is, and I tell him “Park Ranger.” He laughs, but it’s not authentic. I’m not sure he knows what a Park Ranger is. Anyway, the grand total comes out to be more than a hundred dollars over the advertised rebate price. I am sincerely taken aback so it’s not hard to Act Surprised. Then he explains that the special price is for new customer activations only. I remember the rules of my contract and point out that mine is up for expiration soon. He checks the computer and sees that my contract expires July 15th, so I’m close enough to qualify for a partial rebate of $30. Not good enough, I think, but his hands are tied. I joke around about the bullshit policy, and make sure he knows that I don’t think it’s his fault. I want this phone, but I can’t afford the inflated price tag. I ask for the manager. He seems to see where I’m going and heads off to fetch her. She was polite and gracious, but not really enthusiastic about honoring the special price. She even had me call the phone company from the store and explain the situation to HQ. I stayed cool. I could have threatened her with full on Verizon mutiny. I could have bellowed and brayed about my four years of customer loyalty, but no one gives a shit. Mister T. Mobile himself wouldn’t care, even if he did once exist, which he didn’t. There’s no big name to shame, but there is this manager. She is the one carbon-based sentient being standing between me and the thing that I came in for. I lay on a classic guilt trip and within five minutes she has customer care back on the line annotating my account. Needless to say, I did not leave that store until they honored the full rebate. The manager wasn’t thrilled at being held to a higher standard, but I had gotten what I came in for. Nothing more, nothing less. Which is why, after my latest foray into consumer advocacy, I decided to jot down a few of the tips that have helped me get the most correct bang for my buck. Perhaps they can help you too one day. 

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Tip #1- When in doubt, ask to speak with the manager. 

So you find yourself in a situation where you feel like you’re getting the short end of the stick from some teen sales clerk/register jockey. Here’s the deal with sales clerks: this job goes to the youngest, most irresponsible employee in the store. For some reason, letting them handle the money lends a sense of authority to their existence, but don’t let that fool you. These people have no real power. Under threat of firing (or worse, having to watch the training film again), they can’t override a damn thing. The one and only task they perform that is of any benefit to mankind is when they call the manager. Never, ever, get angry with the sales clerk or they might not go get the manager. End of game. If you can’t get the manager over to handle your problem, you’re better off just leaving the store. The manager is like this magical genie- he or she can make the impossible possible. You just have to rub them the right way.   

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Tip #2- Guilt trip. 

Believe it or not, most people still carry a modicum of pride for their job. This is especially true with managers, who have been there the longest and feel a sense of commitment and ownership. This is why laying on a guilt trip is so effective. In my case, the fact that I was starting a new job helped immensely. She could understand my predicament, being an important manager herself, so I made sure she knew just how bad it would be if I showed up Monday morning with my shitty RAZR in tow. She honestly felt bad, which honestly made me feel a tiny bit bad too. After all, I had enough cash on me to buy the phone at full price. Why, she might even get some heat for giving me the rebate. Push those thoughts aside! This is the most difficult step, especially if you’re Catholic (or, from what I hear, Jewish). You have to lay on the right amount of guilt, without feeling guilty yourself. Too much of a sob story and you come across as pathetic. You’re aiming for benign, yet empathetic, whining. You don’t want to lie (although if you’re OK with lying, then your consumer life should be a breeze), but it’s not evil to smudge the details. For example, saying “I’m really late for my nephew’s birthday” is probably not going to tug at the manager’s heartstrings. Definitely make the guilt trip about you. Bring it home, baby.  

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Tip #3- Act surprised. 

Many managers are trained to spot scam artists. Authenticity is key. You MUST act surprised, even if you saw an argument brewing. If your point is valid, it shouldn’t be too hard to feign surprise… especially when the salesperson/manager acts like a jerk. Either way, a convincingly shocked “Are you serious?” or “No way!” is usually enough. If you’ve been practicing in the mirror and can’t act for shit, try replacing a surprised look with a really glum, furrowed brow look. If you look semi-retarded the manager might feel bad for you. In fact, if you are wholesale retarded I bet you can easily combine Tips #2 and #3… just by being you. Zing! 

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Tip #4- Know your rules and regulations. 

Nothing kills a complaint faster than the small print. This is the handy paragraph written somewhere in 2 pt font that explains why you’re a sucker. In my case, the fact that you needed a new activation wasn’t clear or stated anywhere obvious. The fact that I knew my contract was up in two months gave me the necessary leverage to argue for the full rebate. When I say “know your rules,” the same should apply to the salesclerk… News Flash! … Most minimum wage clerks do not thoroughly read their training manual. If you walk in to the store with a firm grasp of the small print, you’ll be able to make heads spin. If everyone followed Tip #4, life would be awesome.  

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Tip #5- Never storm out.

Hey, this list isn’t foolproof. There is an element of luck and timing involved. Yet, no matter which way the discourse goes, it’s critical that you keep a cool head. Never give an employee a reason to deny your request. They believe they’re in the process of doing you a favor, and they’re only going to put out the effort if they like you. The old adage “The customer is always right” isn’t a de facto rule. A more accurate modernization might read “The customer is always a nimrod. Despite the bombastic threats spewing forth from his mouth, he will never move the issue beyond yelling at our 16-year-old trainee and storming out empty-handed.” Trust me, if all other options fail and you raise a big stink (which is very tempting), your savings mission is over. You sign your own death certificate with any kind of ultimatum. “I’ll gladly leave right now and go to Best Buy!” will be greeted with a “Go right ahead”. Corporations have no familiarity, and therefore it’s harder to trust their word and get a fair price. Managers can accomplish a lot, but at the end of the day they still don’t own T-Mobile. At the same time, they recognize businesses need customers and referral customers (unless you’re dealing with an utility company, then you can fuck off to hell if you don’t want to freeze all winter). Companies don’t survive for too long without making at least some customers happy, so next time step up to that sales counter and demand to get what you came in for! 

 **Hot Hollywood Riot Hint: I’ve never once signed up for a membership at Vons, Ralph’s, CVS etc. I just enter this telephone number, like the ’80s song: 867-5309. In Los Angeles, use area code (310). It really works. 

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Monday is Cinco de Mayo and I’d just like to give an early shout out: Vive Mexico! I love that country. Seriously. Where else can you get cheap beer, cheap prescriptions, great hospitality, and your name written on a grain of rice (all on one street corner)? Certainly not here.

But the best part about Mexico, in my opinion, is that they hate China. A lot.

They refuse to import Chinese goods. Hmmm… that’s an idea. I wonder why we haven’t thought of that? Oh, right, because protesting the Olympic torch relay is a much better way of sending a message. Uh-huh.

Mexico, unlike US, is proud. They view cheap-labor Chinese products as competition for cheap-labor products from their own country. And they’re right. Why would the Mexican government want Mexicans buying cheap shit from China when they could be buying cheap shit from Mexico? It just doesn’t make sense.

How serious are they about this policy? Well, Mexican officials recently banned a donation of shoes from a woman in Colorado because some of them were made in China. They don’t want that Chinese crap cluttering up their country. They’d rather have bobble-head turtles and horsehair blankets do the cluttering, thank you very much.

While I may not understand the boycott (I am American, after all), I do respect it. Mexico is apparently willing to sacrifice comfort and convenience for principle. Weird, right?

But is it smart or just plain loco?

These shoes were donations and supposed to go to a small village that desperately needs them. Keep in mind, these people don’t have any shoes — they’re basically walking around on hot coals all day. It’s not like the Mexican government is providing them with shoes made in Mexico. But, hey - no shoes are better than Chinese shoes (she says as she ties her Reeboks).

What do you think, dear reader? Chinese shoes or no shoes at all?

Speak your mind.

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What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Well, Shakespeare, looks like you’ve been trumped by the mullet… I mean, “Hockey Hair.” That’s the name Minnesota moms give the horrendous hairstyle they somehow convince their boys to don during the cold winter months of hockey season. The Star Tribune is reporting that these chill Northern folk even have contests to see who has the “best” rendition. The lucky winner this year? According to Hockey Moms Magazine (the absolute authority on mullet execution), it’s Brady Arneson, a 3-year-old who can’t even play hockey. That should tell you something right there: No kid in the history of the world has ever won anything that somebody older actually wanted. We suspect young Brady Arneson, even with his flaxen blonde back-locks, is no hair wunderkind. Either the pre-teen hockey players were too embarrassed to enter the contest, or Mrs. Arneson is the queen bee Hockey Mom. Think about it.

In the real world, do you honestly believe Charlie Bucket would have ended up with a billion dollar chocolate empire against the likes of Veruca Salt’s peanut manufacturing father? Talk about a business partnership made in heaven, right? Too bad Willy Wonka had the entire contest fixed while in a fit of cocoa intoxication, preventing anybody but the most honest at heart to win. This move ultimately destroyed what he had spent his entire life creating by handing the keys to his candy making secrets over to a lice-infested wharf rat of a child. Well, hair related competitions are no different. Either this contest was totally rigged, or there isn’t a single other male hockey player in the area with a decently cropped mullet… and we all know that isn’t the case. 

What’s the deal, Hockey Moms Magazine? Was this kid just the youngest contestant, and therefore the least likely to develop permanent psychological scars from the experience, or perhaps there is a bit of favoritism working on wee Brady’s side? After all, mullets are a family tradition. An older brother won the title back in 2005. His father’s mullet saved the lives of four men in Vietnam. His father’s father’s mullet killed Hitler. His father’s father’s father’s mullet was scalped by Indians. That’s some serious lineage. It’s apparent Hockey Moms Magazine is nothing but an elitist rag. You know, the Arneson clan doesn’t own a monopoly on bad hair. It’s hard to believe, but Hockey Hair isn’t even the most offensive cut out there. Why, there’s a relative smorgasbord of follicle follies to feast your eyes upon. It might be nice for little Brady to try a different ‘do. Perhaps the Simply Unforgettable mohawk, made famous by… what’s-his-name. Since little Brady is destined for the bright lights of La La Land, his own hockey mom might want to consider last season’s celebrity craze: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow (HTGT). Either way, if he intends on remaining a champ, Brady better improve on the old style somehow. The good Lord knows that by next year’s contest he’ll have stiff competition from Jamie Lynn Spears’ baby.

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Remember the recent report about a medicinal marijuana vending machine opening in Los Angeles? If not, read MSNBC’s article here. Well, I live around the block from the cannabis dispensary that was home to that beautiful machine. The HNC is clean, quiet, and everyone who works there is really nice. This evening, as I was taking my Friday night constitutional down to the 7-11 for beer, a horrible sight sprang into view:

Guess who came calling? The DEA. The dispensary’s manager, who was walking around outside when I strolled by, told me that a group of federal thugs agents smashed not only the ten-foot window you see above, but also over twenty glass display cases inside. They then proceeded to steal all the medicine. This isn’t the first raid, either. The HNC was smashed to pieces last year by the DEA, on suspicion of carrying too much medicine, but were quickly cleared of any wrongdoing. The Feds just wanted to rattle them up a bit. However, the first DEA raid led the HNC owner to install that headline-grabbing vending machine in lieu of another break-in. He figured they would just take the machine and leave the interior of the dispensary intact. Nope!

Remember, this is a state certified business. It is legally entitled to operate in every way under California law and was doing absolutely nothing wrong. Don’t think we’re living under the thumb of soft fascism? Even if you don’t use cannabis, or for some reason have a problem with others using it, you should be disturbed by your federal government’s continued abuse of state’s rights.

UPDATE:

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. I feel the need to explain the situation a little bit further, so as to clear up any misconceptions. This was a Federal DEA raid. They were not robbers, or robbers dressed up like DEA (that comment made chocolate milk shoot out my nose!). From time to time, the DEA does conduct raids like this in California. They are not polite because they don’t have to be- they’re sending a message, or fulfilling a quota, or whatever the precursor to the raid was. It’s true, marijuana is still a Federally recognized contraband. However, I feel the heavy-handed approach (breaking of glass, destruction of property) is not warranted. If the HNC was truly under suspicion, a simple search of the premises would have sufficed. Don’t miss the big picture because this was a cannabis dispensary. The particular article was not about the pros and cons of cannabis use (although I’ll be glad to extoll the virtues of hemp anytime you want!).

Cheers!
Geoff

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It’s become cliche. Everything gives you cancer is now a justifiable response to any warning over potentially harmful products. When I informed my aunt about the dangers of pesticides in her food, she just shrugged and exclaimed: “They said the same thing about microwaves. Everything gives you cancer!”

The sad truth is that everything does give you cancer. Even oxygen, that sweet life-allowing element, ravages the cells in your body like millions of tiny Mike Tyson’s (and I’m talking “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!” Mike Tyson, not the current “I’m-a-crackhead-rapist-Jimmy-Kimmel-cameo” Mike Tyson.)

Oxygen facilitates the aging process. Listen up! Want to stay young forever? Stop breathing! Drink some tap water for a little OTF Ambien and pass out. Proceed to have nightmares involving Trans-Fat Phantoms and evil Vaccination Vixens turning the children autistic. Welcome to the Dreamland of Misinformation, the place where Chinese Lead rules supreme and Chicken McNuggets are good for you.

Which brings me back to the headline of this post. I’m done believing anybody, about anything, ever again. My trust in the system of safeguards I had always assumed existed has been destroyed. There is no system of safeguards. Nobody is testing your cheeseburger for germs. When I was a kid, styrofoam cups were destroying the world. Don’t use styrofoam, it’s cutting a hole out of the ozone layer! So, like everybody else not wanting to make a hole in any of our layers, I switched to plastic. Well, turns out plastic is terrible for the planet, too. And, according to many recent studies… wait for it… the shit gives you cancer! Chemicals leeching freely from Nalgene bottles has the hiking and camping crowd in an uproar (those people would live in their Nalgene bottles if they could.)

Scientific Fun Fact of the Day: Neither plastic nor styrofoam grow on trees or in the wilds anywhere on Earth. We had to invent and manufacture these products… which turn out to have harmful side effects. Sure, you could easily blame all of that on the pressures of primitive manufacturing techniques or an unforeseen chain reaction. That would be understandable, because humans make mistakes. After all, we’re only talking about a couple material items here. Nothing we actually consume. Wrong! You know those multi-vitamins you’ve been scarfing down with your oatmeal every morning? Not only haven’t they been protecting your body, but according to the BBC they might be hurting you. Keep swallowing those killer capsules and you could die sooner than your co-worker who inhales his Vitamin N (as in Nicotine) supplements. That’s right, health nut- you’ve been had.

Don’t feel bad. We all have. Our whole lives. About everything. Misinformation is a plague and it is spreading. Hollywood Riot’s very own expert has determined that the only celebrity spokesman we can trust at all is Wilford Brimley. That’s it. Diabetes is a hellofathing, for sure, and that man isn’t throwing around any misconceptions about the disease. Just the facts. That’s all we want, but that’s (almost) never what we get.

- Are we supposed to drink 8 glasses of water per day? No, but the people who bottle tap water and sell it for $3 sure want you to believe that.
- Does marijuana really make you a homicidal maniac? Not unless you get zoned in while playing Grand Theft Auto, but tell that to the propagandists behind Reefer Madness or our current Drug Czar.
- Do French Fries even come from France? NO! They come from fucking Belgium.
- Is it true that we only use 10 percent of our brains? Sure seems like it, but this one is also bullshit. No matter what your self-help guru says, you have no potential left to unlock. Sorry. There are people out there working very hard to make sure you muddle through life in a constant state of unease and doubt.
- Should I want to buy the kitchen cleanser with or without bleach? A difficult decision, and I bet the company which makes a cleanser featuring the “safe bleach alternative” is doing quite well. Of course, after a few years of using the “safe” product you’ll learn that the “alternative” chemical they replaced bleach with causes brain tumors. Hey, there is money to be made in misinformation.
-How do you “cure” a split end? Duh, the commercial said to buy their Split End Remedy Formula shampoo and conditioner. Ouch, $20 right down the drain. There is no cure for a split end… save for a hair cut. Care to comment, Wilford?

The corruption of thoughts and ideas is easier and faster now than ever before. Ask any traveling salesman (if you can find one)- it’s much harder to lie while looking into someone’s eyes than over the telephone (or email). Consumer confidence is at an all-time low for a reason. The endless barrage of scams, product recalls and 5 O’Clock News alerts we endure haven’t always been a reality. There are nearly 7 billion of us, going strong, and for most of our time we didn’t have to question the validity of every single claim. Nobody’s friggin’ spear ever bounced off the mastodon. We didn’t get this big by making bows that would sling an arrow backwards.

The bottom line? Stop living life through PSA’s. The “experts” were paid. Just quit following anyone’s advice, ever, and your life will turn out great. When faced with a decision, go with your gut. It appears common sense is the one thing that doesn’t give you cancer.

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