How I Gambled in Las Vegas and … (Part 2)

In part two of this not so exciting travelogue surrounding our ill-fated, yet still enjoyable, trip to Las Vegas our fearless writer (who now fears only two things Swordfish and the Burger King – stay tuned for Part 3 to find out more) discusses how he and his wife gambled on Customer Service in Las Vegas and won… big time.

Customer Service. It’s a thing that many companies talk about and strive to achieve in the eyes of the common public. Many a CEO has often been heard around the gold-plated water coolers with his buddies saying: “Doesn’t Joe Lunchpail know that we care? Doesn’t Mary J. Homemaker realize how important she is to us? It is a tragedy these common folk lack the intellect to see how we are hear to guide them… say good fellow is that a canapé?”

Sometimes it must seem to those in the customer service industry the “Satisfied Customer” is a mythical creature like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Honest Politician.

There are precisely two times that we will pay a lot of attention to customer service.  The first is when customer service is so bad it stands out – sadly this is far more often than the next: when people go out of their way and do there dangdest to make sure that the needs of me, Jon Q Customer, are met to the nth degree.

While in Las Vegas my wife and I had many service experiences. Restaurants. Stores. Airport. The thing that stood out to me is the fact that virtually all of these people – all the waiters, cabbies, airline attendants, shopping clerks - all possessed two traits that I look for in people in those positions – first and of the utmost importance: competence. Following right behind that: manners.

There’s something about going into a restaurant here in Canada where you feel obligated to tip. The service could be horrible, the food could be garbage, yet most of us might still feel inclined to drop the gratuity bomb. I once got hung up in a Red Robin for 45 minutes trying to find a server to bring us our bill while they chased after a dine and dash (almost creating the second of the evening). The food had been horrible and the waiter had been a doofus. I didn’t tip.

I still feel guilty.

What if I deprived his kids of food? Although in hindsight, if his kids did have food they’d be waiting so long for that jackass to bring it that it would be long cold by the time they got it… but I digress. In Canada, people who work in service industries are working there until they can find something better – and they work like that. You do enough to do the job and you complain about the goofs that come in (I don’t have a problem with complaining about the goofs though – its part of the pay package for people who have to put up with goofs for a living).

In virtually every restaurant and every store we went in to, the people we interacted with were great at their jobs and seemed happy to be there. In virtually every clothing store we went shopped, we told them how the airline had lost our luggage, and in many cases the clerks went and found coupons, some of them out of date, or made up some discounts and gave us from 15-25% off.

You can’t teach that sort of customer service. You can try to teach that sort of customer service but you just get a bunch of disgruntled employees sitting in a room listening to an instructor that hasn’t served anyone since she got her degree in College.

Kudos to the chick at Westjet who almost managed to take the sting out of us losing our luggage. Kudos again to Westjet for ponying up for their mistake (though it would have been nice if they’d given us a plane). Kudos to Vanessa at the IHOP, kudos to the gals of Target, kudos to the chick at Lane Bryant who helped my wife so much (who’s name I can’t remember because I wasn’t shopping there for me) and then gave us the discount that had expired a month ago.

I gotta tell you I feel odd not complaining about it though… happily I came back to the Bread Garden near work… plenty of fodder for complaint.

How I Gambled in Las Vegas and… (Part One)

This year for our tenth wedding anniversary my wife and I decided to dump the kids off on Oma and Opa (thanks so much Oma and Opa and though it will be years before it happens again, we appreciated this one greatly) and headed to the glitteriest city in the world (unsubstantiated): Las Vegas.

That’s right, yours truly was headed off to the home of CSI, Elvis (Fat Version) and no longer the home of the singing broomstick that is Celine Dion.

Now as everyone knows Las Vegas is famous for one thing: gambling; and with this in mind here’s a multipart series of how we gambled in Las Vegas and the results of those numerous gambles.

How I gambled in Las Vegas and… Lost

Our first major gamble happened even before we boarded the plane and it involved handing our luggage over to Westjet with the assumption we would get it right back on the other side of the voyage. Well, maybe we should have checked the Vegas odds on that because when we stepped off the plane in Las Vegas our luggage was like Celine Dion in the last few years of her five year contract in Vegas (you know where she had to get Elton John to fill in for her) that is to say: a no show.

My wife, bless her heart and brains, had taken out travel insurance and sure enough it came in handy. First we talked to the representative there and she was nice and we were nice and everyone is nice; you get more flies with honey (though I didn’t want flies, I was still nice anyway) and we filed our claim and they promised to call if our wayward luggage showed its ugly face anytime soon.

The lady told us to call back tonight as there was a flight from Vancouver due in and it might make that; failing that call tomorrow as there was a chance they might have located it. Failing that there was a chance the luggage would be on the flight tomorrow afternoon and so on and so forth yea unto the 7th iteration of said daily flight from Vancouver to Las Vegas (which wouldn’t do us any good as we were to be out of Vegas by the 5th iteration of said trip).

So our first order of business upon checking into our hotel: go get some clothes for tomorrow. Now, being a guy, my care level for people seeing me in the same clothes I wore yesterday is about 22% – and that 22% is made up entirely of the fact that I’ll be wearing the  same underwear as yesterday (now normally people aren’t going to see that but keep in mind I am in Vegas and who the hell knows what can happen).

So off we went to Macy’s.

Now being a guy, and a Canadian, I don’t generally think of Macy’s when I go shopping. After having gone there, I won’t think of it again. It’s not that it’s a bad store by any stretch of the imagination – it just happens to be the typical store a guy gets dragged to on a weekend when his wife needs to go shopping (note: that was not the case here, I needed clothes too). It’s like Sears without the weekend sale (I haven’t checked, but I bet they’re having one this weekend!)

We went, we saw, we shopped. Not an ideal experience. But not a bad one, and necessary.

But we still needed things like tooth brushes and other hygienic things so we went to the Walgreens to replace the essentials.

Traveler’s note: never try and replace essential items at the Walgreens on the Strip because you will have to go to a blackjack table and hope you win big before you can afford a stick of deodorant. If you are afraid to gamble or that’s not what you’re there for and you still need a stick of deodorant or what have you, always  look on the bottom shelves down out of eye level. That’s where they put the cheap stuff, you know the stuff they test on monkeys and the FDA passes after the monkey only grows one extra arm (I haven’t read the testing rules, but I believe two extra arms are the fail).

The next day my wife followed up with the airline. She was nice. The airline lady was nice. I wasn’t on the phone with them, but I was nice anyway because I was on vacation and would go back to being a doofus upon our return. No sign of luggage. Off we went to Target.

Now being a guy, and a Canadian, I don’t generally think of Target when I think of a  positive shopping experience (note: for me a positive shopping experience is one where the wife goes shopping and takes the kids with her and I sit home and watch football). I will now think of Target as a positive shopping experience. My wife and I managed to replace a fairly large portion of our wardrobe with the assumption we would not be seeing it again as our luggage had gone the way of the Dodo bird.

I bet you didn’t know Westjet is at fault for the extinction of the Dodo bird. That’s right Westjet. I outted you. Air Canada you could believe, but not the nice smiling people at Westjet… true story.

I did the typical guy shop. I found one make of shirt that fit me well and got four different colors of it. Grabbed some pants that fit and when they got wifely approval threw them in the shopping cart. For those of you in Las Vegas – 10 o’clock on a Monday morning is a good time to go shopping.

The final item we had to pick up at Target were: suitcases. It occurred to us that if our clothes and items never showed up again, that would mean our suitcase probably wouldn’t be making an appearance either and so we purchased a couple of duffel bags that transform into suitcases (like a more mundane version of Transformers) and off we rolled down to the nearby mall.

There we bought a few more necessary items and that took up pretty much the full first day in Las Vegas. We returned to our hotel room exhausted but no longer in danger of wearing the same outfit all 5 days in Vegas.

Just to be sure when we got back to the room my wife called the lady at the insurance and at the airline again. She was nice. The ladies on the phone were nice. I was tired and hungry but didn’t see any point in being grumpy so I stayed nice.

Then on Tuesday we received a call from the airline. Our luggage had been found! Hurray! Huzzah! Wicked Awesome SuperTuesday!

So what had happened? Well apparently some Hercules baggage clerk had ripped off the handle of the suitcase, the one with the tags on it, while stacking bags and the baggage never left the airport because no one knew whose it was or where it was going. When it was identified by its contents it got to go on a side trip to Los Angeles and then met us in Vegas.

Reunited. And it felt so good.

Of course I couldn’t look at the clothes in the suitcase now. I had new ones. Better ones. That’s right I’m looking at you previously drab wardrobe.

And thus concludes the first portion of How I Gambled in Las Vegas and… the next instalment will tell you how I gambled in Las Vegas and won – on customer service. And that includes Westjet, who despite the experience did an awesome job on dealing with the situation.

James Taylor Eats Babies…

… Okay well he doesn’t (that I am aware of), but he could. And he could get away with it. I’m not sure what musical avenue you walk upon, whether you’re a metal head, rocker, opera aficionado or whatever, but chances are you’ve probably heard of James Taylor. Even if you don’t actively follow his musical styling if you’ve seen the movie Cars you’ve heard at least one of his songs.

The other night my wife and I, and a friend, got sucked into the local PBS station and they happened to be playing a Carole King/James Taylor concert. I’m not an avid fan of either, but the two of them combined have more talent than at least 57 me’s, and they sucked in our attention. We couldn’t help but watch and listen.

The thing is, looking back on that time, I can’t remember a single song that James Taylor sang. For some reason when I think about that concert I associate it with marshmallows. But I can’t tell you why (other than I may still have been a bit hungry). And Ghostbusters (but I know why that is, because I can’t think of marshmallows without thinking of Ghostbusters).

I just knew that whatever he was singing about I agreed with him, I felt slightly melancholy and wistful and I too wished to be back in that time he was talking about – even though I couldn’t figure out what it was. There’s something about the way the man plays guitar and his tone of voice that just makes you want to sit an listen and maybe, if I wasn’t dead inside, to shed a tear.

For all I know James Taylor could have been singing to me about the Feast of Babies, where he gorged himself on younglings to honour his dark god Rakadoom, Lord of the Long Dark Night. I imagine, had he been doing so, the song probably sounded something like this:

Sit down a while, across from me
We’ll talk a bit, and you will be
Longing for a night such as this again;
While we talk over open flame
We’ll talk of times when we played games
Where it helped to be just a little insane.
                And time goes by And time goes by

Grab a haunch, find a cup
Sit at the table we can sup
This is no time for hesitating maybes
How can we bring about our future
Cut out the rot and leave no suture
Unless we take part in this feast of Babies
And time goes by, his time goes by
His time goes by and its come again

Chorus:
He will be here, he’s coming soon
Live in love with Rakadoom
Lord of the Long Dark Night
Eating babies, might some wrong
But it sounds good cause its in my song
Grab yourself a newborn, it’ll be alright
And time goes by… and time goes by.

They are cute with their curly cues
Now roasting on the barbecues;
That’s not rib sauce in that chalice by the way;
All it takes for veneration
Is the blood of this future generation
And soon the Rakadoom shall again hold sway
                And time goes by, and time goes by
Chorus
Repeat “As Time Goes by” (Fade)

A song like that is something you’d expect from Ozzy Osbourne but not James Taylor which is why its fairly obvious that James Taylor is the High Priest of Rakadoom and Ozzy is probably just a sixth level acolyte.

Just to reiterate, I have no evidence that James Taylor eats babies.

Your Call Is Being Held in Priority Sequence… You Are Low Priority

Dear Solitary Reader: Right now I am on hold with Shaw Digital to hook up an HD Box. I am on hold not once, but twice… simultaneously. How you ask? How is it possible for GLOM THE  CONGLOMERATE to do this to me? Tell you in a second (your curiosity is placed in priority sequence).

I have been on hold in one form or another for over an hour now. My call is being held in priority sequence. I am low priority.

Maybe its my middle child syndrome acting up but I’m starting to get a little pissed off here; I am being ignored. I hate being ignored. I can go anywhere and being ignored. I am paying these SHAW people a fair bit of money a month here, am I paying these people to ignore me?

Apparently.

Perhaps it was an omen. When I, Robot first answered the phone it told me SHAW was experiencing higher than usual call volumes. But I ignored that. Do you know why I ignored it?

I ignored it because every time I have called SHAW they are experiencing higher than usual call volumes. Every time. For SHAW high call volumes are, apparently, normal. It’s like at work when every email management sends you is marked urgent. If everything is urgent, nothing is and I can go back to playing minesweeper. If you are experiencing higher than usual call volumes all the time, SHAW, then you need to change your definition of “usual call volume.”

And how am I on hold twice simultaneously you ask? I’ll get to that (thank you for continuing to read my blog. Your curiosity is important to me).

One of the most annoying things about the SHAW hold system is the continued breaking of the barely tolerable hold music with HARRY The HAPPY TECHIE. That’s my name for him/it, not theirs.

Harry interrupts the outdated, non-copyrighted hold music with these useful little tips – YOU CAN CHECK YOUR EMAIL ON THE INTERWEB!!! Harry sounds like he’s trying to teach 86 year olds how to use email. He talks to me like I talk to my kid. My kid’s 4.

I honestly hope HARRY runs into an EMP blast at some point and get’s fried. I … hate… Harry

Okay, so how does SHAW have me on hold two times simultaneously? Well it turns out that “Activating your digital terminal is easier than ever,” so says ANGELA THE ANNOYING ANDROID in her dead voice, and all you have to do is go to their handy dandy online activation system which puts you in contact with a representative.

So I did that, but at the same time I recalled their 1-888 number… I was on hold on the phone and on the Internet – two different avenues to exhaust my patience which was now drying up as fast as spit during high noon in the Sahara.

Well I did manage to get throw on the Interweb faster than on the phone – I think I was at the 20+ minute mark for both when I got in contact with Jeff #4503.

Now this is the thing about Shaw that I’ve found: waiting to get a hold of someone there sucks but when you finally do get around to them they’re smart and they can walk you through you’re problem fairly quickly.

I reiterate: Jeff #4503 did great.

ANGELA the ANNOYING ANDROID and HARRY the HAPPY TECH… not so much.