A Thief's CV

A sloppy shoplifter slipped police a vital clue after raiding our shop today. The six ft blond man was spotted leaving the Edinburgh branch with goods lifted from a display. A customer told me he thought a man in a blue top had taken battery chargers.

I looked left and right out of the door into Shandwick Place, spotting the likely lifter scurrying towards Princes Street. I ran after him but he must have sensed something or, more likely, heard my size 13s bearing down. He glanced round and broke into a sprint. During the chase towards Lothian Road I shouted out:

"You might as well stop I'm probably fitter."

Hearing this he threw a bag onto the ground. I gave up the chase as £80 worth of battery chargers are not worth a knife in the guts. That is what was inside the Lidl plastic carrier bag.

As an added bonus the clueless criminal had also thrown away a red file containing 10 copies of his cv. Unbeliveably he had included a photo in some copies. It told us he was probably from Eastern Europe and was looking for work in the building trade. It also stated the thief was hard-working, articulate and had much experience in the building trade. His ideal job was diamond drilling presumably with hot jewels.

The two constables, who took my statement, reckoned they might get a result......

Bare Faced Cheek

A clever camera con almost backfired for a customer at our shop. 

We run a 30-day exchange period, so that if an item is bought as a gift or is found to be unsuitable it can be refunded or exchanged. 

With many branches nationwide however a crafty person might always use the latest equipment and just pay for consumables.
Often my colleagues suspect certain people who return items such as video cameras within 30 days of buying the equipment for a holiday.
About a six weeks ago I sold a Canon DC10 DVD camcorder to a man who was off to the States on holiday. 

He returned it just within the 30 days claiming that recorded films were of low quality compared to his previous hi-8 analogue camera.
We discussed the relative merits of recording on mini-DVD and mini-DV tape. 

For instance the fact that a mini-DV tape can store 22gb of information in one hour versus 1.4gb on mini-DVD. 

He decided to use his credit add some money and purchase a Panasonic 3-CCD tape machine.
However, a few days later he returned and swopped the camera for a telescope plus partial refund.
On Monday he returned with six mini-DVDs which he had shot during his holiday using the Canon camcorder. 

Unfortunately he did not realise that before it is possible to play them or download to a computer the discs need finalising in the camera.
Would it be possible he wondered to power up a camera so that he could stand at the counter and finalise his discs! 

After reminding him that the 30-day exchange is not a holiday hire agreement we allowed him the use of a camera.
Perhaps we should have given him the chance to buy back the camcorder so that he could record discs on his next vacation.

Young Juggler

This young lad was a bit of a one trick pony but brave to be entertaining the crowds on Edinburgh's Royal Mile. 

Edinburgh Fringe Performer 2

Flames and action always make for good pictures, the Fringe shop and crowd make for a great background. Just a slight pity the performer is not facing the camera, still you cannot have everything. 

Performer at Edinburgh Fringe

 

Blogging

Blogging

Interesting people with boring thoughts seems to sum up many blogs. The difference three days can make is amazing. 

Enthusiasm must have overweighed sense when setting up a blogspot on Friday. 

It seemed logical being simpler than creating a website. Has "photo" already fallen into that category

Reading Dan Farber's "Interesting People" compilation puts life into perspective. People actually bother to spend time submitting this stuff to a site. Has "photo" already fallen into that category? 

But of course then checked the dates and realised there were no entries on Sunday. 

So perhaps it is safe to assume (making an ass of u and me) that most of the comments are communicated from work devices, rather than created spontaneously - just idle chat to fill in the dull moments in a writer's life.

This reinforces the notion that most blogs and e-mail communications are written by people who should be doing something else, like working. 

Once not tied to the desk or Blackberry, pontificating their thoughts becomes somewhat less important.

Many recent articles in the Financial Times profile CEO's and other's who have set up blogs to disseminate their tedious thoughts. 

For perhaps one hour everyday these people hope to boost their efforts and company's performance.

A whole raft of people below try to do some work, perhaps some are being fired for minor misdemeanours. 

These guys and dolls are lucky if they are able to pay the rent let along afford just the hardware necessary to emulate their bosses.

Sometimes a little guy gets lucky, buys a 2nd user 6-year-old laptop-£100-still 1/6th of a month's take home pay, happens to read a free copy of the FT and is introduced to the world of Mozilla, Picasa, Google Talk, Onspeed amongst others.

Yes, there is free access, in the UK at many libraries, to online resources but it is nothing like having a generous employer setting up all the equipment and a fast broadband or similar link. So the little guy keys away in Wordpad, the laptop does not have Word, but Wordpad is more advanced than 15-year-old Locoscript on an Amstrad also bought 2nd hand for the princely sum of £200!

Perhaps our little guy will make it to a Wifi hotspot to upload these thoughts for free..............

The customer is always right

Clearly there is a bit more to this than I first thought. 

This site will cover everything from incidents which happen during my day-job for a well known large UK photo retailer to my lecture notes from courses in digital photography. 

Here's an example of something which happened at work recently: A customer came in for a Pentax 360 flashgun (£199). 

There was a long queue, a common occurrence in our shop. 

When it was his turn he told me the item had been put aside earlier in the day. 

I knew there was a flash in the drawer so took it out, put in batteries and tested it. 

At the same time explaining that I always did this when selling an item to be sure it worked. He gave me £100 in vouchers and £100 in cash and I began to put the sale through the till. "Now then," he said, "Before you finish that let me tell you about your firm's appalling customer service." 

"Earlier today I phoned, but was on the phone for three minutes unanswered before ringing off. 

"I tried again and the wait was six minutes before I gave up. 

"At the third attempt I got through after two minutes!" 

"As you can see we only have three assistants on duty today and there's a big queue," I told him, "It has been suggested that we have an answerphone but the problem is that we would never have the time to make a response," I added. 

During this conversation phones were ringing all the time in the background. 

Rather than finish off his sale I picked up one of these phones. 

It was a customer wanting something put aside. 

I hurried off to find it leaving Mr Angry seething. 

When I returned he demanded I finished off his sale. 

"Sorry," I said, "I have to finish dealing with this caller now." 

"You think you've taught me a lesson, don't you," he shouted, "Well, you have made a big mistake, by the end of the week I'll see that you are out of a job, I have your name, this will go further." 

Seething with anger I finished off his sale despite being tempted to tell him to sling his hook. Sometimes I am sure I am not cut-out for the retail life.....