Thanksgiving: Day 6

Vincent Price's Thanksgiving Special

Alias Mr. Sanders

It's a process

The character of "Racist" Bannon in the 1964 animated Johnny Quest adventure series was quickly re-imagined when he didn't scale well with focus groups.

See the original Johnny Quest title sequence here and the fantastic stop-motion homage here.

Checkstand Etiquette

This post exists only as a direct result of a customer completely losing their mind and embarking on a screaming tirade of threats, violence. libel and slander. What followed was a multi-week campaign of attacks via Twitter and Yelp (using sock-puppets or drafting others to assist) and harassing phone calls to the job site and corporate offices. All from one customer that was miffed the customers in from of him did not let him enter a new line ahead of the when an additional check stand became available. I nearly lost my job (or at the least I was in peril of a financially disastrous demotion) due to the unhinged attacks of a customer who acted like a spoiled brat. I received the ire of the customer because I did not step in and escort him to he front of the line. This happens more than one would think.

Unfortunately, businesses typically side with the customer no matter how deranged the complaint appears. This worry of being fired for "rudeness" is something grifters and revenge-minded for a perceived slight often use to their advantage, playing on the employees very-real concerns of what might happen if a customer doesn't get their way and even if they do, the worker doesn't display the right amount of obeisance or display that they don't know their place. Luckily for me, there was video recording the event.

To function smoothly our modern society relies on an agreed upon social contract to maintain peace and cooperate successfully among its members. Created through centuries of trial and error the social contract is a tenuous yet mutually agreed upon rules of expected behavior that allows strangers to get along in unfamiliar social situations. Sometimes that contract breaks down and chaos ensues, as anyone who has been in a major city during an extended power outage, cut off in traffic in Maryland, passed wind in an elevator or witnessed a Black Friday sale at a mall can attest.

Specifically and for the purposes of this study, the social contract often breaks down at the first moment when there are long lines of people waiting in a retail establishment and an additional cash register opens. Unfortunate recent events in our country have made it imperative that some people are in need of a refresher course on checkstand etiquette and the proper way to behave in a public retail environment.

Waiting in long lines in stores is unpleasant and I can sympathize. I would really like to get back that ten minutes of my life I lost when I was five people in queue behind the couple who insisted that they can buy DVDs with their WIC checks since they were purchasing children's movies. But the reactions by some waiting in line seems to be relative in nature. Oddly, the same person who shouts and screeches about a delay, throws a tantrum and threatens or acts with violence for waiting in line to pay for groceries is conversely just a few minutes later calm, patient and even pleased to be waiting in a long queue to rent a movie from an automated kiosk. I've personally witnessed an enraged customer upset over a harried coffee shop barista that are then placidly content to wait in a long checkout line at a big box discount store. They shockingly display such a personality change that it leads me to think they were replaced by a duplicate from an alien pod somewhere between the condiments section and the fifty-pack of toilet paper.

It should be obvious that if a retail establishment does not have enough cashiers to serve the number of customers present it is not because no one cares or receives some sort of delight in alienating the main source of income. Rather it is because that is all the people they have dedicated to the checkstands. Most stores rely on personnel from the other departments to fill in as needed. Depending on the type of store employees from the children's department, jewelry counter, dairy or meat sections will back fill and assist the front end with helping customers. Wander a major retail clothing store and witness that register after register and department after department is vacant of employees. This is is due to the staff being pulled in multiple directions. Is the shelf that displays your favorite shirt empty and no one is around to help? This is probably because the person responsible for stocking the shirts has been cashiering in the shoe department for the last four hours. 

The degree to which an employee is available to immediately assist is often subject to reasonable availability. Breaks, lunches and some other duties are mandated by State and Federal laws and company policies. Employees can and have been terminated from their jobs for the simple act of delaying their scheduled meal break to assist a customer or trying to finish a task in a timely manner. While unfortunate for the employee this is as much to protect the store from future litigation and spurious labor claims as much as protecting the rights of the worker.

So here is a step-by-step refresher course for both retail employees and customers on the proper checkstand etiquette for when an additional register opens. Feel free to print it and hand it out to those who are most in need of it.

CHECKSTAND ETIQUETTE

Figure 1: This diagram is representative of a typical checkstand in almost any retail establishment. In this example Register #1 is open and populated by a cashier. There are four customers waiting. The common wisdom states that if there are three or more customers in a line then a additional register should be populated to assist in processing waiting orders.

Figure 2: When checkstand #2 opens it is policy and common sense for the cashier to call over, if they should so choose, the next persons waiting in line. That is, the customers who have been waiting the longest in a line have the right of first refusal to move to the other register. In this example Customers #2 and #3 move to checkstand #2 allowing the Customer #4 to move up in the checkstand #1 queue. This way, all waiting customers are expedited through the lines efficiently. Basically, everybody wins.

Figure 3: The main drawback to the common sense application of the social contract as it relates to checkstand etiquette are the facts that politeness in our society is nearly extinct and "common sense is so rare it is a super power". Often, as in the example as diagrammed in Figure #3, the last customer in the line, who by virtue of arriving last and therefore has been in line the least amount of time, jumps ahead of the customers who have waited the longest. This is rude and violates basic checkstand etiquette and breaks the social contract.

The cashier is put in a difficult situation when this occurs. If the cashier points out that the other customers should be helped ahead of them they are typically berated by the line jumper. What also frequently happens is that if the cashier, seeking to avoid confrontation, does not stop the last customer from jumping the line the other customers take out their frustration on the employee in much the same manner. Rarely do the customers directly confront each other. Wisely, perhaps, though cowardly, merely because the employee is perceived as a safer and more vetted target for ire and is unlikely to react with violence as an unknown quantity, whereas a customer off the street purchasing an energy drink just might.

Figure 4: This diagram represents the typical temper tantrum a customer indulges in when they can't be first in line, even when they were the last to arrive on the scene. The product they were attempting to purchase (and would have if they had a little patience) is often thrown at the cashier, down the register aisle or at a display. The proper course of action would be for the customer to wait, return at a more opportune time or decide to take their business elsewhere, handing the product to the cashier so it can be restocked to prevent damage or spoilage. Unfortunately the tantrum is sometimes followed by a Yelp-ing Twitter-rage of dissembling and distortions motivated by revenge that can and has escalated into concerted real world and online harassment campaigns, bullying, slander and libelous acts. This is an extreme example though not all that uncommon and is familiar to many Marketing, Security and Human Resources departments.

Any person that thinks companies only track sales are kidding themselves. Blogs, forums and all kinds of media sites are browsed, sifted through and monitored. It is not an exaggeration to state that seemingly untouchable companies have been brought down by a negative yet truthful campaign. A sudden torrent of opinions (even seemingly coming from different people over an extended period of time are sometimes sock puppets created to cause problems for an individual or company) is analyzed with great effectiveness and the revenge motivated, spurious, harmful, libelous, slanderous and exaggerated claims are readily evaluated for what they are. Companies spend millions, if not billions, annually on marketing research and analysis.

So let's clarify a few things clear for those people who feel too self-entitled to wait their turn and are caught up in the personal horrors of their First World problems:

1. It is not poor customer service to first assist those who arrived before you.
2. It is not rude on the part of the employee to guide into the newly opened  checkstand customers who have been waiting the longest.
3. Calls for the employee to be fired for acting according to common politeness are ridiculous.
4. Threats, violence and acting out will not be tolerated, so don't be surprised if you are asked to leave and not return. Workplace violence is a concern and threats are taken seriously.
5. Just about all stores have video cameras and all manner of claims are easily investigated so tell the truth.
6. Cyber-bullying, online personal attacks, harassment campaigns and libelous tales of how terribly you were treated could be actionable by a company and employees that may suffer a loss of reputation and income due to statements that are not factual.
7. A threat to "never shop there again" is...Well...No threat at all. Few establishments encourage the repeat business of the tantrum-throwing customer.
8. Don't be a jerk.

For your convenience here is the entire 4-part Checkstand Etiquette worksheet suitable for framing, inclusion in a PowerPoint presentation or just for shoving into the faces of enraged a-holes: Checkstand Etiquette slides from LTMS.

Are we sure it's tobacco she's smoking?

Not making the news the other day is that the Old Gold Tobacco-Lovin' USO Hostess also had her day before a judge, appearing in court immediately after Julian Assange made his famous showing. Since cameras were not allowed in the courtroom a sketch artist was present to record the events. While Julian was sketched variously as being dignified or about to power-up and beat an invading alien superman to death, Old Goldie should have requested a different artist. Based on the art provided that faithfully carried over her advertising persona she is clearly in for a rough time convincing a jury of her peers she hasn't done anything wrong.

You can't be too careful

Following with interest the news that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been issued a warrant for his arrest by Swedish authorities. I'm not ready to state whether he has been framed, set up, or is guilty but I am going to pay attention to the story. There are only a few people who know what really happened and we have to wait for the evidence to determine who is guilty and who is innocent.

This story has international implications. Assange is notoriously difficult to locate as he is reported to never stay in the same place more than one night. Dangerous men have dangerous enemies and I'm sure the various threats against Assange are very real. There is no telling what region he may visit in his travels. He is a ghost. He could very well be hiding in a motel in New York, Britain, Berlin, Hong Kong or even San Diego.

So just to be on the safe side I'm going to wear a t-shirt with the slogan NOT JULIAN ASSANGE on it whenever I venture out of my home. I'd hate to get tasered by cops when on the way to the mall mistakenly identifying me as Mr. Assange. This is something everyone should be concerned about. Furthermore, my wife is visiting relatives in hated Maryland soon so I have to be ready when I go to the airport to see her off. The t-shirt will divert suspicion from me being Mr. Assange and ensure that there will not occur a case of mistaken identity when I escort my wife to the TSA checkpoint. Look what happened to Frank Morris. If he was wearing one of these T-shirts he'd still be a free man today.

Little Evil Women

"Good! Bless you! Now, as there's nothing like `taking time by the fetlock', as Winkle characteristically observes, allow me to present the new member." And, to the dismay of the rest of the club, Jo threw open the door of the closet, and displayed Laurie sitting on a rag bag, dead by her hand. Blood was everywhere and stained the deceased man's fine attire.

"You rogue! You traitor! Jo, how could you?" cried the three girls, as Snodgrass the Pimp pulled the body from the closet, and producing both a bag of lye and a large oilcloth tarpaulin, installed him in a jiffy.

"I'm not a bad person. I'm a real good person." Said Jo. "People always look down their noses at hookers. Never give you a chance, because they think you took the easy way out, when no one could imagine the willpower it took to do what we do. Walking the streets, night after night, taking the hits and still getting back up. I wish there was a way that people can forgive you for something about this, you know. But they can't. They can't, man. So I gonna die... Hey Meg, Beth and Amy, I'll never forget you. Good bye, babies. Bye babies."

"Good bye, Jo!" Chorused the three sisters.

Little Evil Women by Louisa May Alcott (1869).

Not shown: Nursing bottle filled with cola

A long time ago someone at Disney had the great idea that old American folk tales done in an animated style would make a great movie. The result was the 1946 live action and animated film Song of the South. Unfortunately, Hollywood and America of the 1940s was hardly a positive example of racial sensitivity and the execution of the Uncle Remus tales the film was based upon was, in hindsight, terribly managed. The main and wholly accurate complaints with the film is the depiction of African slaves as being happy, content and grateful for their subjugation. Caricatures that were fashionable and acceptable in popular entertainment of the era are numerous. Because of the way people were depicted and in spite of any artistic merits the film may contain it has not been fully released for the home audience in the intervening decades and only appears in the United States in heavily edited versions.

One of the more popular sequences was The Tar Baby, a tale in which the character of Brer Rabbit escapes from predators using reverse-psychology. For the uninitiated and anyone who grew up outside of the South after 1970 the term "Tar Baby" is a pejorative in relation to African-Americans. As a child in the late 60s watching this film in the drive-in I had no idea that the sticky trap represented anything other than what it appeared to be. In the Disney universe of walking, talking intelligent animals I didn't see anything unusual with Brer Rabbit engaging an inanimate object in conversation and expecting a reply. It is unlikely that the creators and audiences of the 40s thought the same and knew exactly what the sticky trap was supposed to represent, which is only one of the reasons the film was eventually pulled from syndication.

The marketing and exposure for some some sequences continued unabated. Stripped away from negative associations the fun and bouncy song Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah has regularly appeared in music collections and on various video releases since it was originally issued. Yet the mistakes of the past had a way of repeating into more contemporary times in spite of the decisions to suppress the less enlightened and insulting aspects of the film.

In 1958 Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies #8, under the Dell imprint, published a recipe for a "Tar Baby" treat as a one page fun feature. The snack, which kids could make at home or (I shudder to think) school, was a marshmallow creation covered with dark chocolate that resembles the sticky trap that Brer Rabbit ran afoul of in the Song of the South feature. In 1946 sheer ignorance and marketing inertia could explain the promotion of stereotyped caricatures of African-Americans though it would have been a little harder to justify in 1958. It could only have been utter stupidity when the decision was made to include the one-page recipe feature and reprint it in 1975 in Walt Disney's Showcase #28. By the 1970s everyone involved should have known better.

In the interest of parity I changed the recipe to make it more representative of the contemporary South and included it in this post, which you can click on to make double-wide size for easy viewing. For those who prefer the "warts and all" approach to history the original can be viewed here.

Note for people with IQ equal to their shoe size: Original recipe for educational purposes only. Please do not print out and share with your Cousin-Spouses, pals in the unemployment line or distribute at Sunday school gatherings.

Fun and Games

A little backstory.

Must See TV

Submitted for your approval are two ultra-rare issues of television programming magazines featuring the infamous teleplay Spiders Come Back, initially broadcast back in February of 1964 on the syndicated thriller anthology series Mysterious. The episode so horrified the audiences of the day that the U.S. Government itself took an unusual step and interceded, forcing the network to cancel the show or face the possible loss of their broadcasting licenses. Originally scheduled to be shown nationwide, after the east coast debut the show was preempted and not broadcast to the rest of the network time zones. In the annals of broadcast history, the intervention of the government over the content of what would be by today's standards a typical horror show is comparable to the censorship of the classic Judgment at Nuremberg, when the sponsor, a maker of gas kitchen ovens, successfully lobbied to have any reference to 'gassing' removed from the script.

As the new hostess of Mysterious, Hayley Mills gave introductory and epilogue framing sequences to teleplays, similar to those offered by Boris Karloff as the host of Thriller and Alfred Hitchcock for his part in The Alfred Hitchcock Mysteries. The producers of Mysterious also made use of the Hitchcock model, in which the host would appear for a short epilogue to assure audiences (and the censors) that the antagonist did indeed pay for their crimes, even though the actual feature usually ended with the evil-doer triumphant. The use of this device in Mysterious however did nothing to mollify the government censors. They acted swiftly to ensure Spiders Come Back and the then shocking themes of murder, abortion, homosexuality, adultery and the re-animated dead would never be again broadcast. It was possible that hostess Hayley Mills, though a fine and talented actress, was unable to convey the same air of gravitas when winding up a tale as her fellow hosts Karloff and Hitchcock so effortlessly conveyed. Disappointed with the cancellation of Mysterious, Hayley would leave television to star in several blockbuster films for Disney, proving the adage that the best revenge is to live well. A fine epilogue of her own story.

Thirteen - The Movie (Official Comic Book Adapation)

Once a regular, though often troubled presence in the marketplace, the Dell comic book company stuttered through a few short-lived and ultimately futile revivals before finally surrendering to the inevitable and being consigned to the dusty stacks of publishing history.

Dell published a few original series, some good and some just silly or a waste of paper and ink. They hit the ball out of the freaking park with a couple titles but were mostly known for quick and dirty adaptations of television series. There were few 60s and 70s television series that didn't get a Dell treatment. Like most of their titles the book would start out strong but would soon feature repeated covers and content as the sales figures didn't support investing in new material. Once a cover and interior content was reprinted, usually with a marked decline in the coloring process, it meant the book had been canceled.

Dell as a company has made a few attempts over the years to re-enter the market, mostly by re-imagining an old book or series. But in the fickle direct market economy the attempts were usually financially disastrous. After limping along through the 1990s, Dell would eventually only exist as the small company that printed the instructional illustration booklets that are packed inside new canisters of tear gas used by law enforcement. One of the more ill-fated, though intriguing, attempts to revive the Dell line came in the year 2003.

Several years before the Archie company would experiment with altering the fabled house art style of the Riverdale gang that had endured virtually unchanged since the 1950s, Dell made a similar attempt with a property of their own. The small publishing house that had become Dell attempted to make an obscure teen comedy comic book series relevant by merging it with the box office smash teen drama Thirteen.

While the Dell company was in familiar territory by adapting a film property, the choice of cinema source material was raw, adult-oriented and full of situations that the comic book malt shop and bobby-sox gang of the 1950s never experienced except as subtext comic book fans would itemize, obsess and analyze many decades later. Of the four issues planned to bring the film to the printed page only one saw print. The following three issues were canceled due to low sales on the first issue. The remaining issues exist only as solicits in a few industry trade magazines and a cover gallery on the GCD.

The problems with the choice of Thirteen to relaunch the Dell company were many. Parents with fond memories of the Dell comics of their own youth were horrified when they themselves read the first issue, presumably long after their own child had it in their possession for several days. The book was returned by retailers in numbers not seen since Marvel published Void Indigo. Not only was the new, contemporary Thirteen out of place in the magazine rack of the local grocery store the company had no idea how to market what could have been a valid adaptation of the controversial movie. Instead of dealing with a niche demographic and garnering small though respectable and steady sales as a trade collection, the book was dumped as a monthly onto an open market that had no idea how to sell it. Dell took a risk and failed. What could have been an interesting effort on the part of Dell to make a come back did not work and it was apparent that the lack of a clear marketing strategy was what closed the Dell shop for good.

Speculators

Here's the first one.

That place was just full of hippies anyways

From Pizzazz Magazine (June 1978).

On a routine shopping expedition

Thanks to the informative blog The Consumerist, recent media attention has ensured that in most cases the unfortunately designed t-shirts bearing the Nazi SS Totenkopf image have been removed from store shelves or the database is flagged to not allow the sale of the item. Flagging a product is a common practice in the industry and it is most helpful during a recall. In many cases the vendor is responsible for the removal, replacement or inspecting to allow the sale of an item. Recalls of products are often via lot numbers and the vendor will inspect the product to ensure it is safe for sale and not a part of the recall. Flagging the product in the computer helps ensure that any product not removed or inspected doesn't make it into someone' s meal or dresser drawer.

FYI: If while shopping an item comes up that is "not for sale" don't allow the cashier to go around the system by hand-entering the price, especially if it is a food item. This flag would be different than a product not in the database. Due to shipping schedules, almost daily we get products at our store that are sent to us by vendors for sale that are not in the computers and it takes a few days for our systems to synchronize.

While on a recent trip to the local chain store I tried to get one of the Totenkopf shirts for myself (for culturally historical purposes, I assure you) but it was revealed that the shirts with the inappropriate Nazi symbol were removed.

To my surprise, however, I found several stacks of alternate shirts featuring a mash-up of the SS symbol and a Land of the Lost character, the Sleestak.


There were plenty of these "Totenslee" t-shirts for sale of various sizes and they were not restricted from sale. In response to my questions the clerk informed me that they still had many cases in the back to be stocked. I was delighted to see a t-shirt featuring my namesake that wasn't obviously connected to skateboarding. The design is still derivative of the Totenkopf image but it's saving grace is that it is now more of a humorous pop-culture reference and less of one that has it's roots in genocide and racism. Because of that difference I picked up a few, one to wear and a couple more to seal in large baggies for the speculator market.

I imagine that it would be any day now that because of the similarity to the Nazi iconography that these shirts will also get yanked from the stores. I hear the mouse-clicks of an on-line auction coming!