Entry 35: Ultimate!!!
Microsoft, DirecTV, and RadioShack have lumped together into this huge money-making machine that they refer to as UltimateTV. That name of course implies that they offer a television experience that dwarfs any television experience previously had--I'm sure that little moniker will win them thousands of dollars in itself.

Dilbert, supposedly by order of our fearless owner, installed one of the damn things, and now it refuses to shut up. The receiver replaced the old DirecTV one we were using (WITH EVERY CHANNEL ACTIVATED), and it constantly plays the same 6 minute demo in an endless loop for all of us to be brainwashed by. I'm not sure what that demo is meant to do, other than drive every single employee crazy, because all the customers just glanced at it and walked away. I saw one guy listen just long enough to hear the tagline, "NOW INTRODUCING THE BIGGEST ADVANCEMENT IN TELEVISION SINCE THE INVENTION OF... THE TELEVISION," before turning to stare blankly at a rack of batteries. If people aren't even going to listen long enough to find out what the demo is about, why are we keeping me from watching Scooby-Doo damnit?

You can change the channel, but after a 6 minute time period it leaps back. We tried running another show in a PIP window. No dice. We tried running the demo in a PIP window. Ditto. We tried deleting the %$#* demo from the thing's hard drive. After unplugging the satellite feed for a little while it worked, but only long enough for the demo to be downloaded again. Everytime we took a shot at it, it seemed to come back louder, and more annoying. "NOW YOU CAN INTERACT WITH TELEVISION! YOU CAN PLAY ALONG WITH JEOPARDY AND WHEEL OF FORTUNE, VOTE YOUR OPINION ON MSNBC, ORDER PIZZA!" Tell me the last time you counted ordering pizza as interacting with your TV and I'll call you a freakin liar. What the whole thing boils down to is a WebTV combined with a Satelite feed, put into a nice little $400 package and a monthly fee. We eventually hooked the normal receiver up to one TV and let the demo play on the others without sound. It's still annoying as hell though.

When Dilbert tried to hook up the phone line to the thing he managed to completely intertwine the three phone lines in the store, and amass a foot long system of splitters and connectors in his attempts to send everything to the right place. He also ran lines through the ceiling tiles, brought it down behind the Compaq display, intertwined it through some boxes of headphones, and balled up the excess cord beneath the UltimateTV shelf. My manager was none-too-pleased, needless to say, and I think he is completely convinced not to give Dilbert anymore jobs that require wiring. Too bad my owner is oblivious to such an assessment.

Entry 34: *slams head on desk*
Sometimes the problem with writing this page isn't finding something to write about, it's chosing which of the many annoyances I face is most noteworthy. I've had a load to choose from.

First I spent 45 minutes trying to explain telephones to some old woman, caked in makeup, and apparently taken care of by a butler or something all her life.

"Okay, to hook up your answering machine you need to first plug a telephone line from the machine to the--"

"What's a telephone line?"

"It's the line that... it looks like this."

"Where does that plug into?"

"It plugs into the wall, into a hole like--"

"I thought this plugged into the wall. There are blinking lights on my answering machine. What do those mean?"

"That's the power supply. That plugs into the wall too--"

"But you said this plugs into the wall. Where does this plug in then? I thought my phone went into the wall."

"Both of them plug into the wall. Your phone plugs into the answering machine--"

"So this plugs into the phone? I thought that went into the wall. What do you mean?"

"That's the power supply, that plugs into the wall. You run a telephone line from the phone to the--"

"What's a telephone line? I thought the phone plugged into the wall. How come all those blinking lights are doing that?"

"You plug the phone line... THIS... into a socket that looks like... THIS... and then you plug the phone into the answering machine. The signal goes through the machine into the phone--"

"So I need to adapt this to fit in here?"

"That's the power supply. It does NOT PLUG INTO THE TELEPHONE OUTLET."

Forty-five freakin' minutes of that is enough to drive someone insane. My next customer tried to check out his items at the MSN Internet Center--our big neon display for computers. What's sad is that I told him to follow me if he's ready to be checked out, and he still wandered to the other side of the store and pulled out his money. Then, I had a chain of customers come in the store and try to DESCRIBE their cordless phone battery. "It's small and has a wire coming off of it," only applies to about a hundred different items, but they still manage to get pissed when I tell them I can do nothing off of the description and where they bought the phone from. Yet another customer came in after closing time and wanted to buy a few hundred feet of 10ga wire in order to hook up his indoor surround sound system. 10ga wire is about as thick as your thumb, and would cost around $100 for a few hundred feet. My arguments that the wire was too thick for a home stereo system, that it was too expensive, and that it would take me forever to count out two hundred feet of the stuff, just kind of bounced off his thick skull. I don't know how many times I pounded office furniture the other day.

Entry 33... I think.
Apparently I'm not the only one that the weirdos ask for help from, even though it does seem to happen to me more than everyone else I work with. Of course, I've got a much better skill at remembering conversations than most of my co-workers, and I've also got a definate purpose for bothering to commit such encounters to memory (meaning this page of course). I managed to slink behind some DirecTV boxes when this particular guy came in, and so the details of the encounter only come from what I gathered while peeping through RC cars and satelite dish parts, coupled with post-customer conversation. Here we go!!!

He was an old man with one eye half-way shut, as if he was glancing into a bright light that no one else was aware of, his face contorted as though he was confused as to why that light was everywhere he went. He hobbled awkwardly through the door, relying on the support of a wooden crook painted partially blue. That was basically what I saw before I dove for cover.

Apparently the man asked for something that we don't sell, and continued to hold the oddest conversation with one of my co-workers about his past. He muttered something about being ran over by a car twice, which would have been pity evoking had he not followed that with a lecture about how you shouldn't walk out into the street drunk. I believe the quote I was given was something along the lines of, "You can drink as much as you want, but don't walk into the middle of the road while you're drunk. That just ain't good." I never considered the fact that drunk pedestrians are about as bad as drunk drivers, but I guess that can be the case, should that pedestrian get the hankering to wander out infront of a semi. The end of the conversation was something along the lines of, "I've never been run over by a horse though. If a horse ever kicks me I'll beat the $%*# out of it because I don't put up with stuff like that."

I just thought that I'd mention our computers at work that we use to ring people out, the one that most stores use to store huge databases of customer information that's aquired whenever you try to buy some batteries. We, everyone except the owner that is, don't do that at our store. People get far too cranky when you ask them questions at the same time that you're taking their money--two annoying things at one time is enough to get some of our clientel a little trigger happy. This computer system that annoys so many people, crashes windows, slows to a crawl for no particular reason, and sometimes makes one wonder if pen and paper reciept writing would be easier, is named P.O.S. It's supposed to stand for Point Of Sale, but I can think of a certain other phrase that would be a lot more fitting. The little window that displays the customer's information is the most fun, as one can change the color of it at will. The default color is a yellow, which our manly staff quickly changed to a navy blue, in order to preserve masculinity I assume. Just for fun, everytime I use the computer I change it to a pale pink color, just to see what response it elicits. For about a month someone rushed to change the feminine color within minutes after I set it. After nearly three months they've resorted to only doing it when I don't work for a few days. I'm thinking of switching to krap brown for a while, just to stir things up. We have far too much time on our hands.

Entry ... ?: THE MEETING!
After spending five or more hours at work, the last thing you want to do is sit around in the back for yet another one. Tuesdays, or at least most of them, that's exactly what we have to do. The big STORE MEETING! I'd try to explain what exactly it is that we need a meeting for, what it is that we discuss I mean, but I'm not too sure of it myself. I've gone through dozens of these things without learning even semi-useful information, and I'd willingly skip them if I didn't work every Tuesday. It's kind of hard to close down the back room's computer with everyone watching, and then simply slink out the backdoor.

In fact, seeing as how the topics that are brought up aren't really of any interest to anyone, we usually finish by twenty or thirty minutes after closing time. There's always one guy who stretches the meeting out past the hour mark, however. Much like that kid that always reminded the teacher that she forgot to give out homework. That "kid" in this case, would be the manager of the other store.

This store is privately owned, and a few years ago the owner decided to open up another branch in a rather low-traffic section about twenty minutes away from the first. My manager was assigned the task of getting it up and running; I'm not sure how many late nights he spent over at the place arranging everything the way he wanted it. There was apparently a misunderstanding as to who was going to run the store, my manager obviously thought that it would be he.

After the new store was in tip top condition, and was opened, with the most knowledgeable person we have on our staff at the helm, the owner switched things up. Our manager was brought back to this store, and the new store was given a different lone staff member. Seeing as how the new location was sparse in the area of customers, headed by a moron who drinks on the job, along with carrying the burden of all new businesses, I don't believe that store has managed to turn a profit yet. The once tidy shop is now covered in a film of dust, fallen price tags, and merchandise that was lazily laid on the floor instead of on the shelf. Old reciepts, and yellow post-it-notes line the counter, and other flat surfaces, in case some random fact needs to be remembered. On the rare, and by that I mean miraculous, occasion that a customer happens to wander in, he calls us for assistance. Seriously. We have recieved calls asking what coax cable is. Not to make anyone out there in reader land feel dumb, but knowing that coax cable is "that cable that plugs into the back of your television" is basically the LEAST one should know before applying for a job at Radio Shack. That man runs the store.

Anyway, we basically get through with the meeting, and the boss asks everyone if they have any questions, and everyone says no. It gets past the bad manager's turn, into the next person's turn, and in the middle of the word "no" (right after the 'n'), the bad manager suddenly remembers an important issue he forgot to mention. "HEY! Someone came into the store today and they wanted to buy something, but I didn't know if I was supposed to give them a rebate on it, and I tried calling over here, but the phones were busy, so I told him to come back later. I don't know if that was the right thing to do or not." Such an outburst is answered by the ownder with a ten minute speech that varies off topic continuously, but originating around the area of: You were wrong, and that the phones were busy because we actually have customers. Someone else is given a turn to speak, and he interupts again, saying something about not getting any information about a certain special with Sprint. Another ten minute speech was triggered, saying something along the lines of: You should have read the sheet I gave you, seeing as how that's why I bothered typing out a copy for your store. After snickers from everyone, the moron asked another question about something that was on the sheet that he didn't read. By this time the meeting had technically been over for half an hour, and he started rambling about how he never has any customers in his store. Wandy the rat boy and myself ended that conversation quickly with statements along the lines of: Wow! You must have loads of time to clean! (The good manager visited yesterday, and informed us that the shop is in worse condition than any of us have ever seen it.) Enough of that bitching though. Go look at the web cam or something. I'm going to go lock the doors. Maybe no more customers reaking of marijuana will come in asking for cingular wireless cards. See you Sunday!

Entry 31: *blink*
If you've been experiencing troubles with the webcam, it isn't just you. Our loveable little SHACKcam seems to enjoy taking the term "dynamic IP" to the extreme, changing its server address whenever it damn well feels like it. Changing this page's link to adapt to the camera's fickle personality has gotten a little more difficult in the past few days, as the CYBER PATROL that MSN put on our computer is now blocking out webcams. It also blocks out language translators, thirtyfour.org, and any page with the word "but". The cursed web nanny has become a fierce dictator. I hate g*****n censorship.

I had yet another member of a rather typical mindset yesterday, the type that gets very angry when they realize that they have no idea what they're talking about. It was some old woman, I'm sure you're not surprized, that came in looking for external speakers for a television. Apparently her mother blew them up. Our conversation's structure actually resembled that of all those repetitive pop songs everyone hates.

"Do you use an amplifier or a reciever? The speakers are plugged straight into the TV?"

CHORUS: "I don't know, I don't know. What does it matter? Anything will work."

"Is the speaker wire permanently fastened to the speaker, or does it clip like this? Does it use a plug? What connection is on each end?"

Repeat CHORUS.

If all those lines rhymed I'd have a record contract. I'd also probably have to have large breasts, but anyway, the woman basically refused to give me any information, and she got angry every time I asked her for some. Eventually I just gave up and showed her the speakers, despite the fact that they WOULD NOT work when plugged directly into a television output. Any speaker I showed her, she complained about how it wasn't big enough to produce enough sound for her mother. She didn't like my explanation about how the larger speakers wouldn't produce any sound because the television would barely be able to power the smaller ones. I suggested a pair of speakers, and she randomly pointed to a $29.99 sales tag that had been accidentally slid under a $100.00 speaker, demanding that one. "Ma'mm, I'm sorry. That tag is for a style of speaker we are out of at the moment." She started yelling about how I didn't know anything, that she was going to Walmart to buy speakers. All the other customers stared at her.

There were so many things I could have said. I could have said something about how none of the help at Walmart would even know where the speakers were, or something about how the mother that wanted the speakers was lucky she couldn't hear her daughter, or even the tasteful, "Up yours." Instead I used the same response I use with every customer I detest--a phrase that wraps up all the mean-spirited, frustrated retorts into one. I told her to have a nice day. It was enough to make her double her speed out the door, and the volume with which she was grumbling. Hooray for the small pleasures in life.

Entry 30: You just put the damn pieces of bread together!
Have you ever done that writing exercise where you have to explain in detail how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? I did that in fourth or fifth grade, and the teacher kept berating me over such things as forgeting to say you have to take the lid off the peanut butter jar. If I say, "Get the jar and use the knife to get out some peanut butter," doesn't one assume that you have to open the damn jar? Apparently we were writing recipe books for some rare breed of nit wit, and I swore back then that I never wanted to meet the moron who found peanut butter and jelly beyond their range of competency. Now I sell phones to them.

I can't make telephone operation any simpler than it already is, but I'm told constantly by old people that I'm going far too fast for them, that they can't catch on to things as fast as "younguns." They ask how to use a particular phone on the shelf, I say, "You pick up the reciever, you dial the number, and then you talk," and they look at me with a blank stare and ask me to repeat myself. The other day I had an old woman who went so far as to inquire about the redial button.

"What's that?" she asked.

"It redials the last number you dialed," I replied.

She shook her head in amazement, "What will they come up with next? Do you have anything less fancy?"

After showing that particular woman the ropes, as you might say, and going through the rather arduous process of explaining how to plug the phone into the wall, I was confronted by yet another old lady that also desired a Telephone Machine.

"I had an AT&T one that had two amplificators on it. There was one on the handset and one on the side, but now it is broken sometimes, but sometimes it's not. I want a loud phone. I want the voice on the other end to be 20 decibels at least," she said. I love it when people come in and spout off numbers. Normal conversations are right around 70db, and I was damn sure she couldn't hear a normal conversation.

"Sure ma'mm. Did you want a cordless phone or a desktop?"

"Didn't you hear me? I said I want an amplified phone."

I blinked, "There's two types. Do you want it on a desk or do you want to walk around with it?"

"Oh I don't need all that walking stuff," she drew the shape of a box with her hands.

"O..kay. Well, these are our desktop models with amplification," I said as I pointed to about five models for her to choose from.

"I bet my AT&T phone was much better than these. Look at.." she pressed a few buttons, "I bet they aren't as amplified. Which ones are amplified? I said I want my phone louder. Why don't these tags say which ones are amplified?"

"They do ma'mm. See?" I pointed to one of the many tags with the bold word "amplified."

"Well it's just that one. You should mark them all. Here's another one that's marked. Where's the control?" She picked up the phone and knocked another off the shelf, its handset breaking into halves upon contact with the floor. I picked it up and started trying to put it back together.

"Where's the amplification? It says handset amplification. I don't see anything."

I spoke while forcing the parts of the phone back together with folded palms, "It's right there on the handset ma'mm."

"You're going to have to show me how these phones work or I might not buy any. How does this one work?"

"The exact same way ma'mm," the skin of my index finger somehow got wedged between the fragments of phone.

"You're going to have to show me. You're not a very good salesman. My AT&T phone had two amplifiers so it really kicked up conversation. I think it was cheaper than your phones."

"Ma'mm, I'm trying to fix the phone you broke. You just turn the dial to increase volume."

"What does this do? Hold this," she shoved a phone into my hands, "Ringer volume... hiiiiigh......... lowwwwww..... and offffff..... How do you work this?" She slid the switch back and forth.

"Just like that ma'mm. You slide the switch." She demanded that I show her, so I slid the switch one slot over, "See?" It went on like that for God knows how long, her demanding demonstrations of identical functions on every phone, I just kind of standing there attempting not to commit murder. One time she asked for a chart displaying the decibel ratings of each phone. I told her they were all around 135db.

Eventually she chose a phone that required batteries for its amplification function. "I guess I HAVE to get that one. It's not as good as my AT&T phone." She demanded that I show her where the batteries go. Then she demaned that I install the batteries. Then, after I installed the batteries, she insisted that she hadn't seen me, and said she would be right back if it turned out I hadn't put them in properly. "Nobody wants that ma'mm," I replied.

She left the store after giving me a tip that I have to be enthusiastic about selling things or I'll never succeed. I blinked, "HAVE AN ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL DAY MA'MM."