If you’ve been following along, then you may remember a few weeks ago I had an interesting experience with a loyalty card at Bakers Delight (see Am I missing something?). Let me not recount the whole story, but just say that the shop assistants at Bakers Delight Palms have some funny ideas about how these things work. You may also recall that my workmate Pip waded in on the issue after I told her about it one quiet afternoon at work. She kindly (and hilariously) called head office and confirmed that the Palms store was indeed quite mistaken about how the loyalty card system worked.
Email from Head Office
Well, armed with the email from Head Office, I braved the bread shop once more. I just wanted to redeem my stamps for a free loaf of bread. Sue was working. I was pleased about this, since we now had a history of loyalty card discussions. We started with the usual routine:
Sue: “You’ll need to spend $6 to redeem your free item”.
Me: “But I’ve collected all my stamps, I’m ready for my free bread now”.
Sue: “It’s store policy”.
Now I tried to be as nice as possible about this next bit. It was christmas eve, and I do understand that Sue isn’t in charge of store policy. But I felt ripped off. I pulled out the email and Sue and I read it together carefully.
“You’re right”, she said. “You get the bread for free. Can I show this email to my boss?”.
“You can keep it”, I said generously. “Thanks so much for the bread, and merry christmas!”.
Okay, so I didn’t really wish her a merry christmas, not my style at all, but you get the idea…I left happy (with my free loaf of white block toast slice).
I’ve been visiting the same bread shop for about a year now, every week. On Friday afternoon, Bronwen and I go to the mall for a beverage, a muffin and a catch up. I hear all about what’s going on in her life and we watch the world go by for an hour or so. Once we are finished with that, we go and see the ladies at Baker’s Delight. Usually we are served by Angela. She’s lovely. And sometimes, for whatever reason, we don’t make it to the bread shop on Friday afternoon and we get our bread on Saturday morning instead. Riveting stuff, huh? Well that’s not the story, so read on!
A few weeks ago, I was offered a loyalty card. I have tonnes of these things from all over the place, so of course I said yes. I love ’em! (see Loyalty for more about this). This card turned out to be more complicated than the others…
Baker’s Delight loyalty card
As a goodly loyal bread-consumer, I collected my stamps $6 at a time as required (two loaves of bread for $6.50, a bargain!). Once I got to the 5th stamp, the Saturday lady (not the lovely Angela, some harpy called Sue) explained to me that I needed to redeem my freebie right then and there. I had to buy my two loaves of bread, and then take my other loaf at the same time. Huh?! Here are the rules in the world according to Baker’s Delight:
I collect stamps until I get to the 5th stamp.
In order to get my free bread, I must collect the 5th AT THE SAME TIME as I redeem my freebie.
In order to do this, I have to spend $6.
So I always get two loaves for $6.50. That’s enough to get the 5th stamp and I can redeem my freebie … another loaf of bread. But I don’t want three loaves of bread. I want to be able to redeem my freebie NEXT time I’m visiting with Angela (or god-forbid, Sue).
Sue kindly pointed out that I could just pay for ONE loaf of bread (at $4.90) and then get something else to ‘make up’ to $6 in order to get a loaf of freebie bread. But why would I do this? I only ever buy two loaves of bread – that’s all I ever want. I’ve never even look at the other offerings in the cabinet. I argued with Sue about the logic of requiring customers to take their freebie at the same time as their purchase (i.e., you can have a free coffee, but you have to buy a coffee first…what if you only want ONE coffee?!). My arguments fell on deaf ears. It is the way things have always been done, explained Sue. Sigh.
This weekend, I decided to humour Sue. I dutifully selected my one loaf, and an additional scone because it was the cheapest non-bread item on the menu. I paid my money, got my stamp and received my free bread. I took my bread and scone, and off I went. Then we sat down and analysed the transaction (I know, but this is how things roll in our house, okay?).
I paid $4.90 for my one loaf.
I paid $2.20 for the scone.
I got a free loaf (hurrah, free stuff!).
I spent $6:30 in total.
I received a useless scone that I didn’t want.
In essence, my loyalty saved me a grand total of .20 cents.
Am I the only one that thinks this is strange? Sue thinks it makes perfect sense. It made me so mad I wanted to rip up the card. And that’s pretty mad for me, especially when, as you can see, I’m SO close to another free loaf.
So now what should I do? Should I continue with the stamps and collect inedible scones? Should I rip up the card? Should I, as Stephen suggested, refuse to go back there until my loyalty is rewarded in the manner to which I am accustomed? It is REALLY delicious bread. It forms the backbone of our weekends. I just don’t know.
I was thinking about PIN numbers the other day and wondering…when is an acronym no longer an acronym?
“Acronym: an abbreviation formed using the first letters of the words in a phrase”
There are lots of acronyms that I use everyday that I don’t really think of as abbreviations. It seems to me that some acronyms eventually become words in their own right. Think about some of the TLAs you use regularly:
PIN
ATM
DVD
LOL
FAQ
HIV
WOF
IOU
ETC
There are so many. For some of these, I have to really think about what the individual letters stand for.
So here’s what I was thinking about. It’s grammatically incorrect to talk about using an ‘ATM machine’, or your ‘PIN number’. You don’t use a Personal Identification Number number.
Saying ‘PIN number’ really annoys some grammar Nazis (not me, hence this blog). Is it now the case that a PIN has become a pin number? Has it ceased to be a reference to a TLA and become a word in its own right? I think it has.
The way that language changes over time is really interesting (to me anyway). As a self-confessed grammar Nazi, I’d like it if people always used the right word and correct accompanying punctuation. But at some point the overwhelming mass of people wrongly using a particular word or phrase actually changes the accepted norm for that word.
Take for instance ‘alright’. When I was a girl, ‘alright’ was more correctly written ‘all right’. During my childhood I was aware that either spelling had become acceptable. And nowadays it would look strange to write ‘all right’ when you meant ‘alright’. The same is happening with ‘alot’. Many people think (wrongly) that this is one word. It’s not. Never has been. But following the tendency for little words to snuggle up to the words next door to it, it is slowly becoming more normal to write ‘alot’.
When I see this happening, I have to accept it. The most wonderful thing about the English language is that it is flexible and adaptable. And so must we be.
And the same is true of the humble TLA. They become words. It’s just the nature of things. So if you’re the type of person who cringes every time you hear someone refer to their PIN number, do the mental lower-casing. It will make you a happier person.
So Kacie posted this idea on Facebook (she got it from Tumblr), and I liked it. I think I’ll give it a go. I’ll try to keep ’em brief so your blog-reading muscles don’t get overworked. Play along at home if you like, share your faves with me as we go along.
So we went to Armageddon over Easter weekend. For those of you not in the know, Armageddon is a “pop culture expo” … basically a geek-fest. Ostensibly it is giant store for people to sell their wares (comics, figurines, t-shirts, movies, games, swords etc etc etc), but really it is SO much more than this.
Just another day in central Wellington: Spock holds hands with a Dalek
Armageddon is a strange collection of geeks, nerds, emos, weirdos, and aged Trekkies (that would be me and Stephen). The thing that brings us all together is a shared love of comics, anime and sci-fi. To be completely honest, I am not into comics at all. I never really liked the chaotic nature of the comic – text and drawings all over the page. I prefer my words all in neat straight lines. This is a somewhat shameful admission for a self-confessed geek.
And anime is a strange form of art that I just don’t get. I suspect that it is very referential – in order to enjoy amine, you need to have a working knowledge of every other amine series ever made, and it helps if you can remember the plot of every Marvel comic ever produced. And if you spent your childhood drawing manga, that would also help. Having not done any of this, anime, manga, and comics in general just don’t do it for me.
So what the heck was I doing there? Other than experiencing the joy of watching Stephen and Megan pawing, nay *drooling*, over the comics, I was there for the Star Trek. Specifically, a panel of three Star Trek actors: Dominic Keating (Lt Reed from Enterprise), Rene Auberjonois (Odo from Deep Space Nine), and John Billingsley (Dr Phlox from Enterprise).
The Star Trek Panel
It was awesome. They were entertaining and funny, and the crowd asked interesting (and sometimes ridiculous) questions. It was fun to see the interplay between the Trekkies in the crowd (with their scary and exact knowledge of everything Trek) and the actors, who are certainly not that into the whole Star Trek universe. Case in point:
Trekkie: “Can you name all the star ships in the fleet?”
Dominic: “I couldn’t give a hoot” (or words to that effect)
John: “Well…there’s Enterprise…”
All-in-all we had a really great weekend. It wasn’t perfect (food always an issue; Megan could have had more coffee, earlier; our dorm room could have been a *little* bigger) but no-one got hurt and everyone had lots of laughs.
Why is it that people hang calendars in their toilet?
Am I the only one that sits in the small room and wonders this? Is it considered a good moment to do some forward planning? Time to sit, relax and reflect on where you’re at in your week so far? The worst thing is that I almost PUT ONE in my loo! It’s contagious I think.
The cards that I use the most are the coffee cards (Starbucks, Globe, C1, Mondo, Esquires, BBs, Muffin Break, Robert Harris). They great value for money. Every little stamp or click brings me closer to a freebie coffee. I like to save them up and redeem them when I’m poor and needy. There is nothing more joyful than finding a fully stamped card when you are tired and frazzled and in need of a latte. I find it interesting that they all have different schemes to keep me loyal. At C1 I get the 10th coffee free, but if I save up five fully-stamped cards, I can get a free t-shirt! At Muffin Break the fifth and tenth stamp is a free coffee. The Globe Cafe is stingy, they only give me the 11th coffee for free. Esquires has the most complicated system: the third stamp gives me a free flavour shot, the sixth one I get a free size upgrade, and then after I’ve purchased ten coffees, the 11th is free.
I haven’t really figured out how the Countdown Supermarket OneCard works. Perhaps it’s the OneCard to rule them all…but I wouldn’t know. I swipe it every time I go to the supermarket, and nothing has ever happened as a result of all these swipings. But I’m hoping that this will change. Yesterday I logged onto their website and updated my address. I suspect some lucky punter at 43 Brockworth Place has been reaping the benefits of all my (not) hard work. But no longer!
I think the one I love the most is my Body Shop club card. I buy all my beauty products at the Body Shop, and usually stock up every 3-6 months. With my club card, I get a $10 gift voucher every time I spend $100. The dollars rack up really fast, and I usually have an extra $10-20 to spend each time. There is something especially luxurious about free beauty products.
Anyway, my point. Looking through the volume of loyalty cards that I’m carrying around, I question the value of the system. Does it make me any more loyal to a particular brand or store? Not when it comes to coffee. There are three coffee shops within stone’s throw of my work, and I really just visit them at random, using the appropriate stampy-card. So really, there is no particular benefit to the company to hand out these things. There is however, a cost – to me! I must be paying for these things. I assume that the cost of all these freebies are built into the price of the products I buy. On this basis, Michael Moore once implored me to cut my cards up and JUST SAY NO! He argues that loyalty programmes are a trick and a gimmick, and we are paying for them through higher prices at the till. My strategy is to make maximum use of what these stores offer, since I’m paying for it anyway.
It takes commitment to carry all those cards around and have them at the ready, but it’s a commitment I’m prepared to make.
What do you think? Love them? Hate them? Ignore them? Do tell.
I’ve never been much of a one for all that gushy romantic stuff, especially Valentine’s Day. But in the last year I have celebrated my birthday and Xmas, so it would seem that the celebratory landscape is changing for me. Of course, it helps that I have an adorable boyfriend who likes buying me gifts…
I’ve been reading about this Valentine’s business. Did you know that we’ve been celebrating romantic love with heart-shaped cards, flowers and chocolates since the 14th century? And did you also know that we celebrate love on February 14th to remember the martyrdom of Saint Valentine, a man about who we know little except that he was Roman, and that he took it upon himself to marry young love-struck Christian couples. The very non-Christian Roman emperor was not amused. For his crimes, poor Valentinus was beaten and beheaded. And so in honour of this, we collectively send over a billion cards to one another professing-confessing our love and devotion to each other. And probably most of us don’t really think about why.
Since I started listening to podcasts and audiobooks in 2005, I have read paper books less and less. When I first started listening, I found it hard to pay attention to the spoken word for very long and my attention would wander. In order to help this, I began listening and playing games on my iPod at the same time – mostly just tetris or solitaire. The longer I listened to books, the easier it became to hear.
Now I am in the strange situation that I almost never read paper books, but I listen to books every day. Listening rather than reading has the advantage that you can do it hands-free. I can listen while cooking, cleaning, on the bus, wandering around the mall, out for a run. Books are great company. On re-listening, certain books evoke a strong memory of where I was when I first heard them (I listen a lot while travelling).
So here’s the thing. Will listening rather than reading make me intellectually lazy? Will I lose the ability to use my reading muscles if I don’t exercise them enough? Will I lose the ability to get absorbed in a good (paper) book?
Will audiobooks help develop my ‘paying attention when listening’ muscles?
The Secret Life of Bebe 