Buying Shirts

Not Me.

I’m not sure what just happened.  I feel like a little kid who didn’t get what he wanted for Christmas.  I am home…pouting.  It shouldn’t be this way.

I had my mind set to get some new shirts, which I very much need.  There was a nice sale at Brooks Brothers and I had a gift card to burn.  So I thought I would get a few basic shirts for work.  No fancy meeting shirts…just workaday shirts.  Unfortunately the experience was so uncomfortable I left without buying anything.

I work in sales myself and so I pay attention to what is going on when I am the buyer.  I hope I never make the mistakes made by the people at Brooks Brothers.  I have to admit they are in a tough spot.  There are more sales people than customers and if you’re working on commission that can hurt.  But there has to be a better way.

The moment I walked in I was followed by overly enthusiastic sales people.  When I would get rid of one another was right on me.  It got to the point where I didn’t want to look around for fear of making eye contact with one of them.  My regular sales guy wasn’t at the store this afternoon.  Usually I will go straight to him and leave the others on the margin to watch.  That refuge was not available tonight.

All I wanted to do was shop around a little before getting the shirts I had already decided to buy.  I thought I might get a sweater, maybe a pair of pants.  But I could not shop.  If I need help, I’ll ask for it!  The result…I didn’t buy anything, not even the shirts I made a special trip to buy.

The take away here…Don’t make your client feel uncomfortable.  That might seem like an obvious point, but I am guessing it is one that is missed quite often.

This was a pretty dull post.  So I owe you a better one.  Perhaps after frolicking with Halloweeners –Halloweeners?  What do you call Halloween revellers? — I will have some good stuff to share. 

Don’t forget to go out and vote Tuesday!  And remember…Friends don’t let friends vote Republican.  (Sorry…bear with me for just three more days.)

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It Could be Worse

It certainly could be worse, but before I get to that, let me share this nice photo. 

I found a pleasant little cemetery on Old Point Douglas Road across the river from Hastings, MN.  I had to stop.

The cemetery is high on the bluff of the Mississippi River and this has to be the best time of the year to enjoy it.  Summer leaves would block much of the fantastic view that the heights offer.  Today I saw many large birds — hawks, crows, and I don’t know what else — likely migrating down the Mississippi flyway.  Very nice.  Even the sound of a pile driver off in the distance seemed just right.

I don’t know who Robert George Courrier is, but I like his monument.  Very sharp.  Tasteful.  And what a great spot to be…if you’re going to be in a cemetery.  I like to think that spirits get to wander cemeteries.  And wherever else they might want to go.

Speaking of Hastings and pile drivers, they are replacing this bridge.  Pish posh.  I like this bridge!  New bridges are too damn sleek and don’t show a lot of girders, nuts, and bolts and things.  The existing Hastings bridge which carriers Highway 61 across the Mississippi is a real bridge.  Damn cool.  New bridges?  They look like bad art you might find in a pretentious office somewhere. 

One change I would like to see with old bridges like this, however, is color.  Why these old truss bridges are always painted robin’s egg blue or battleship grey is a mystery to me.  This bridge would look spectacular if it were old barn red.

Sadly, the old bridge will come down soon.  The pile drivers are placing pilings for the new bridge over on the opposite side of the river.

Slow sales day today.  I will tell you more about it in a later post.  I can’t deal with it at the moment and I’m in the mood to grab a drink.  It amazes me, however, how many businesses think that marketing and advertising is a perfect assignment to give to the kid or the spouse or the mistress so he or she has something to do.  Today I showed up for a meeting and…well, I’ll tell more later.

Indeed tt could be worse, after all…I could be a used bike and bicycle parts dealer!  (Oh, mercy…Shuddered for moment recalling a bicycle shop owner…the gears might work on his bikes, but I’m not so sure they are working in his WD-40 infused brain.)  I like this picture, though, and I kind of think it might not be a bad gig to drive a pick up overloaded with old bikes and parts.

 Before I go, I have to remind you…friends don’t let friends vote Republican.  Now get out there and vote!  Vote Democrat!

Scary Encounter!

My three fans are clamoring for a post!  Ok, all right…here it is.  Look at who I saw campaigning in Stillwater today! 

Michele Bachmann on the Campaign Trail. Scary indeed.

Michele Bachmann!  She’s looking pretty good for someone who seems to have given up her brain for some zombie’s dinner. 

All right…I’m sorry…I’ll get back to talking sales and walks in the woods soon.  It is the political season, however, and every once in a while I cannot help myself.  And I really did see this frightening sight while out in Stillwater today…Do you see her there?  Good old Shelly B out glad handing for votes.

I do have a separate ideas and politics blog on the side, by the way, that I will open after this election.   Until then, get out and vote! 

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Contractor Day

The forecast in Minneapolis promises very unsettled weather.  A very powerful storm will bring high winds and rain.  This is a great day to pin down people who work outdoors. 

Unfortunately, already today I have had two guys back out of appointments.  We do have low barometric pressure rolling through the area, perhaps that is making people a bit unpredictable.  (I’m not sure what the excuse is other days…but I have my informed prejudices.)

I am taking the computer and camera with me today.  I will look for good things to share.

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Qualifications for Suffrage

Bear with me for a few more days.  Important elections are only a week away and I cannot help but comment on them…or on the process of conducting elections.  Plus I still have not figured out how to post to separate pages on this blog.  If any of my three or four readers cares to explain how this is

1915 American Flag.

done, please do so.  But for now…allow me to comment on Qualifications for Suffrage.

I picked up a copy of the 1915 St. Paul Dispatch and St. Paul Pioneer Press Year Book and Almanac tonight.  (Get a copy of an old year book and almanac.  Chock full of great stuff.)  I found particularly interesting a table describing the state-by-state qualifications — and restrictions — for voting back in 1915.  Oh, what an uneven path we have taken toward progress.  In some ways we as a society were much more enlightened nearly 100 years ago.  In other ways…not so much. 

Consider, for example, restrictions on voting.  Scanning the table I see that 20 of the 48 states banned “idiots” from voting and I am left wondering, where did we go wrong?  I am all for keeping idiots out of the voting booth!  In fact I would very much prefer we kept them off the ballot, too, but there is no list of qualifications for who could or could not be on a ballot.  (I presume that was a more rigorously interpreted Constitutional issue, perhaps.)  I’m not sure, however, that keeping idiots away from our elections as the rules are described in 1915 would have done much to help our country today.  Excluding exceptions like Utah, Texas, and Wyoming, most of the states prohibiting idiots from voting in 1915 still seem to be doing a better job today keeping idiots away than states that did not have that restriction in 1915.  With these few exceptions, there does seem to be a clear “red state/blue state” distinction here.  I wonder…maybe idiots can vote again in Utah, Texas, and Wyoming.  Texas for sure.

It is fun to see that some states had issues with sailors and untaxed Indians voting.  Lunatics, felons, and Chinese get a bad rap, too.  Bribers are not wanted at the polls in West Virginia back in 1915 and duelists and their abettors can stay away on election day in Michigan 95 years ago.  (No restrictions on drunks…perhaps because per capita alcohol consumption in 1913 was up to 21.09 gallons, more than double the amount just 25 years prior.  Banning drunks might have put an end to the serious business of democratic elections.)

Interestingly, while Alaska was not a state in 1915, Alaska is included in this table.  You need to be 18 (and presumably male — the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution recognizing the right of women to vote was not ratified until 1920) and a resident for one year and 30 days.  That’s it.  No restrictions.  Apparently nothing has changed there.  Clearly idiots still vote in large numbers.  Maybe even a lunatic or two.  Sailors?  Probably.  Chinamen?  Hmmm…reluctantly, I suppose, right after nontaxed Indians.

Oh!  I am just kidding!  But it is hard to imagine how some people who have in the past and currently are now on the ballot in Alaska got there AND manage to win elections.  Big families, maybe.  It is a state with a small population.  Get enough kissing cousins to the booth and you might get the deciding vote cast in your favor. 

Ok, all right…I will stop with the silly late night slap happy not-so-funny fun.  But am I all wrong?  I don’t think so, even if I am  being a bit ahistorical and flippant…maybe cynical, too…but really, we do have some idiots out there and they have the right to vote.  Which makes it all the more important that informed voters don’t stay home next Tuesday. 

Get out and vote! 

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Get Out and Vote!

Bill or Rights. It is Worth Looking at Again.

Especially if you’re a Democrat.

Did I say I was going to keep politics out of this blog?  If I did, I reserve the right to an exception. 

I just finished scanning the online version of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and took in as much of the Readers’ Comments as I could stand.  I am hopeful that the comments from the right represent a minority fringe, but I have my doubts.  I come from a state that elects Michele Bachmann, after all, and has an entire cast of like-minded bit players behind her.  We even have a knuckle head governor, Tim Pawlenty, who is who he is today because of the progressive policies of better government all of us — rich and poor alike — enjoyed thirty years ago.   Timmy has grown up, however, and moved from his roots in South St. Paul both in a real physical way, but in an even more profound and real ideological way.

And I fear that the country has done the same.  I might have been getting at that idea when I wrote about the Sock Market a few posts earlier.  Things are changing and it is hard to see how they are changing for the better.

Optimistic Public Servants. We Need More of These.

By most indices, the United States is worst off today than it was 30 years ago.  Reading the New York Times today was depressing.  We have an out of control mercenary war in Iraq and Afghanistan that is costly beyond its economic impact.  There are people running for major political offices — Senate and House of Representative seats — that don’t know enough about our government to cite any Supreme Court rulings or understand the implications of the Bill of Rights.  Our economy is in shambles due to overly-leveraged derivatives and speculative investing, but recovery has been framed in terms of government spending and taxes.  And we have a growing number of Americans willing to accept anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric as gospel even as it has no foundation or substance.

In short…I think we are becoming a nation of quitters.  The GOP has become the petulant schoolyard bully who causes trouble and blames everyone else.  No…perhaps Eddie Haskell is a better model describing today’s GOP.  All smiles and sweetness while taking credit for undeserved praise and a mischievous troublemaker when no one is paying attention.  I tell you what, it is time for people to pay attention.

Government is not inherently bad, but bad government is.  (It is called a tautology.)  We have bad government almost by design.  Grover Norquist and others, riding on Reagan’s coat tails, took the “government is the problem” deception and rallied behind that to “starve the beast,” i.e., deliberate underfunding of government.  If we cannot pay for it (because we underfund it by design), then we must cut it.  A brilliant and obvious trick that most people don’t understand, not even now. 

Government has become a problem because it has been vilified for thirty years and disemboweled because of it.  We have become a modern banana republic, an almost state-less government for the wealthy elite who have as a result siphoned off increasingly more billions and billions for private accounts and foreign investors.  Today, more than any other time since 1928 if not beyond, the wealthiest one percent hold more earnings and savings than ever before.  Meanwhile incomes for both working and middle class Americans has been flat or declining in real dollars.  We are witnessing the decline of the middle class.

So what has all of the supply-side, trickle down small government approach gotten us?  Where is the benefit that the political right wants to protect and seemingly so many people are willing to support with their votes?

We have struggling schools and bridges that literally collapse into rivers.  Issues like water quality and worker safety are getting worse, not better.  We rank somewhere around 15th globally for college graduation rates and in no indice such as science or math do U S Students rank at the top.  More and more people are facing financial hardship and people literally die because private for-profit health care rations care for the sake of earnings.  (We are willing to squander billions to kill foreigners in misguided wars, but raise a fit if we want to spend the same to save lives of our own citizens.  Something is amiss there.)

All you need is a little objective history, an understanding of economics, and some common sense to see how far we have strayed from smart governance.  Government is our collective investment in what we value today and what we want for the future.  It isn’t some black hole that steals freedom and plays Robin Hood with earnings and wealth.  Does anyone really think that kind of negative approach built the strong government institutions that enabled so much success in our past? 

And if government were such a bad thing, why do we thrive when government is strong?  We have been demonizing government for three decades now and look at where we are today compared with thirty years ago.  It isn’t good.  Not by any measure.

We had eight years of George W. Bush and two years of Barak Obama.  Impatience will kill us.  We need to support the different policies that were so enthusiastically embraced by voters two years ago.  We have, in fact, more than just George Bush’s faults to recover from.  We have an entire era of limited non-progressive thinking to respond to.  We also have a stubborn and destructive Republican Party set on nothing but failure.  Since when has it been patriotic to plot failure for our country?

Nevertheless, in two years good things have happened.  Not good enough, but better things can happen.  It is hard to see, however, how better thing can happen if we allow ourselves a return to the failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

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Ok…I’ll Settle Down

At Least One of Them is Crazy.

All right.  I’ll stop complaining about Bad Parker and his pumpkin-driving sidekick and settle down a bit.  Besides I can’t print the parking ticket (a problem with the file) and I have only three eggs. 

To relax and unwind I watched Play Misty For Me.  I like Clint Eastwood‘s shirts in this film.  Most of them.  And I think the lead actress, Jessica Walter, plays one of the very best — if not the best — pyscho-crazies ever portrayed on film.  Walter’s character isn’t necessarily scary in a slasher film sort of a way, which is how she’s often described in film reviews, but she is unbelievably annoying, to the point of embarrassment.  I feel uneasy watching her and almost feel pity. 

The film would have been a short ten minutes long if it were a little more grounded in reality, however.  Eastwood’s character, Dave, meets Walter’s, Evelyn, at a bar and after a night together it is clear that Evelyn isn’t quite right.  This film was shot in the good old days, in a better, simpler pre-restraining order era, but come on, Dave!  You quickly begin to think that Dave deserves all the trouble.  Sadly, however, his sloppy mismanagement of his girl problem brings down a house cleaner and a police sergeant.  Shameful irresponsibility on Dave’s part.  There is a long list of things a guy can do to get rid of psychopaths like Evelyn.  The first of which is stop seeing the woman!

Anyway, it worked…I am not thinking about egging poorly parked cars right now.  so put watching Play Misty For Me was a nice way to forget about Bad Parker and his sidekick.  Did I mention that I like Clint’s shirts?  Most of them.  And I do like Carmel.  And this is Carmel circa 1970.  Pre-strip mall urban sprawl and developments like Daly City were derided, not celebrated.  

One drawback to the film though.  I have Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face stuck in a loop in my head.  Over and over and over.   I can’t shake it.  So I recommend avoiding it.  The film’s love scene which uses this song is a great opportunity to go get popcorn.

Don’t worry, U No Hu, I have a lot — and I mean A LOT — of sales to make in the next couple of weeks.  I’m kind of slacking right now and have a great deal of catch up to do.  So whether you’re reading this in Nanjing, Fuzhou, or are back home in Iowa, you’ll get some sales-related material soon.  (NB:  I have started categorizing my posts, but still haven’t figured out how to post to my Asides page.)

What Are They Doing to Me…?

What the…?!  Look at this!  Another dip head parking like a moron from Nevada! 

Tow It!

And…just so you know…this puny little red car parked right up against my rear bumper, pinching me into a very tight space while at the same time taking up two spots…a little toy car taking up two spots that should be open for real cars in a crowded city!  Shoot…there are pumpkins, literally pumpkins…heavier than this little car!   Carve it up, Jack-o-Lantern!

If this keeps going we’re going to have problems.  We need no more Bad Parkers in this neighborhood.

(Scroll down for something better.)

Bad Parking

You cannot really tell from this photo — or can you? — but this is a picture of an unexcusable urban faux pas.  I don’t care if the driver of this car is Gandhi.  I don’t care if it is Mother Theresa.  I don’t care if it is Gandhi and Mother Theresa together back from saving half the planet from perdition and debauchery…whoever parked this car should be banned from the city! 

Who Has Some Eggs?

Look closely at the crime.  This moron — whoever it is — parked so he or she is eating up two parking spaces.  To make matters worse, this car with Nevada plates  has been wasting that spot for several days now.  When I am Supreme Leader, cars parked like this will be towed and destroyed.   The owner will then be imprisoned 10 years for every day that car sat in the wasted spot…on the first offense.  Second offense:  20 years for every day the car sat in two parking places.  The idea is to protect better urban dwellers from this obscene behavior in the future.  I estimate most people will not survive two offenses, however, if needed on a third offense:  35 years.  (Just to make sure.)

I would give the location of this car so all three of my readers could go find it and let their dogs pee on the fender, but I am too nice for that.  I will go down and leave a Post-It or two on the window signed from all of us better, sensible people advising the moron to go back to Nevada and to never return.

(Yes, I know…Mother Theresa and Gandhi are saving people in paradise now.  Maybe the driver is Bad Parker, Fess Parker’s stupid little brother.)

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The Economy and The Sock Market

A Guy Could Get Great Socks Here -- In the Dayton's Era.

Whatever happened to unique, stylish, and luxurious socks?  I mean the thick comfortable ones made of wool, cashmere, and blends of both.  The kind that fit well and right.  Whatever happened to those?

I am going to make a useful observation that I think will be easy for everyone to understand. 

We see economic measures like our country’s GDP and points rising and falling on stock market but how does that really relate to the quality of every day experience for most people?  While our economy was soaring several years ago, for example, a few people made out like bandits — or robber barons — while most people simple got their lives tussled up a bit in the economy’s slip stream. 

Economic growth hasn’t really “trickled down” to most people very well.  Real wages have been flat — or even declining — for most of our working and middle class while the top 1% of us have managed to hoard more than a quarter of existing wealth.  So it seems to me that judging how well we are living based on economic figures might not really be a good measure to judge by.

So I got to thinking about socks.  I like socks, especially nice socks…maybe exclusively nice socks…and it is getting harder and harder to find unique, stylish, and luxurious socks anymore.  That got me thinking about why.  What has changed?

It used to be easy for a guy willing to spend an extra few bucks to find a wide assortment of great socks.  I thought about this.  Not so long ago — say 20-25 years ago?  Certainly 30 years ago – a guy could go to a retailer like Dayton’s Department Store here in Minneapolis and bypass the Gold Toe and find racks and tables full of great socks.  In fact, not so long ago, a guy could find a great selection of all sorts of things at a place like Dayton’s ranging from relatively affordable to somewhat upscale.  There was a nice vertical element to what was offered.    In one store a person might be shopping for Docker’s khakis or Armani slacks.  And you did it in relative style and comfort.

The store itself had class and style.  Well-dressed adults were happy to see to your needs at the store.  You could go to a great little restaurant — a real restaurant — or grab a great snack.  Sales were real events and infrequent.  In short, it was a civilized way to shop and you didn’t have to be a Vanderbilt to enjoy it.

Dayton’s acquired Marshall Fields of Chicago and things changed a little, but not too much.  I could still find my socks.  But things were indeed beginning to change.  Stock became more horizontal in quality and price point.  You could choose a blue polo from Tommy Hilfiger or a blue polo from Ralph Lauren or maybe select one of the new store brands which were essentially the same thing.  Instead of local style the stores adopted more of the Marshall Fields chain uniformity, but still a notch above more discounted retailers.  Nevertheless, the layered sense of variety and the open mix of practical with luxury was disappearing. 

Some of My Favorite Socks...

Today it is hard to find my socks even at high end retailers.  Places like Neiman Marcus really don’t even stock them anymore.  Nordstrom has some, but only some.  Retailers like JC Penny’s never carried them.  Discounters like Target never have either.  You can try perusing catalogues, but good luck.

This is about more than socks, however.  In the last 30 years we have gone from taking a level of quality for granted to having it all but disappear entirely.  People might argue that we have more selection and more choice today.  True, perhaps.  But we also have more crap.  Do you really need a dozen Old Navy shirts or two or three good shirts?  Does it matter that you can choose between colors differentiated as lavender or lilac? 

The reality is, I think, that the more choices you have, the less important that choice becomes.  Sometimes choice means we don’t think about what we really want, we just take the easy route.  Think of it as a dating situation.  If you go online and see thousands of profiles on a dating site, it is pretty easy to start eliminating options.  There are so many so why not wait for the perfect one?  (You will wait forever.)  But people eliminate potential dates based on what is easiest.  No grad education?  Next profile.  Doesn’t like badminton?  Next profile.  The same thing happens with buying now.  The proliferation of choice hasn’t really made the quality of our choices better, it has only made choosing easier.

So I’m supposed to be happy choosing between different shades of tan socks.  They lay out essentially the same sock, but slightly different, so like in a dating situation, I can easily eliminate one and take home the other.  But I don’t really get what I want. 

And in the retail environment look at what has happened.  You would have a mix of incomes and classes shopping in one place together.  Everyone had the same opportunity to buy up or buy down, to see and experience and mix it up a bit.  Maybe you would buy the inexpensive loafers but dress them up with high end socks!

Now…well, we have retail stores like Macy’s that have an aesthetic that recalls 1970s era Soviet chic.  shockingly banal promotional signs in overly lit monotony offered in a perpetual sale of discounts is what you get.  “Take an extra 15% off when you use your Macy’s card!”  Every day.  And no selection. 

Stores like Dayton’s filled a niche — an accessible niche — between places like Penny’s and Sears and places like Saks and Neiman Marcus.  That niche is gone and with it the variety of quality choices that once came with it.  Now you have a growing gulf between the sameness of the shopping mall retailers and the increasingly inaccessible luxury retailers.  It is a pretty good reflection of what is happening in our country economically and socially, I think.  But as long as people have the “freedom” to choose from a never ending stream of faux variety and crap, they seem not to notice.  Or care.  We need to focus more on the value of quality of choice rather than quantity of choice.

I want better socks and all that comes with them.

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