colour me zen?

Someone in my social media circle questioned the current infatuation with ‘adult’ colouring books – not ‘adult’ as in people without their clothes, but 'adult' as in more sophisticated drawings than rounded cartoon bears and their cheerful companions. It’s a fad that seemed to take over the Christmas shopping list quite quickly. I bought one for a kid straddling that space between childhood and tween-dom - hoping it would somehow fit this awkward age, another friend received one from her friend. The art supply store had an entire shelf devoted to these bound books filled with intricate designs, marketed as meditative. I’m not certain I fully understand the meditative angle, but based on the discussion I ended up having buying that particular present, I guess other people question this marketing angle too.

Basically the discussion had in line was whether or not artsy people needed a colouring book. I, and apparently this man’s wife too, argued that for people who wanted to feel creative but maybe didn’t know how to go about it, for them, this was a place to filter that energy and have an outlet. I mean isn’t this the 2010’s version of the velvet poster art we all did back in the *cough day?!

Being a little crafty already I feel like I have an outlet for the part of me that occasionally wants to make something. I sew, I tinker with beads, I dance, I write this blog, I can draw/paint reasonably but honestly that doesn’t come so naturally. In a weird twist the first time I noticed an ‘adult’ colouring book it came from the McCall’s pattern company – they’d released a  small collection of drawings of a this year’s popular pattern offerings. I downloaded and printed them but in the end, the creative process for me is finding fabric and then figuring out what I might make of it. Because in the end you can imagine whatever you want but if you can’t find the fabric you’re after it’s all moot. And I find my method more satisfying, although time consuming because all the ‘good’ fabric stores are across the city. Although I think I lost the point here, the point was, the colouring book concept is interesting, but maybe not so much for me – so far.

This modern world demands a lot of a person - rather demands that you appear a certain way. Facebook demands the appearance of meaningful interactions with friends and the presentation of a specific life. Twitter demands short, astute, and insightful appearing observations and quips. Pinterest demands the appearance of organized, glamorous and well fed aspirations. Instagram demands all of the above in pictures -I think, honestly I, thus far, have opted out of Instagram, Tinder, Snapchat and whatever might be trending this week, because I can barely keep up the facade of Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Although if I’m being honest I use Facebook to promote my agenda of the absurd, and admit that I spend a lot of my life being a dork. I find Twitter most useful as an outlet as a consumer, a conduit for information I find interesting and very occasionally for being part of a trending topic. But the idea that all of this creative energy spent on keeping up appearances, one wonders if a simpler outlet might be the answer everyone was seeking. Perhaps this idea of a meditative activity does make sense?

Having been raised by wolves, well artistic wolves, I have spent a life around arts, less so now, but it’s still part of my life. When I wanted a particular Christmas tree decoration and couldn’t find what I wanted commercially, I went to Pinterest, stole an idea and whipped up a few myself, because I could. So in that same breath, does the idea of sitting down with a preset drawing and filling in the spaces with colour appeal? Well no, but that's me.

To finish where I started, what is the fascination with these colouring books? I don’t know. I make assumptions that it fulfills a need for those seeking a creative outlet but not certain where to find it. Am I right? Don’t know. But I am wondering if McCall’s has a spring edition of theirs.

P.S. I think it’s absolutely charming that my spellcheck doesn’t recognize Facebook as a word - or spellcheck for that matter.

the grinch who sold christmas

I recently wondered why the heck pimento was so popular in the 50’s and 60’s and a friend’s mother was kind enough to explain that really, it was so nice to have some colour to add to dishes. Remembering, of course, that it’s not that long ago that produce was bought when it was in season and then offered canned or frozen for the rest of the year - well you could buy something called a tomato out of season, but mostly it was a knotty, green, tasteless round thing that was called a ‘tomato’.

Fast forward to about a month ago. Back to school promotions started showing up at my local grocery and drugstore chains (incidentally owned by the same company now). Being neither a child or a parent I was still shocked. Sort of. I did a quick calculation. We were about 8 weeks out from the start of school. Back in my retail days you calculated about a 6 week start to the next big ‘holiday’ event so this sort of made sense. On the proverbial other hand, what kid wants to be reminded of school when vacation is only half way through!

While ranting about this on social media someone pointed out to me that Costco had Christmas out at that time too. Calculating again I pointed out that technically Costco is a wholesaler catering to retailers, so having Christmas gear out in July sort of made sense. Yes it seemed out of place, but for all those who remember the annoying reminder of the ‘Days until Christmas’ sign along the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto all those years; Christmas was always coming.

‘Life moves pretty fast’ and in a consumer driven market, the chase is always on to the next season. But start backing it up, to buyers, manufacturers, designers, colour specialists and really, they’re working in terms of 3 to 4 years ahead, so your 6 to 8 weeks is just the final piece of a very long chain that leads to you picking out that particular tomato red sweater for your bestie this Christmas.

At this point I’m pretty stoked that I managed to work a partial Ferris Bueller quote into a post. I also spent some time trying to track down an image of the old Days to Christmas sign on the DVP and fell into a vortex of old Eaton’s catalogue images and only just came back up for air.

Consumerism requires that we shop when the goods are available, but they’ve also taught us there’s a very slim yet attractive period of the end of season sale and the then not for the faint of heart end of season clearance. But if you leave it too long you’re just plain out of luck. Take it from me - the year my coat zipper busted in February was the year I learned to layer. Now like a good Canadian I didn’t have just one winter coat, but still. And I do know how to sew, so if I was really stuck. Okay, my point was, it’s tough finding a winter coat in February because we’re already into prime spring selling and we don’t wear winter coats in spring. Except maybe in most parts of Canada. Because, after all, all this is based on some sort of completely idealized image of season’s and needs. Now back to the catalogues. Which if they are to be believed - that Christmas of 1908 was one dark holiday.

This is not yer traditional red jolly Santa now is it?

I can't find a single image of the old Countdown to Christmas Sign on the DVP, but the bra page of old catalogues, no problem.

is it gonna go my way?

It doesn't take much effort to find a bad opinion of any company online.  There's always someone willing to dish about their negative experience in a public format.  Yelp seems to be a good place for these types of reviews.  And as I’ve said in the past, those opinions are worth looking at but also worth the consideration that one bad review does not a bad company make. 

(And we all know that people won't/don't/can't be bothered to give good reviews), so.

Having said that, and in the same breathe, it's pretty safe to say that as a company you can probably do 'OK' when servicing the bulk of the public, but it takes some special talent to blow it when it comes to people who are marginalized by special needs.  And I will come back to this point.  I promise.

But first let's talk about a growing trend in the lack of car ownership, in which we also need to talk about intercity mass transit - and when I say talk, but I mean bemoan the lack of decent options.  You can rent a car, or do car share, but that can be pricey and if you're heading out of town to stay with a friend you have to deal with parking.  Also forget getting either a car or a deal during the holidays, my experience is that the 'deal' is you get the pay extra for those dates.  You can use some sort of mass transit, such as VIA; which is expensive and have a laughable schedule unless you are going to Montreal or Toronto; GO, which is great during the week but forget the weekends; and lastly Greyhound (and I'm going to lump other bus lines in here) the final bastion of low cost mass transit and they know it.

Here's the deal.  Greyhound is as non-customer centric as you can get.  They're in the business of selling you a ticket and running a bus from point A to B.  It's up to you to figure out how to buy the ticket, how to get on the correct bus, make certain your luggage and you get on and off the bus and if there's an issue, you're just going to have to suck it up.  Having said that it costs me about $20 to go back and forth to Kitchener on a given weekend and generally, the price is the same no matter what - assuming you buy it ahead of time and pay a little extra for the convenience of printing your own ticket.

We've all seen the news.  Megabus (who is not Greyhound) runs into bridge, into another bridge, starts on fire. Mentally unstable man (on Greyhound) had a psychotic break and it's really, really bad. But the article that caught my eye was the one about a girl, confined to a wheelchair, essentially dumped in a snow bank on a cold day, for no reason that made sense, and in response, Greyhound states "We pride ourselves on stellar customer service and a stellar travel experience."

As a long time customer of Greyhound's my only response to that is 'whathPHFFF".  And I’m not just talking about this particular individual, who really got the short end of the stick on this one.  I’m talking in general. See and then after they decided that maybe they could do better than ‘stellar’.

I'll soften this rant a little by stating that, for the most part, I’ve never taken issue with the drivers' themselves.  I use this service on average about 10 times a year and have for the bulk of my adult life, so I’m eventually gonna run into a dufas or two.  But as a company the service is laughable.

During the December ice storm that hit Ontario, I got up on a day I was planning to travel to a birthday party for my niece.  Airlines, trains, TTC and even CAA were filing news posts, twitter and updates to their own websites.  Greyhound 'cannot foresee delays by weather'.

While the TTC updates by the second, Greyhound has little to say.

So what do we do?  Take the train - which I would love to but at twice the price and a schedule that returns me to Toronto after 11 p.m. on a Sunday night (from Kitchener) this is not an option. So we stick with the reliable and annoying Greyhound until another low cost option presents itself.  In the meantime I'll continue to rile Greyhound on Twitter if only to amuse myself and feel some sort of satisfaction that I said something.  And since we all seem to be voting about something this year, why not talk about intercity transport options.  We're a big country but in places we're not. Like southern Ontario, where a few hours between cities should allow options for travel that are reliable, affordable and decent.

I mean, have you ever tried to pee on one of those things?

observations of an 8 week old twitter user

Ok, admittedly it’s been more like 11 weeks, but really my Twitter use is very much in its infancy.  At this point, we’re still counting my age in weeks.  Weeks. 

Yes I was late to the game but it took a long time before someone succinctly explained why I would like Twitter.  While I don’t recall having anyone say something specifically stunning, the suggestion that I would like the forum came from so many places in my life I finally gave it a whirl. 

Incidentally I signed up for Pinterest the same day and I’m not so much loving it.  And while I’m fessing up, with LinkedIn I continue to fail to find the a-ha so far, but I’m keeping it on the ‘not dumped yet’ list.

In many ways we are living through a very intensive and interesting change in consumer conduct and interaction.  The mobility of the average consumer makes them that much more in tune with their options beyond what is available to them.  The internet has become the best and worst gossip venue - ever.  So while you have to temper what you read with not only what value the opinion has for you but also whether or not it is an anomaly, it is now almost impossible to continue to deliver bad service without the word getting out.  Combine that with changing delivery methods for shopping as the retail space tries to figure out how keep abreast of very diverse habits, it’s almost like the Wild West out there.

As a consumer, and acutely observant of my own behaviour, and all while trying to not to get too far off on a tangent, I can’t help but notice, that I tend to browse on line but want to experience the item in person before committing to it, with rare exception.  However a liberal and easy to use return policy can be used to sway me.  And I’m slowly learning who employs a really good in-house photographer.  On the other hand I think the drug and grocery store industry is completely missing the boat.  But again I’m trying to stay on point and the point is; we’re changing the way we consume.

As already discussed in this space my limited interaction with companies via Twitter has been fascinating.  And influential.  While I’m astounded at some of the responses from companies I really don’t expect much from, I’m equally perplexed by companies that I expect to be on top of things, being not on the ball.

Influenced so much that I am considering whether or not to continue to shop at retailers that choose not to interact directly with their consumers when tweeted directly.  Ikea I’m looking at you, and I like Ikea, or I did, but now I’m on the fence.

On the other side of the coin, I’ve recently been blown away by responses from Greyhound, which is often on my top ten list of annoying but essential companies that I must deal with because I have no car.  Yes their reply was pedestrian but it was prompt.  And believe me when I say I’ve complained to Greyhound over the years, via e-mail, phone and in person essentially to no end.  PC Financial falls into this odd space too, as I didn’t even use their handle in my complaint, again a canned response but still a response.

The only issue that will come of this canned ‘thank you for your feedback’ responding is that it will quickly smell of what a good friend calls the ‘PFO’.  Back in the day when you went to a job interview and didn’t get the job, eventually you’d get a form letter, addressed to you via mail merge, basically saying ‘Thank you for your time, Please Fuck Off’ and then you knew for certain the job wasn’t yours.  Of course as I write about it, this feels so quaint.   Now you’re to assume that your resume fell into a big vat of computer rejected filters and you and all links to you were deleted upon receipt. 

So as Christmas approaches and I’m forced into the mall to shop for others on a deadline, with people who generally avoid the mall, do I consider taking up the challenge and confining my dollars to those who are harnessing the Twitterverse, early, and in novel ways?

oh come all ye faithful

With each year that passes we all seem to feel that retail Christmas creeps just a little bit further ahead stretching the season for all it’s worth.  But here’s the thing I can’t quite grasp.  People will Christmas/Hanukah/Insert-Holiday-Celebration-here shop regardless of when you do or don’t start the festivities.

A veteran of retail sales, I can tell you I am almost completely immune to the charms of Christmas carols, unless they became popular after 1993 and that I have a healthy antipathy of the mall during December.  Let’s just say I’m a big fan of order it and pick it up at the store options, letting me get in and out fast.  A quick trip to the liquor store and I’m content to head home and enjoy the holidays that way.

A colleague who has started her own online store asked me what my opinion about when to start talking about the holidays on her site.  I suggest 4 to 5 weeks before her last day to ship, which puts us pretty close to now.  And this is where I see both sides of the argument; 5 to 6 weeks is about what is needed to be successful at a season in retail and like it or not that puts Christmas pretty much immediately, like the-next-day immediately, after Halloween.  And in order to do that well, a retailer has to put stock out with Halloween.  However I do concur that going to Metro on October 31^st and finding a giant Christmas tree made of soda cases, wearing a red hat, was off-putting. 

SDM did a survey via their twitter feed asking when people thought it was a best time to start the caroling and December first was the consensus.  I was a little surprised, I suggested November 23^rd figuring it was a month prior to the holiday and so a decent interval, although, as mentioned above, I’m somewhat immune. 

I guess what I’m trying to say dear retailer, is that they will come faithfully.  So stop trying to shove it down our throats quite so early.