In the spirit of the election, Woot is offering up two shirts today: one for the Bleeding Heart Liberal, another for the Conservative Wingnut. Get yours for $10 before they sell out!

In this current economic climate, it looks like the layaway concept is making a comeback.

(Photo: FredoAlvarez [flickr])

I stopped in at the Target in Columbia Heights the other day and noticed that the store is using Domo Kun in its Halloween department. I was hoping they might have some figurines or something but alas, it wasn’t to be.

Target – often pronounced “tar-gay” or “tar-zhay” by some friends of mine with tongue firmly planted in cheek – opened ahead of schedule at the DC USA complex. The store’s arrival in the Nation’s Capital proper was announced a few years ago, and finally opened it’s doors on March 5 – four days earlier than originally announced. Despite their prevalence in the suburbs, big box stores like Target are few and far between when compared to locally-owned mom and pop shops.

Naturally, there is no shortage of blog posts related to the chain’s new location. DCist offered a photo spread of the store the day it opened. [Disclosure: I also write for DCist.] The CityPaper’s City Desk blog seemed to obsess over various aspects about the store for several days before obsessing over the soon-to-be-former governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer. And Prince of Petworth unwittingly helped spread a rumor about crime at the new Target. (Crime in D.C.?! I’m shocked!)

Brian offered his self-professed obligatory post on the new Target, and I found this tidbit worth commenting on:

[... I]t looked like they had staff taking care of cleaning duties as well as random stock, nearly every employee I passed asked if they could help me find anything and about 50% of those said good morning and asked how I was doing. It was an interesting slap in the face to the typical DC brand of customer service, so it makes me think that they’ve been cracking down to make sure customers want to come back.

I hope that’s really the case, but the cynic retail employee in me says otherwise.

It’s been my experience that when a chain business opens a new location, the opening staff is just that – there for the opening. A good chunk of the employees are often new hires from the local area, but often there will be a portion of experienced and passionate staff (Sometimes a little too passionate.) there to train the newbies to follow in their footsteps. They come from all levels, from the lowliest grunts to the highest executives.

This was a common practice for an entertainment chain I once worked for many years ago. Flyers were posted in the back of the house to announce new location openings and ask team members to sign up to be part of the “opening team.” Those who were picked went out to the new location for a month to help set things up and train new hires.

When Vapiano opened it’s first D.C. location, nearly everyone I encountered there had a German accent. They were obviously not local; now, just about everyone who works there is. (Vapiano is a German-owned Italian restaurant.) I went to the Cici’s Pizza location in Rockville not long after it opened, and the counter staff was remarkably cheerful. They shouted, “Welcome to Cici’s!” whenever someone entered. That doesn’t happen so much anymore.

Good customer service is a rarity these days. Perhaps Brian’s experience at the new Target will be the norm for years to come. Only then will it truly be a slap in the face to the typical D.C. brand of customer service. It’s one thing to get the ball rolling; it’s another to keep it from stopping.

What could happen when an online shopping site goes haywire. (Warning: long load time.)

Whole Foods supermarkets plan to eliminate plastic bags at their stores by Earth Day, April 22, 2008. The initiative is called Bring Your Own Bag and encourages its shoppers to re-use whatever bags or other carriage vessels they have on hand. It kinda surprises me they didn’t do it sooner.

I’m guessing the fine people at Balducci’s have never heard “The Lonely Jew On Christmas ¹” from the eponymous “South Park” episode. Apparently, one of their stores has a delicious item on sale for Chanukah — HAM.

(via defenestrate)

¹ To quote the song: “Instead of eating ham / I get to eat Kosher latkes….”

These are my links for 22 Jun through 25 Jun:

• pee and poo plush dolls * kiss & bajs | scandinavian details - The pee & poo set makes a fun, light-hearted tool for introducing your child to potty training (SSSH. It even makes a great gift for hard-to-please adults.)
• A Long Line for a Shorter Wait at the Supermarket (New York Times) - A relative newcomer to Manhattan is trying to teach the locals a new rule of living: the longer the line, the shorter the wait.
• Metroblogging DC: Maybe photography IS a crime - Wayan, Carl, myself and the rest of the DC Metblogs crew invite you out for a photo outing on what seems like the best day to do this: July 4th.
• Uncovering America: Fighting for Acceptance - Special Reports from CNN.com - From the basic desires for understanding to the complex issues of adoption and marriage, the LGBT community faces an array of challenges.
• If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers - Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion.
• Second Life Without Sex Would Be a Sad Life, Indeed - There’s nothing virtual about the anxiety felt by Second Life residents these days.
• How Dumb Can a “Wizard” Get? - How can setting up a cell phone get that complicated?
• Machinist: Tech Blog, Tech News, Technology Articles - Salon - “No drop of milk oozes from the Apple teat without a crowd of journalists gathering to swallow it up,” writes Jack Shafer, Slate’s ever-clever media critic, in a piece launching his pre-iPhone “Apple Suck-Up Watch.” Shafer is the sort who reaches for his

These are my links for 18 Jun:

• Daily Blog Tips - You don?t need to know much about SEO to realize links are the golden road to blog promotion.
• Fluther: Tap the Collective - A new twist on social question and answer sites.
• 25 Web Sites to Watch - The Internet is evolving in new and inventive ways thanks to mashups that pull data from all over the Web and to AJAX-based interfaces that give sites the same degree of interactivity and responsiveness that desktop apps possess.
• The great iPhone hunt of 2007 | CNET News.com - Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently gave free advice to a columnist asking how to get an iPhone when they go on sale: head to an AT&T store, Jobs suggested, rather than Apple’s own retail outlets.
• Mozilla exec calls Apple’s Safari plan ‘duopolistic’ - Mozilla’s chief operating officer, John Lilly, is calling Steve Jobs’ plans for building Safari’s market share “out of date” and “duopolistic.”
• Dell apologizes for remove-this-blog-post-or-else nastygram | Tech news blog - CNET News.com - A blog post at Consumerist.com offering tips on buying from Dell drew a nasty cease-and-desist letter from the company’s attorney and then, in quick succession, a chastened apology from a Dell manager.
• Microwave popcorn warning memo - Unedited memo sent out to City of Seattle employees.
• 15 Best Game Show Hosts - TIME Magazine ranks 15 best game show hosts; Bob Barker comes out on top.

These are my links for 29 May:

• Playground Fun - Worse Than Failure - “Either I missed out on a lot as a kid, or the playgrounds here in Belgium are a LOT more fun than the ones back home.”
• Anti-war mom Cindy Sheehan gives up her protest - Sheehan: My son “did indeed die for nothing”
• Real-Life Transforming Optimus Prime Costume - It’s a real costume?there’s actually a man inside?that transforms from robot to truck mode without making the wearer bend his spine in three different directions.
• Apple?s Lesson for Sony?s Stores: Just Connect - New York Times - Retail is supposed to be hard. Apple has made it seem ridiculously easy. And yet it must be harder than it appears, or why hasn?t the Windows side of the personal computer business figured it out?

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