duck lips: or how i accidently became the world’s leading expert on lip gloss.

When I was a teen, almost every girl carried a little, colour topped pot of Rachel Perry Lip Lover gloss in their pocket.  The container was awkward, and you had to go to the ‘health food’ store to get it, but this colourless, flavoured gloss was way popular, mostly because, in addition to being a good product, it tasted and smelled amazing.  Mint Tingle was the favourite of most, but my aversion to mint made me a Raspberry Cherry girl.   Sadly, after having had a pot of RP’s Lip Lover on my bedside table since I was a teen, the company seems to have closed up shop and my Raspberry Cherry, once the last of my half used pots are done, is no longer.

The internet is rife, still, with people seeking this favourite product, which I suppose means if you have any aptitude with making cosmetics, or could figure out how to purchase the recipe, you might have a little bit of license to 'Mint Tingle' money for yourself.  However, failing that anything you’d find now has been around for awhile and eek.

So the search began for a replacement.  Certainly there are lots of options on the market, but something that smells and tastes good and will stay on overnight, to protect the thin skin of the lips turned out to be a tall order.  Admittedly there’s not really anything wrong with anything I tried, but I was looking for that special combination of taste and pliability and that was hard to find.

So here we go.  Smith’s Rosebud Salve was rated a favourite over and over again so I picked it up.  Unfortunately I don’t really like rose smell or taste so it has a fairly unsavory start to it.  Once the rose perfume dissipates the gloss is pretty benign.  Absolutely nothing wrong with the product but missing the smell/taste combo I was seeking.

Nip and Fab’s Lip and Nip Fix, which it turns out you can use for chapped nipples too, should that be an issue.  Found at the drugstore and reasonably priced.  It’s a step up from something like Blistex but again, no smell and tastes like Vaseline.  Might be handy for really chapped skin in the winter, but for lips, it went in my no pile.

So I moved on to Smith's Rosebud Strawberry Lip Balm, which also comes in Chocolate flavour.  Again nothing wrong with the product and it seems to give a bit of colour to the lips when applied even though it’s clear, but missing the taste.  The smell is so good it initially fools your senses into thinking there is a flavour but there isn’t.  A potential keeper, mostly because the tube is lightweight and purse friendly.

Hope was high for Eos.  The package, a round coloured container is cheerful.  The gloss smells and tastes good and there are plenty of flavours, including mint for those missing their Mint Tingle.  My only objection to the product is the delivery, a hard gloss that you do not dip your finger into but instead apply right to your lips and because of this, it is really hard to get enough on.  The other issue I have with it is the esthetics of the package, because once a male friend commented it looked like a testicle, well I couldn’t see it any other way.  And, this package is every weirder looking that Lip Lover, in your pocket!

The latest product I’ve tried, Tokyo Milk Dark Lip Elixirs, I bought the Cherry Bourbon flavour holds the best option, the gloss, a little firm but becomes viscous with a bit of heat from your finger, smells good, tastes OK.  It will probably be the one I try again when this batch is done with.  However if I could somehow combine the features of the Eos with the Tokyo Milk, I might be happier.

Carmex, with its yellow lid, not really a contender, but worthy of a mention because it has camphor it in and it’s the only thing I found useful in treating cold sores.  I keep a pot in the medicine chest for this explicit reason and when I feel that weird tingle, it goes on immediately.  This gloss is difficult to spread, but they do have a version in a tube now, smell pretty unappealing and doesn’t taste much better, but cold sores, the gift that keeps on giving and often the little reminder of x’s past, need to be treated.

It’s always tough to replace an old favourite, and boy do I have a drawer full of products meaning it will be awhile before I need any more lip balm.  All I can say to Lip Lover is farewell old friend, we’ve been through the ages, and you’re a hard act to follow.


P.S.  A friend tried in earnest today to find me more of my old standby online but came to the same end I did, that Lip Lover is no longer.  But kudos to her for efforts.  It gladdens this old crusty heart of mine.

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.

consumption

In addition to the time I spend objecting to and about companies and the various levels of service I experience; and besides the endless hours I while away jumping from link to link on the internet I am currently spending a great deal of time considering with what my next job should be.  Of late, and after what seems to be the world’s longest mid(ish)-life crisis, I feel like there needs to be a distinct and planned approach to the next stage of my life.  And barring the idiosyncrasies of my own internal thought process, it does, at times, feel as if this task consumes me.

There was also a joke I was trying to work in about having spent the last several weeks being sick with cold and chest infection, thereby having ‘consumption’ but I just couldn’t get the tempo of it worked out.

So as I think on and about how and where I want to take my next venture; I also seem to be thinking about my new encounters in the Twitterverse and my unintentional discovery of how some marketers are using this, and other social platforms, to extend their customer service outreach. And I’m fascinated.

@TTCHelps – the online persona of TTC customer liaison is prompt in replying to people in a forthright manner.  In fact, I tripped over them very early in my app adoption kibitzing about the on train ‘are-they-aren’t-they’ announcements on the subway one morning.  To my flippant tweet that I couldn’t decide if the TTC announcements were informative or infuriating, they replied ‘hopefully more informative than annoying’ and with that simple exchange I started to get it.

Next was @CampbellCares – the soup company that noted my tweet complaining, while suffering my cold, that I could no longer find my preferred Turkey Chunky soup and that the Chicken flavor just didn’t cut it.  Not only did they respond; they tracked down stores nearby that I might be able to find my favoured flavor at.  Then @FURminator_Inc. favourited my tweet about my, somewhat, bizarre affinity for their pet brush.

Ricki’s, who is not on Twitter but does use Facebook, after announcing a sale and then having their website crash, did take the time to answer each person who commented on the issue on the FB feed.  In a world where using the comment feature to acknowledge the issue globally is available it was a decided personal touch to reply to each of, even if they did recycle their response.

The IKEA follow up, via a real live person, discussed in this blog, also fell into this sweep of service responses.  But I have to say I’m somewhat disappointed that after I lauded the employee who assisted me so well to @IKEACanada five days ago and they have yet to acknowledge my approval.  And in my estimation a bit of an error on their part.

The friend who strongly encouraged my adoption of Twitter and its little unique universe and I have discussed my interest in both this new (to me) medium and how it could move customer experience and service into the most interesting places - which in turn gets me thinking, again, and more, about where I should take my next career venture.  

The next steps are not entirely, yet, apparent to me but I do believe that service is the next great venture of business and somehow I’d like to be involved.

getting a little warmer

I'm a little late to the Twitterverse, and I'll talk further about my consumer adventures to date but first I wanted to update the Ikea story. 

Amazingly the very helpful woman "L" who works in the Self-Serve area not only did as she promised, measuring the shelf I was after she also called to let me know and then a couple of days later she called again to say she would hold a shelf for me until the end of business today.

I have to say I was pretty blown away.   So in spite of the rain tonight I headed over the Swedish House of Home Worship and collected my held shelf - for which I plan to use to hold my various bathroom linens.

I will let Ikea know the story, partly because I'm just plain impressed.  But also because I think employees who got that extra mile really deserve a shout out.

So now I have a 'grown-up' shelf and, my favourite part of all Ikea purchases, a project!

memories of Dave Nichol

Dave Nichol passed away over the weekend.  For those who are newer Dave Nichol is the reason you all know Galen Weston.  The so called 'pitchman', but really a bit of a pioneering marketer who brought us what we all know as a store brand before there really was one.  First with No Name and then with President's Choice - which continues to be the mainstay of my day to day sustenance. 

There was always a well worn Insiders Report in my childhood bathroom and I still take a good look at what I might try next when they arrive.     

your blanket policy isn’t very warm and cozy

I'm a bit of an Ikea fan.  Even known by close friends to be a bit of a 'Sherpa' and I have to say tonight I'm flummoxed.

Ikea.  Basically your policy lacks rationale.  And your explanation even  a little less.

A little background.  I have a very small bathroom and I need to stash towels and, er, um, toilet 'tissue' somewhere.  I also have no car.

I currently have a dorm like contraption in use and yes , it does the job. But I'm a grown up so I'd like to have something a little more substantial.

Ergo Ikea.  Decent.  Well priced.  Quasi-disposable furniture that when you are an apartment dweller you feel is a reasonable option considering you might have this for a short time.

I also have a fixed ceramic hook in the middle of the only usable wall.  So I got my handy measuring tape out and then went to the Ikea showroom.

Except the piece I was interested in was not on display.  So I figured the most logical idea was to go look at the pieces in the box and see where the predrilled holes were.  Except there's a company policy that they can't open a box on the floor because that makes the item unsellable.  A policy which I completely question but since I was trying to get what I wanted I didn't question to very strenuously.

Needless to say several stores were called looking for a display unit and a manager got involved.  Mostly because I said hauling the item home and back was not an option I was interested in if it didn't fit.  And which silently begged the question of where does all my unsuitable MDF stuff go?  Surely not to landfill based on the sole rationale that they'd never keep their prices as low as they do.  (Although usually I get to measure the furniture at the store and now I'm into a circular argument.)

What I found the most perplexing of the entire exchange was that the exact reason I was given by the manager for why the item wasn't on display - which was 'we can't possibly have everything on display' was the exact reason I felt my request to look at parts in the box before I made a purchase was pretty amenable.

I understand that policies have to be put in place to help staff with their jobs.  But sometimes blanket policies don't make sense.  Toronto is a pretty big city. And a large section of the population do not have cars.  Ikea is always on the edge of a city to keep costs down.  But if you want the customers to traipse all the way to you, you have to be willing to help them out.  So when I, and I did do it politely, asked if they'd be willing to come retrieve the item if it didn't fit - based entirely on their suggested rationale that my only course of action was to purchase and return the item if it was unsuitable - I thought opening the blasted box was still the best option for both parties.

I didn't win my argument.  I didn't really lose either because finally after all this work the warehouse woman who was stuck with me agreed to measure the display when it went up and call me one way or the other I felt that was a reasonable option.  I suspect it's pretty far off her job description and I did think the manager had a bit of gall to end the discussion with 'there'.  But I appreciated the gesture. 

So now I'm out 2 hours of my evening and I don't have a shelf.  But maybe the promise of one.

Stay tuned for the outcome.

so you want to divorce your bank?!

Oh.  My.  God leaving your bank is difficult.  After *cough years with one of the blue banks, I started to feel that my faithfulness and invested money maybe wasn’t getting the best treatment.  And so I started shopping around and discovered all sorts of free chequing accounts available and perhaps even worse that my own bank was waiving fees for those with multiple accounts – like me.  But not like me because nobody ever mentioned this offer to me.  In spite of the fact that they telemarketed me at least three times a week and didn’t leave a message.  Needless to say after banking at the same place since I was a teenager, I decided I was done.  I walked my butt over to one of the red banks and signed myself up for a new free chequing account.  Then I started moving all the prearranged payments company by company to the new account.  Then I moved my RSP.  Then I applied for a line of credit.  Then I waited. 

At this point it’s been almost 8 weeks and we’re still waiting on some of this and honestly, it might be easier to divorce a spouse than a major financial institution.

First, it takes you about 3 pay cycles to figure out what comes out of your account and when.  Or at least it did for me.  Then it takes each of them about 3 weeks to move these so you need another pay cycle to confirm that the move was made.  So I get paid bi-monthly.  If I remembered on the 13^th that something came out of my account on the 15^th, and I called to make new arrangements, because I remembered so late, it took another month to confirm that everything was hunky dory. 

Secondly it takes 4 to 6 weeks and some paperwork to move an RSP.  And dealing with a venue-less bank means you do all of this over the phone and (eek) fax.  And if you’re like me, they keep sending your confirmations to your misspelled e-mail address.  Which is almost like not sending them at all.

You will have to remember and repeat a lot of things about your financial life to many people many times.  Have you ever missed a bill payment? Answer ‘Never’, ‘Occasionally’, ‘Often’.  So there’s no point in fibbing because you’ve just given six people permission to pull your credit report, but honestly the only answer reasonable is ‘Occasionally’ because yes, I probably forgot to post a payment once or twice in the 20 odd years I’ve had to pay a bill.

You will also learn a few new idiosyncrasies of your new financial institutions.   Among them PC Financial makes it so difficult to set up a credit card password that, if you’re like me, you will forget it instantly completely eradicating its effectiveness.  And if you are on hold with ING as much as I have been of late you will notice that they play only songs with the word ‘Money’ in them on their hold music.  It’s actually quite entertaining.

Finally, you will have to toggle between two institutions until this is completed because otherwise you’re just writing cheques to yourself and having to go into the bank branch – which I have spent the better part of *cough years avoiding.

Hopefully all this malarkey will be over shortly as soon as move the last of the balances over to one of my 

two new red institutions and finally give the blue bank the one finger salute goodbye.

I have a bottle of bubbly on ice for when this absurdity is finally over.  And other one for the un-cabling of Rogers.  Which is next.  But not for awhile because if you’re like me, there’s only so much of this you can take.