Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

May 08 2002

Hey, Mo! I knew it! Slowly but surely, the Eng…

Hey, Mo!

I knew it! Slowly but surely, the English-speaking world is coming around to my point of view. What prompts me to say this, you ask? This week’s Queer Duck uses the word “Mo”. Ha! The next step is calling straight people “Teros”.

Luke, of all people, pointed out a handy site for webloggers who get too big for their britches. This site will tell you exactly how many websites more popular than your are out there. It makes me feel so much better to know there are literally millions of better sites than the one you’re reading right now. And you should feel good about it, too! After all, doesn’t it just make you feel all warm and special to know that you’re reading The Blog Less Read? You’re now officially hip and alternative! You can sniff at your Kottke- and Megnut-reading friends and say “Oh, are those ancient former dot-commers still around? I thought everyone had moved on. I read Poagao these days (sniff).” I should make bumper stickers.

I had a coupon left from my company for Ruby Tuesday’s, so I went there for dinner last night. The deal, as stated on the coupon in both Chinese and English, is “50% off your meal or 2 free movie tickets if you spend over NT$1,000”. I had gotten 50% off my last meal with the first coupon, so I went in, sat down, and ordered, giving the waiter the coupon. A couple of minutes he came back and said that I was required to spend NT$1,000 to get the 50% discount, which is a bit ludicrous for any party less than three or four people. I told him that the coupon was ambiguously worded and indicated that it was an either A or B choice, A being 50% off and B being the two free tickets with NT$1,000, and he went off to huddle with the rest of the staff. I was prepared to forget the whole thing, but the floor manager came up and said they’d let me use it for my paltry NT$300 meal (I usually spend around a third of that for a meal here). So that was that.

Or so I thought. I had gotten my meal and was just digging in when the big manager, the guy who doesn’t have to wear any kind of uniform, came up to me. He wasn’t happy. “We’ve decided you can come back here, but don’t you ever, ever try to pull something like this again.”

“Huh?” I was confused. “I couldn’t anyway. This is the last of my coupons I got from my company.” But he just sneered.

“Yeah, right. For all I know your ‘company’ (I could actually hear the single quotes) hands these out all the time. Just don’t try it again, because I’m not going to stand for any more of this from you.”

I was incredulous that he would treat a customer this way, even if the customer looks as shady as I do. “Look,” I told him, fishing out my O&M card. “Here’s our company telephone number. Why don’t you call it and complain? We’re right next door.” He jotted down the number but his anger seemed to dissapate somewhat when he realized that all of his bluster might have certain less-than-desirable consequences. I saw this and continued. “In fact, that’s ok, because first thing tomorrow morning I will send a company-wide email, letting everyone know about this misunderstanding. Lord knows we wouldn’t want to give out these coupons to some important client like the regional director of a company like Nike or Ericsson, only to have them embarrass themselves at your fine establishment! Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this.”

And I did. The 12-story Ogilvy Centre is home to a large portion of the employees in this area, most of whom have lunch somewhere around Warner Village, and now every one of the hundreds of potential daily customers has received a heads up on the pitfalls of dining at Ruby Tuesdays. It would be unfortunate if this resulted in a noticable drop in their patronage.

Not. Ain’t I a stinker?

posted by Poagao at 7:36 am  

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