Pardon Our Dust

   The final chapter of Riley's Trick Shop is being written as we begin to move forty years of accumulated stuff to its new location. Whether it's going to our new store in Palos Hills, the garbage dump, or the recycling bin, everything must go. As we've take down shelving that hasn't been moved in almost four decades we're finding a few interesting things such as items we haven't seen since Carter was President, but mostly we're finding dust. Huge dust bunnies are everywhere. As I was sweeping up another one today I realized that it probably contains the remnants of my parents, my kids, everyone who's ever worked for us, and all the customers who have supported us over the years. Dust is merely skin that's been shed, after all. We profusely thank everyone who's made a contribution to the pile.
   When the dust has settled, the story will be a comedy of errors befitting a business like ours. Right now, with all the dust in the air, it's hard to see the final outcome. You, the gentle reader, will hear about it later.
   What I can say for sure is that we're moving to 8086 W. 111th St. in Palos Hills, across from Stagg High School. We should be open on or about June 1st. How we're going to do that is anybody's guess and should be fodder for another blog post.
   We're changing our name to Riley's Tricks and Gifts. A good portion of our business comes from the purchase of presents for birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and Christmas. We wanted to reflect that part of the business in our new name.
   So please stop by our new home. We'll be glad to see you. Maybe by then I'll be able to tell you the whole story.

Please Take "No" For An Answer

   Our T-shirt machine, the Brother GT-541, does a great job a great job printing on T-shirts, pillow cases, bibs, aprons, and other kinds of material. It’s basically a steroidal inkjet printer that sprays the ink right on the garment. Once the ink is set, it will never fade or run. It becomes part of the material and will last as long as the item it’s printed on. And therein lies a problem.

   Because the ink goes into the material instead of on top of it like silkscreening, it doesn’t show up on dark colors. Black, maroon, forest green, navy blue, and other darks are right out. Red, kelly green, royal blue, and other semi-darks will look good printed in black only. Computers do not print white.       

   Now that you’ve tried to print white with your computer, read on.

   We have a regular who comes in insisting that his paving company be the one to repair our “driveway” as he calls it. He’s actually talking about our parking lot. Yeah, it needs work which would cost about what we pay in property taxes every year. Until the Crook County assessor gives us a pass one year, the parking lot’s not getting done. This guy says he’ll give me a “good deal” on sealing and striping it and making it look nice. Yeah, nine hundred bucks for some black spray that’s gone in a year. He’s a good salesman, though. He won’t take no for an answer and keeps pushing until I walk away or it’s time to close.

   He won’t take no for an answer in regard to T-shirt printing either. When he comes in to harass us about the “driveway,” he brings “sweaters” for us to print. They’re really T-shirts but he calls them sweaters. No, I don’t know why either. Invariably, they’re black. Just as invariably, I tell him we can’t print on black and he asks me why like we’ve never had this conversation before. I offer the same explanation I always have but he persists.

   “What about white printing?” he asks.

   “Computers don’t print white,” I counter.

   “What about red?”

   “Nope.”

   “Blue?”

   My job is not to turn business away but there are some things that I’m just not able to do. Exasperated, I administer what I think would be the coup de gras to this encounter. “Listen, my printer has the capacity to print every possible color and variation of color you can imagine, none of which will be visible on a black shirt. There is no color that will work on black.”

   Instantly, he counters with, “What about yellow?”

   Raising my voice, I respond, “When did yellow stop being a color?”

   This had him stumped for the moment but I could see he was formulating a comeback. Just then a customer walked in and I greeted him like I’d never greeted a customer before. He had a request that I could fulfill and I ignored the other guy until he picked up his “sweaters” and went away.

   The point of all this is: we try, but sometimes we just can’t do what a customer asks. This is true for any business. Our job is to help you get what you need and we’ll do whatever it takes. It pains us when we can’t help you. If we can’t give you exactly what you want, it’s not because we’re lazy or indifferent, it’s because we just plain don’t have the capability to do it.

   

Is Technology Making Us Dumber?

   Not long ago I got a call from a customer asking for directions to the shop. Now, I’ve successfully directed people from Milwaukee, South Bend, Peoria, and every point of the compass since before navigation systems were invented. I know how to get someone here from just about anywhere.
   These days, navigation systems are standard on some cars. You would think I’d never have to direct another customer again, but they still call. I guess it’s easier just to make a call than look it up on google maps or, God forbid, unfold a paper map before setting out. This particular lady was close enough that it was a matter of one or two turns. No GPS required. I gave her those directions, she thanked me, and hung up.
   A little while later she called back on the verge of tears. It was getting close to closing time and she was “hopelessly lost.” A simple instruction like “turn left on 111th” appeared to be too much for her. She said she desperately needed something and asked me to wait for her.
   When your store sells fake poo and artificial vomit, you’re not selling needs, just wants. Still, I played along. I asked where she was. She didn’t know. What direction was she heading? Not sure. Can you see the sun? It’s cloudy. Then I asked if her car had a navigation system. Yes it does. “Hallelujah,” I thought. “I still might get home in time for supper.”
   Here’s where it got strange.
   “OK,” I said, “just enter our address: 644...”
   “I can’t,” she said.
   “Why not.”
   “It won’t let me.”
   “Is it broken?”
   “No, it won’t let me do it while I’m driving.”
   “So just pull over.”
   Her response was silence, as if I’d been speaking in a foreign language. For some reason, pulling over and entering an address didn’t appear to be an option for her. Moving her attention from the road ahead while driving was a better option than doing it from the safety of a non-moving vehicle.
   It seems the more our devices try to save us from ourselves, the more we try to circumvent their safety features.
   I don’t know if she ever made it. Supper was calling and I knew how to get there.
  

Scammers, Beware!

There are plenty of scams involving businesses: quick change artists, people in “need,” building maintenance ripoffs, and Crook County taxes. But the most persistent one is what I call “The Copier Scam.” It’s always by phone goes pretty much like this:

   “Hello, Riley’s”

   “Hi, this is (insert name here) from your copier company. Can you just verify the make and model of your copier for me?”

   If they’re really from my copier company, they should know that already. I know where this is going but scams evolve and I like to keep up with them. We don’t even have a copier. I give them the number from one we used to have.

   “That’s that I thought. The toner for that model just had a price increase and you weren’t notified. So we’re gonna give it to you at the old price if you buy a case of it.”

   Now, this old “lower” price is typically three to four times more per unit than the regular price at Staples or Office Max. They want me to buy four to twelve units of some overpriced after-market garbage that’s not going to print correctly at best or ruin my copier at worst. What they’re doing is trolling for some poor mope who’s looking to make an impression on the boss by “saving” him a ton of money on toner.

   I have several ways of dealing with this. If I’m busy I tell them they should be ashamed of themselves or that they should do something anatomically impossible. If I have a little more time, when they say they’re from my copier company, I’ll interrupt and ask how “Bob’s” doing. This usually stops them cold. If they don’t hang up, they may respond with a tentative “fine.” Then I’ll tell them I heard “Bob” was in the final stages of some horrible terminal illness. That usually gets them to hang up. Other times I'll give them a model number that doesn't exist. That drives them insane searching through all their manufacturer lists. If I have a lot of time I’ll beat them down so badly on price or quantity that they have to call their manager. When he gets on the line I tell him to do something anatomically impossible.

   The upshot of all this is that I’ve been around a long time and know just about every old scam there is. If it’s a new one, I can always smell it. It’s in the tone of their voice, the words they use, or the sense of urgency they try to impart. If you’re a scammer reading this or, more likely, having someone read it to you, don’t bother calling here–unless you like doing things that are anatomically impossible.

Around Town

    Now that the dust has settled from Halloween and I’ve had a chance to collect my thoughts, it’s time to write about our visit from WGN Morning News and Ana Belaval.
   I got a call On October 5 from a producer at Channel Nine asking if we’d like to be on their Around Town segment the following Tuesday. They would send a crew to the store and broadcast live in the seven and eight o’clock hours. I told them they didn’t have to ask me twice.
   This was our third attempt with WGN. The first was April Fool’s Day 1997 when they asked me the day before to come to the studio with some suitable tricks and jokes for the day. There was only one problem. Fox was coming to do a live remote for their Fox Thing In The Morning show with Bob Sirrott and there was no way I’d get up to the north side in time. I told them I’d do it if they landed their news chopper in the parking lot and flew me up there and back. They declined. The next time was in March of 2003 but we got preempted by the invasion of Iraq. We hoped nothing would keep the third time from being the charm.
   On Sunday, Judy and I went in to straighten everything and make it look like we had a lot of stuff. We did have a lot of stuff but it needed to be better organized. I cleaned the T-shirt printing area like it was brand new. Judy filled the holes in the costume area and filled or at least faced every spot on the shelves. The place looked great when we left. We hoped Monday’s customers wouldn’t mess it up too much.

   Monday was Columbus Day, the unofficial kickoff to the Halloween season when we start staying open til 8 p.m. every weekday. It was busy but the place still looked good by closing time so we headed home to hit the rack early.
   The alarm went off Tuesday at 5 a.m. and I was on the road by 5:40 after a bite of breakfast and doing the best I could to look good for the camera. On the way I passed an open field where the setting moon cast an unearthly glow to the miasma hugging the ground. That alone was worth getting up for. I pulled into the parking lot at 5:58 and the WGN truck one minute later. The camera operator showed up twenty minutes later, and Ana Belaval herself fifteen minutes after that.

The WGN news truck in our parking lot.

   Anyone who’s seen Ana on the air knows she’s a real high-energy ball of fire. She doesn’t stop while the camera’s off either. We had four segments each hour consisting of long and short teases and a three-minute interview. Between each segment she was looking for things to show the viewers, asking questions, and giving directions to all involved. She didn’t stop for the entire two hours. She especially had a blast with my children and grandchildren who were there to model costumes, since Halloween was the main focus of the day.
   Her two favorite items where the electronic fart machine and a pair of boxer shorts with a fake rubber butt on the back. She loved shaking that thing for the camera and we loved watching her do it. They really liked it back at the studio, too.

    All too soon it was over. The crew went on to their next assignment and Ana headed back to the station to prepare for the next day’s Around Town.
   Did it help us? Hard to tell. In the short term, several people came in to let us that they were in the store because they never heard of us until they saw us on Channel 9. One lady drove all the way from Niles because she saw a T-shirt design she liked on the wall behind me. I hope they turn into repeat customers.
   After everyone left, we had an hour until it was time to open for business so we headed out for a well-deserved breakfast. The waitress in the diner down the street recognized us and said we looked good on TV. We’d made the big time after all.
   When we got back to the store we noticed that Ana had left her jacket. I sent it back to her at the station with the note: “Ana, Tuesday was a lot of fun, but you have to stop leaving your stuff at my place.”  I hope that didn’t get her in trouble.
          

Mysterious Ways

   I had a job come in recently that I just dreaded doing. There was something about it that made me want to put it aside until everything else was done and I could give it my undivided attention. Even that wasn’t enough.
   It entailed printing on a piece of white cotton material 72 inches by 42 inches. That’s way too big to fit in our printing machine. Even if I could fit it in there, lining up the letters would be a nightmare. I’d have to do it by hand; all 42 4-inch red letters, 2 6-inch blue numbers, 14 2-inch black letters. An 11-inch-tall logo had to be transferred on, too. The letters would have to be taped together in segments and pressed in our T-shirt machine one segment at a time.
  It’s pretty obvious where this is going. The number was supposed to be 49 but for some reason I had the number 42 in my head. I even put that number on a template I set up on the computer to help me with layout. That was my jersey number when I played intramural basketball back in college but I have no idea why it came to me now. It was too late when I realized my mistake. The wrong number was permanently emblazoned on 21 square feet of cloth with no way to remove it.
   With trepidation I called my customer. If she was upset, she didn’t show it as we tried to come up with solutions. I offered one that required her to return to the fabric store and purchase a piece of blue material the same color as the number. Since this was going to be part of a football fan's blanket, I suggested she cut the blue fabric into the shape of a football and I could put a white number 49 on it. She could then sew it over my mistake. She loved the idea. I carefully finished the rest of the lettering and waited for her to come in with the new material.
   Still, that number 42 persisted as I tried to iron it on yet again. Good thing she was there to correct me. It turned out being a good thing I’d made the original error, too. When she went back to the fabric store, she found the white material on sale at a substantial discount. With her original receipt in hand she was able to cover the cost of the blue material and walk out with a cash refund.
   The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.
   A few weeks later another customer came in who’s son also plays on the same team. She’d seen the finished blanket at a game that Friday night and wanted to know if I’d make one for her.
   I told her absolutely not.
  
  

Show Me The Money!

   Life on the front lines of retail is usually all about dealing with customers.    

   On the other side of the coin, we merchants also have to deal with suppliers who assault us from the rear with missed deadlines, incorrect shipments, false promises, and other ineptitude for which we have to answer to the customer.

   One of our suppliers, a humongous conglomerate, whose name I will not mention for fear of swift retribution, has hit us with a new angle. In addition to supplying business like ours they own a nationwide chain of 700 stores whose name I also will not mention but whose last name is akin to Metropolis and whose first name is something to do with Celebration. So you get the idea that this is a pretty big outfit.

   My wife always mispronounces their name and it sound like some kind of scam. Lately I’ve come to believe she’s right. They require us to prepay our orders by credit card. That’s no problem but what they do with the credit card is. Say we order $500 worth of merchandise. If they’re out of stock on half of it, they still charge $500 plus shipping to our card and hold the balance until our next order. No big deal, right? Well, sometimes we don’t reorder for a couple of months and we sure could use that extra $250. Plus, if they do this to a thousand businesses, that’s $250,000 of our money this mega supplier is collecting interest on.

   I have recently started a campaign against this policy and it seems to have had the desired effect.

   There appears to be only one person there to answer the phone. She’s a very nice lady who must have drawn the short straw and has to deal with every phone call, whether it’s an order, question, or complaint. She must have mixed emotions when she sees us on the caller ID. When my wife, Judy, calls, it’s to place an order. Judy’s always very pleasant and our phone lady is relieved beyond all telling to hear from her. She’s told my wife that she’d much rather deal with her than me. Maybe that’s because I’m not quite as pleasant when I call. A typical call might go like this:

“This is Jim at Riley’s Trick Shop. Where’s my money?”

“You know we’re holding it til you order it again.”

“Yeah, well I’m not gonna order any time soon, if ever. I want it now.”

“We’re good for it. We’ll credit it to your next order.”

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I want MY money back NOW.”

“I’ll see what I can do about getting it credited back to your card.”

“No! I want you to mail me a check. And I want it now.”  

   This forces another drone at the company to write a check, put it in an envelope, stamp it, and get it in the mail. The check usually shows up in a few days because they don’t want to deal with me again. They know I won’t be so pleasant the next time. If every other merchant is making these demands, it adds up to a lot of extra work and expense for our supplier. That puts a dent in the bottom line, which gets the attention of the bean counters, and eventually works its way up to the honchos in the ivory tower.

   They appear to have reconsidered. With great fanfare they recently announced that they are changing their policy and charging us only for merchandise shipped. Woo-hoo!! They’re giving us our money back! How magnanimous. And for that they probably expect to be nominated for some kind of supplier of the year award.

   Don’t get your party hats out just yet.