My Baby Takes The Morning Train...

I take the train to work, and the (roughly) 3000 feet between the train station and my store can contain some of the most frustrating experiences of my day. Let’s take a look at some of the people I happen upon;

-Gaggles of teenaged girls:

How is it that two or three teens happen to take up five and a half square miles of space? No matter how you try to get around them (they are, of course, walking at about the speed of glaciers), they somehow manage to be in the space that you were trying to walk through! So you’ll dart around to the other side and suddenly there’s another teenager there! My theory is that teenage girls don’t exist in the 3 dimensions that you and I (and everyone else in all the land) are aware of. They exist in like, 5 or 6 dimensions, so we can really only see about 40% of any teenage girl at any one time. Each one seems to exist in about 5 different places at once. Laws of physics be damned.

-Pedestrians who stand on the street waiting for the light to change:

I know that this has little to no effect on me whatsoever, but these people simply baffle me. We will be approaching an intersection, seeing that red “do not walk” sign illuminated, and both of us will be fully cognizant of the traffic cruising through the intersection. I will stop a few feet away from the curb, lest an errant rock or automobile come flying toward me, but the other person will keep right on going, and step off the curb, and only then will they stop. Cars and trucks (and errant rocks) will be zooming by them, honking (not the rocks), and missing the individual by mere inches. Is this some form of lame death-defiance? Is this how they get their rocks off? (Nyuck! Rocks. Get it?) I simply do not understand.

-Solicitors:

This section needs to be broken down into a series of sub-sections. Yep. I’m that insane!

i) Religious Enthusiasts;

While it’s easy enough to get away from religious enthusiasts who may ring your doorbell (one option being to close the door, or the other option, if you’re my younger sister, is to answer the door in a bikini in the middle of February caressing knives against your skin. Whatever works for you in your current circumstance), it is substantially more difficult to get away from them while out in public. See, they tend to follow you, and no amount of protesting will get them to leave you alone. Which is why I have taken up yelling at them that I worship the Prince of Darkness and that one day he will reign fire upon this Earth, and I will rejoice. That usually gets them to leave me alone. One of them threw Holy Water at me.

ii)The random guy who I always think is going to murder me;

This large (not to be racist) African fella works at an actual store (I think) selling actual hip-hop style clothing (I think) and routinely leaps out at passers-by from behind the bushes thrusting flyers in our general direction. He usually does this at night while wearing dark clothing, and his tone of voice usually indicates that if you do not take a flyer, your family will be receiving your various limbs in carefully wrapped packages delivered via Fed-Ex for weeks to come. I know I have a tendency to exaggerate here, but I am seriously not making any of this up. Seriously. And since he is currently lurking behind me (I can only presume), I should probably keep my limbs intact and encourage you to shop at his store which, despite the number of flyers I have taken, I cannot recall the name of. Ow! Give me back my leg! I need that!

iii) Canadian Red Cross Volunteers;

I know I’m going to sound like a charity hating jerk-wad here, but I seriously hate the Red Cross specifically because of these wholesome, cheery, peppy pieces of garbage who accost me on almost a daily basis. They’ll be set up in twos or threes on opposite sides of the street (so there’s no escape unless you leap in front of a large truck), goofing around with one another, being all wholesome and crap, and as a group of people from the train station approach, they will perk up and start sauntering toward the crowd. The best way to avoid them is to plant yourself in the middle of the crowd of people and sacrifice those on the outskirts, and sometimes fist fights will erupt among those struggling to not be accosted by the Red Cross Volunteers. I once saw a nun kick out the crutches from a teen with a broken leg in one of these skirmishes. His butt needed to be sacrificed for the greater good.

But sometimes you wind up as the unfortunate soul sacrificed to the RCV, and the conversation ensues thusly;

RCV: “How are you, buddy?” (She has like, 945 teeth in that huge grin)
Me: “Leave me alone, please!”
RCV: “Do you wanna talk about the Canadian Red Cross?” (Are there more teeth growing??)
Me: “I have to get to work! Please, leave me be!” (At this point I’m sprinting)
RCV: “Hey, those are some awesome sunglasses you have on! Can I try them?” (This is not made up.)
Me: “They’re prescription… I’m going to work now!” (Still not made up)
RCV: “Hey, maybe we have the same prescription! Can I see?” (STILL not made up)
Me: “Oh my God, I’m calling the police!” (Made up)
RCV: “Well have an awesome day, pal!”

Part of me died just writing about them.

-Indecisive Coffee People:

Some people go to coffee places for coffee. Other people go to coffee places to get in line, chat loudly with their friends for several minutes about something incredibly personal (“I started menopause last week! Sob!”), get to the front of the line only to realize they have forgotten where they are (“I’ll have a burrito!” “You’re at Second Cup.”) and only then start looking at what the coffee place has to offer. Many times, this period of intense decision making involves questions such as “Is the Iced Mocha cold?”, “Where is this ‘Ethiopian Blend’ from?” “What’s your smallest size? Small? Small is your smallest? Can I have an extra small? No? No, you don't have that? No extra small? Ok then, I’ll get a large.”

In some instances though, the employee is aware that the ten people standing in line may start getting upset, and since she would rather not spend her afternoon cleaning up blood, asks the next person in line what she can get for them. This, of course, offends the Indecisive Coffee Person so much that they demand immediate service, and vomit out the last words that they saw on the menu, taste the drink, and then inform the employee their drink is awful and they want a refund.

-Couples:

Good lord I hate couples so so SO freaking much. What is it that encourages two people to slowly walk hand in hand down a crowded hallway in a mall, forcing other people to fight it out to get around them? I have problems with these people for several reasons:

1) The mall is not romantic! It’s a mall for crying out loud! What is it about the mall that makes you want to stroll and hold hands? The lame music blaring out from generic emo store after generic emo store? The Bell Booth employees telling each other stories at a decibel that could destroy reinforced concrete? The burnt-grease aromas wafting from the food court? Seriously!

2) They always spread apart while holding hands. It’s as if they were actually playing with crazy glue, got their hands stuck together, and are now forced to walk through the mall hand in hand while trying to retain as much of their individual bubbles as they can. And for some reason, I always restrain myself from playing Red Rover with them, and I hate them for that.

3) Like teenage girls, they exhibit the same glacier-like speed of movement and somehow manage to exist in 5 places at once.

As I’m sure there are some I have forgotten, I encourage you to post comments reminding me of the other stupid people I have forgotten about. I also think that this post is getting a little long for certain items, such as those who treat the escalator like a ride, people who get off the escalator and immediately stop causing everybody else on the escalator to panic and scramble backwards, and possibly fall down the escalator and get those sharp teeth jabbed into their skulls as they bounce down the moving death traps, and groups of people who think it’s appropriate to stand in front of doors having a conversation.

iGlass Economics 101

It seems that people have a skewed relationship with how much money they spend on certain items versus how much care should be taken with said items. Many seem to think that the more money they spend on a pair of glasses, the more indestructible this makes them. Following is a graph to illustrate this point:



However, the amount of care taken with said high expense items creates an inverse correlation, meaning that the more money they spend, the worse they treat their glasses:



It needs to be noted that this rule only applies to very specific items. Most individuals would not normally spend tens of thousands of dollars on a vehicle (let’s say, for argument’s sake, a BMW) only to drive it off a cliff, or use it to demolish an old garage, or allow his or her child to drive it simply because the child wants to, and then go back to the BMW dealership and berate the salesperson because they spent $100 000 and the car should have been able to deal with the high speed impact on the boulders hundreds of feet below, and they now expect a full refund. What are you talking about? Of course they didn’t bring the car in so that the salesperson could see what sort of carnage (get it!?) was wrought. The salesperson should just take the customer who drove his car off the cliff at his word and give him a new one!

See? That sounds crazy! The expectation here is that the more money is spent on the BMW, the more care is taken of said BMW.

Glasses, however, are treated in a much more indelicate fashion. Following are some examples of the damage I have seen done to glasses:

• People adjusting their own glasses, heating them using hair dryers. (If you have never opened the hood of a car, would your first crack at carburetor repair be with your 6 month old Lexus?) Heat, by the way, destroys antiglare.

• Mothers allowing their children to play with their glasses (although seeing my sister with my nephew, I now kind of understand that one. New mothers don’t sleep a lot, and when the kid wants to play with something, he or she will definitely get his or her hands on that something. May as well just give it up willingly.)

• Glasses dropped in a garburator.

• Glasses cleaned in a dishwasher (I wish I was kidding.)

• Countless dog-on-glasses maulings (with several of them being the second, third, or even fourth incident for the same person with the same dog. They say old dogs can’t learn new tricks?)

And most of the time, the customer comes back to our store with purposeful stride and announces that we owe them a new pair of glasses or they want their money back. We hear the story of how this is the worst pair of glasses they have ever owned, how this sort of thing has never happened to them before and how we told them they are 100% scratch proof and demand to know why they should bring the glasses in, they’re in the garbage disposal dammit, they want some new ones!

Now, several of the statements made in the previous paragraph need to be dissected further;

-“scratch proof coating”; This should protect against your dog’s teeth? Really? REALLY? Your dog has chewed your couch, coffee table, TV, bed, toilet, sink, bathtub, and house foundation, but the tiny piece of metal and plastic for which you paid $500 that holds lenses on your face should be able to stand up to them because of the “scratch proof coating” that is applied to the lenses only? I must be underestimating the power of this stuff, and I think that NASA should consider coating the Space Shuttle with it.

-“this sort of thing has never happened before”; For those who say this, I would like to respond “Have you ever cleaned your glasses in the dishwasher before?” Of course this has never happened before! It’s because you’ve never done this to your glasses before!

-“100% scratch proof”; When selling glasses, we actually correct people who say “scratch proof coating” by saying “There’s no such thing as scratch proof. They are scratch resistant. “ The usual response? “Whatever. You know what I mean.” Do you know what you mean?

So what is it that causes this inversion of money spent / care taken with glasses? Scientists have posited several theories, but the leading theory goes something like this: Eyeglass lenses focus x-rays beamed to Earth by black holes directly into the cerebral cortex, causing the wearer of the lenses to suddenly go insane and want to destroy them. It is not uncommon to see these people bashing their faces into tree trunks or sticking their glasses into a blender. As soon as the glasses are destroyed, the customer loses all memory of why they thought it best to ruin their spectacles. The memories are sometimes replaced with something much more mundane, such as “I was wearing them and they suddenly exploded,” or “I took them out of the case and they were just sitting there in eighteen thousand pieces.”

Bear in mind that the researchers who came up with this theory also like to inhale helium on a regular basis.

Let's Try This Again

I've often thought about returning to blogging. I’m always thinking of the hilarious stories I could write, the amusing anecdotes, the tall tales, the--ok I'm out of ideas. But seriously, I do think about this blog, and then I simply don't follow through. But now that my Auntie Di (http://www.ingredients-for-health.com/) and my sister Nicole (http://functional-fresh-fabulous.blogspot.com/) have both started blogs, I feel inadequate. I mean, I was the first one in my family to start one. But alas, they have beaten me with their consistency (both having written for more than two whole days!)

But I'm back, and this time I promise you readers, all 3 or maybe even 4 of you, that I too can write with consistency! When Nicole or Auntie Di post, I will feel shamed and compelled into posting as well.

I figure my first post back should be one of the classic struggles we in the eyewear industry endure daily, the passage of time. While some people feel that time has passed far more quickly than it has, (“Where are my glasses? It’s been weeks since I ordered them!” “You just left here an hour ago!”) others feel the opposite. These others are always, without a doubt, contact lens wearers.

You see, in Alberta the rules are quite strict. If your current prescription is more than two years old, we cannot sell you contacts. It’s mostly so that your eyes don’t rot and fall out of your head, but it’s also a little bit because we’re jerks like that. A conversation one might overhear goes like this;

Employee: “I’m sorry, but it looks like your prescription expired last month. Have you had a new eye exam done since then?”

Customer: “I just bought contacts six months ago.”

Employee: “Yes. (Pause.) Yes you did.” (At this point, we usually wait to see if the logic has sunk in. It, invariably, has not.)

Customer: “So I wanna buy the same ones.”

Employee: “But now your prescription is expired.”

Customer: “But I just bought contacts.”

Employee: “Yes. Six months ago. And your prescription expired one month ago.”

Customer (quite indignant, as clearly the employee is the idiot): “Then how could I buy my contacts last time?”

Employee: “Because last time your prescription was still valid. Now…it is…not.”

You see, the average contact lens wearer does not understand that in the time that has elapsed since their last purchase, events of many types have transpired. One of these events was the expiration of their contact lens prescription. This conversation can go back and forth for quite some time, with one or both people becoming quite irate.

Customer (sighing): “Well then how do I order contacts?”

Employee: “You need to have an eye exam done, and then a contact lens fitting.”

Customer: “Why do I have to have a fitting done? I know how to put them in.” (Please note that the employee has said nothing here about how to put them in. Shall we applaud that the customer still knows how to put them in? I'm honestly flummoxed as to how to respond to this statement.)

Employee: “We need to make sure your contacts still fit your eyes properly with the new prescription.”

Customer: “I’ve never had to have that done before!”

Employee (showing the file): “You actually had one done two years ago. And two years before that. And two years before that. And two years before that. And another two years before that. In fact, you have had these appointments done every two years since 1990. You’ve had ten—TEN—of these appointments in the past! And you don’t REMEMBER?”

Customer: “Oh. Yeah. I forgot.”

At this point the employee usually has to be restrained by several burly gentlemen.

So why is it that contact lens customers are usually so, shall I say, forgetful? One common theory is that one or more contact lenses have actually slid up the customer’s eyeball and has been sucked along the edge of the optic nerve and is now lodged in the person’s parietal lobe like some sort of beaver dam, with large quantities of time building and building up until one day the lens caves in, and a massive flood of time bursts forth, flooding through the whole brain, at which point the person comes in to the store and asks “Where are my glasses? It’s been weeks since I ordered them!”

Let's try this again!

I've often thought about returning to blogging. I always think of the hilarious stories I could tell, the amusing anecdotes, the tall tales, the--ok I'm out of ideas. But seriously, I do think about this blog, and then I simply don't follow through. But now that my aunt (http://www.ingredients-for-health.com/) and my sister (http://functional-fresh-fabulous.blogspot.com/) have both started blogs, I feel inadequate. I mean, I was the first one in my family to start one. But alas, they have beaten me with their consistency.

But I'm back, and this time I promise you readers, all 3 or maybe even 4 of you, that I will write with consistency as well! When Nicole or Auntie Di post, I will feel shamed and compelled into posting as well!

So let's make my first post back