"Those People"-'ed

While working in customer service directly with the public there are times when you are inspired by the human spirit, without a doubt. As somebody who does, despite frequent kvetching, aspire to being the best person I can be I do notice a lot of good.

And sometimes people are total twat-tards.

As things start to slow down after 9PM or so generally the store starts to get it's desolate night time vibe. Mostly outside because the homeless shelters are closed down town. The destitute of the city set up camp to prey on patrons of late-night pizzas, fast food and prescriptions. Some money or cigarettes is really all they want.

But a gentleman had the audacity to complain to us about "them". Verbatim, the thesis of his comment was:

I will NOT shop here unless you do SOMETHING about THOSE PEOPLE. Why doesn't your boss do something about THEM. [his emphasis]

Of course this man, obviously into his mid-life crisis and clearly well enough to do, had but not a shred of compassion or even irony in his voice. Like anyone raised in a North American city I feel a bit put-off by the homeless, sure. Sometimes you just don't want to deal. Suburban attitudes are but the result of a weird desensitization to the people around us. Fall-out from World War II still tweaking the culture with it's historical shock-waves.

But like the common person I would never consider complaining. Human society has it's transients and down-trodden. We have but forever been in the company of prostitutes and beggars. It is, to borrow a cliché, but part of life's great tapestry.

The man used our Franchisee's real name, he is a big cheese in this part of town. And for a good reason, he's a good man. I can say this with all honesty. But as his employees the standard "give us your money still" responses were given. You gotta be a cock sucking robot in those situations, it's what people expect. It's fucked up and wrong but it's what's expected in our culture... and that's a separate issue entirely.

I didn't tell bourgeois twat-tard about how I packed thousands of dollars of food into the Franchisees van to deliver to shelters the on X-Mas eve. All of us off the clock and burning the midnight oil before going to our families. This is in addition to the regular food drive already completed. We just wanted him out and really the fear of anything superlative being said far out-weighed it's righteous implications. Perhaps the holiday implications are too heavy handed an example for the agnostic reader. But it was real and it was there and happening, part of the picture.

I left the situation wishing I had said something. To take him to town, it was really in context of the time of year and situation, just totally unacceptable. Only a complete asshole would wish the homeless away so you can shop for fancy organic coffee and important Italian sweets in peace. I mean shit, what an archaic attitude. I even like the hippie trippy Fruitarian bobos better than him. At least when they get righteous and indignant it's about shit that doesn't matter.

Small Apples

David! Here' s my annual post-Macworld Keynote Apple Bashfest! I wrote it for you, miss ya lots!

So Apple is the belle of the ball once again. They're selling iPods hands-over-fists, Mac sales are steadily growing and generally things are rosy.

But here's the thing. They're still kinda not huge. The Apple today relative to the size of the market today isn't as big as the Apple that created the Apple II and the Mac. That's good because it makes them theoretically more agile and more able to avoid great organizational blunders like the Windows Vista Shut Down Menu Crapfest. But bad because they are up against some much larger competitors who are still moving slowly towards the same goals. I wouldn't count out Microsoft and Sony just yet for instance. They could relegate Apple to the Whole Foods of the computer market once again if they bring out their Wal*Mart Pod and it does the same things cheaper and mostly the same.

The reason I say this in light of the new products is because Apple still continues to operate in Canada like a smaller company. The iTunes Music Store didn't arrive here until much much after it did in the USA. Currently they still don't sell movies or TV shows and much of the content that is the same or similar in music stores across the Canada-US boarder is not mirrored in their online store. Now they have released a GSM based phone and I have no doubt they haven't talked to a single wireless provider in the country. The iPhone is nowhere to be seen on Apple.ca, .ie, .co.uk or .jp for that matter.

Now I understand that international media law is probably a tough issue to wrangle. But other companies still do that. It takes tremendous resources to implement but even still Amazon, Sony, HMV and various other companies are selling media in this country and adhering to the tricky stuff like Canadian Content laws. Now the difference is that telecommunication ain't that much different in Canada or around the world. If I'm not mistaken the US was one of the last nations to get good national GSM coverage. We have great GSM networks here and a variety of providers and MVNOs. It's just another bad localized implementation of the iPod's more advanced features. That's cheesy because it doesn't matter to the majority of their customers or stock holders. But it does to a few large minorities, ie. Canadians, British, Japanese, French, whatever.

So as somebody who has meagre cash to throw at the optic white and dark matter black objects from Apple I feel kinda disappointed by their actual business reality. They clearly can't afford to get into the media game internationally. They're crackin' the egg in the USA but really that's about it. Elsewhere they are just selling some really well designed and engineered hardware. Which is great but I think it's about time they serious about being a real player in media around the world. Right now they just keep bigging up their chest, satisfying most of their market and then sorta waiting for the rest to fall into place.