Awesome is: being one of the urban Northeastern elite.

[Ignatius]

I usually just memorized the numbers and gave 'em to people all willy-nilly. If people sign up for a reward card, they should get that reward without rejiggering their spam settings and remembering to print something every time they might feel like going to the mall. Plus who wants to use up all that paper for, what, 14 digits? As an employee, though, it's kind of frustrating when the coupons save you more money than the employee discount.

[davy]

Having worked at Borders, I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it can save regular shoppers quite a bit, but on the other hand, 40% off at Borders is about regular price on Amazon. For DVDs, 40% off the Borders price is still more expensive than Amazon. Also, it leads to all sorts of crooked dealings with customers. Someone asks if we have any coupons. Maybe they say they forgot to check their e-mail. Employees are told to lie to these people or risk getting fired.

Also, it goes without saying that the primary reason for trying to sign as many people up for Borders Rewards card as possible is so that Borders can flood their inboxes with thrice-weekly advertisements. It made me a little sick every time I gave someone a BR card knowing that I was serving as a cog in a corporate marketing campaign.

And they would have to give out 80% off coupons for me to start buying at Borders instead of the excellent used book store across the street. For the kind of stuff I'm usually looking for, used book stores have much better selection than Borders too.

I mean, if all I cared about were prices, I'd buy everything off Amazon, no question. But sometimes it's nice to take my kid into the bookstore and let him pick something out. Or make an impulse purchase while I'm browsing the tables. If 3 emails a week (more like 1 a week for me) is what it takes for me to save $5 to $10 on that book (a savings that I can duplicate pretty much EVERY time I go to Borders, since the coupons are so plentiful), then I am definitely cool with that.

Also, with new hardcovers (which I'll buy right away for certain authors), 40%-off at Borders is probably a little better than Amazon, and then you have to factor in shipping and wait time. So it's still a good deal.

When I worked at Borders, it was like Iggy said. If somebody inquired about coupons and had a Borders card, I just typed in the number for them. Made them happy, made me happy, and it wasn't even discouraged by management. Course, I'd have done it anyway.

[RavingLunatic]

Yeah, I normally did the number thing too, but then they started tightening the screws and cracking down, you could no longer just do that willy-nilly. They track your numbers, and we had some people taken to task for using too many coupons and/or handing out coupons. And from what I gathered from the Borders employee livejournal site, our management was much more generous than other stores'. Even before I started working there, Borders had become a much less desirable place to work, and then it got a lot worse the last next couple years before I left.

[davy]

Whenever I want to redeem a Borders coupon, I always just punch the SKU # into my phone and read it back to the cashier. I don't have a printer, so I never have a paper coupon. I doubt I'm the only customer who does it this way. How could management keep numbers on something like that?

[RavingLunatic]

They've got your register records, since you have to put your four-digit number in before every transaction. Just like they track your Borders Rewards sign-ups, they track your coupon use and a bunch of other stuff. It doesn't matter whether you scan a coupon or type in the number.

The worst, though, was when they started asking everybody, practically every hour, how many "recommends" you had the previous hour. They actually gave us scorecards to fill out how many recommends, "make book" sells, Rewards card sign-ups, and book drive items we sold. I can't remember if we've ever discussed the whole "make book" fiasco here before, but that was the worst of all. A lot of people got fired or quit because of that program, though not at our store. Thankfully, the farce was terminated along with CEO Ron Marshall in January.

[davy]

The worst I ever had to deal with was the constant push for more and more Rewards cards. It got to where I  was signing up imaginary people to meet quotas. That sucked. When we eventually got a new manager, he eased up on that, though.

[Ignatius]

I quit during the make book thing. They trimmed my hours until I went through a stretch of two weeks where was given a single six-hour Friday night shift. A kid who'd been hired only a few weeks prior, but had better numbers than me on make books took most of my shifts. It's possible that they cut my hours for some other reason, but they didn't say why. Managers would point out that the best way to make sure you kept your job was to sell more titles than your fellow employees.

I was pretty pissed - I'd worked in retail for 7 years by then, and I was pretty good at it. I didn't like that so much of my evaluation was predicated on a single, seemingly arbitrary number. This must mean I would make a bad salesman.

Maybe the Rewards card thing wasn't a big deal at my store, but I found that I did ok just by explaining the program to people who didn't have one. As you've demonstrated above, people like 40% off coupons.

[davy]

I was pretty pissed - I'd worked in retail for 7 years by then, and I was pretty good at it. I didn't like that so much of my evaluation was predicated on a single, seemingly arbitrary number. This must mean I would make a bad salesman.

Yes, it probably does. But please believe me when I say: I mean that as a compliment.

[morgan]

Started teaching a new class tonight -- it went pretty well! I've only got four students, which is really nice. I think it will be successful! I really hope that they learn a lot and walk away from the course feeling satisfied! I've got 28 hours to fit in 184 hours worth of work (accelerated classes -- oof). This should get me back in shape for my TA position that starts in a month. Pretty excited!

[RavingLunatic]

I was pretty pissed - I'd worked in retail for 7 years by then, and I was pretty good at it. I didn't like that so much of my evaluation was predicated on a single, seemingly arbitrary number. This must mean I would make a bad salesman.

Yes, it probably does. But please believe me when I say: I mean that as a compliment.

Yeah, definitely. There are some things you just shouldn't want to be good at, and salesman/marketer is near the top of that list, somewhere close to Congressman and drug trafficker.

[davy]

I had the bad habit of allowing my customers to take their time. They appreciated it more than my supervisors did.

[RavingLunatic]

How could you sleep at night knowing you hampered corporate profit-making like that, Davy?

[davy]

It wasn't easy.

One of my managers once told me during an employee evaluation that he'd wanted to "slap the shit out of [me]" after I questioned a new shipping policy in front of my coworkers at a meeting.

[mixed cats]

My local Borders gives me the creeps, but for some reason I have no beef with B&N. I have cards for both. Borders has better real rewards and is free, but my entire family uses my B&N card, so my grandmother somehow usually ends up renewing it for me, and I still get all the coupons in the mail/email/whatever.

Yesterday we went outside and had batting practice with a cabbage. I don't know why. It was extremely satisfying, though.

[RavingLunatic]

Yesterday we went outside and had batting practice with a cabbage. I don't know why. It was extremely satisfying, though.

I bet I know why: it is extremely satisfying.

Once when I was 11, our little league team had a post-season family softball game/cookout, and one of the parents painted a grapefruit white and surreptitiously switched it with the game ball when I was batting. I swung and the thing exploded all over me. Good times.

[peacocks]

Awesome is having your best friend forever move to your town after not living near each other for 2 years, getting the cutest kitty in the world and who is very skilled in the art of cuddling, and getting a cheap phone that is fancier AND cheaper than your old phone- all in ONE DAY!

Awesome also is meeting and talking briefly to a cute guy, walking away and coming back to hear that cute guy thought you were way cute too.  Probably never going to see him again but still, what an ego boost.

[jebreject]

I decided to take the day off tomorrow. This makes me happy.

[Nick Ink]

Ellie just beat me at chess for the first time. 

I made a stupid mistake and lost my Queen early on, but she did well to finish me off.

[hannah]

Nice! If you don't mind me asking—how old are your kids now, Nick? I have lost track of time...

[Nick Ink]

Nice! If you don't mind me asking—how old are your kids now, Nick? I have lost track of time...

Ellie's 7 - She only learnt chess recently, I think we've played about 20 games. I'm a pretty bad chess player unfortunately.

edit: Also, to answer your question, Gracie is 4!

[davy]

I want so badly to be good at chess, but I'm missing all the necessary tools.

[Bernard]

Same here. I am more lousy at chess than anybody who is physically capable of moving the pieces should be.

[davy]

It's the necessity of planning ahead that dooms me.

[G.C.R]

I don't play it. My mother and I both had the experience of being 18 and going to hang out with our boyfriends in their flats on Aro Street, only frequently to be ignored at the expense of vital, "this r serious mens biznez" chess games that they were having with their flatmates. When you've been cock-blocked (is there a feminine for that?) by a chess games, you really lose the desire to play it very much.

[Anne the Man]

I've had the same thing with guys playing pool. Chess, however, I am not bad at. There's still bits of the forward planning I find pretty hard, but I like chess. I want to go sit in a cafe with my ragged notebook and copy of Howl in my pocket wearing a beret and play chess with someone.