Brunmarde.com

Took the video camera back to the store. When I put in a tape, it tried to find the last spot onto which it had spat ones and ohs, and more often then not it couldn’t - whereupon it would beep frantically and flash EJECT TAPE EJECT TAPE. I’d have to reseat the tape. Half the time this worked, like giving a pacifier to a startled baby - but more and more it was acting up. Perhaps it’s just the tapes, I thought, so I gave it a new one. Beep! Beep! Eject! Eject! Stall! Pull up! I opened the tape slot, and found a slew of brown linguine. It had yanked the tape out of the transport path.
I no longer trusted the camera. Truth be told, it had done this from day one, and I’d chalked it up to bad tapes. No more. Back to BesBi, the monstro-mart where I bought it. I had my receipt and my 4-year service contract.
The clerk looked at the receipt, the contract, the camcorder. He typed a few things into the computer.
“I don’t know if I can Deev this,” he said. “I’ll have to ask Chris.”
“What?”
“I said,” and he repeated the same meaningless statement. Then he added: “Chris is the manager.”
“What’s a Deev?”
“I don’t know if I can do the Deev. That’s why I have to ask Chris,” he said, adding, “I’m new here.”
One more time. “And a Deev is . . .?”
“That’s what it’s called when you can trade it right away for a new one.”
Pause.
“Is this a word I’m supposed to know?” I said, with a cunning blend of herbs, spices, smiles and flaming irritation.
Never, ever ask a BezBi clerk a rhetorical question. They either go Nomad on you, and you have to beam them into deep space where they can explode safely, or they just - plain - hate - you. This fellow took the second path. I said, with a big grin:
“Well, whatever Chris says, I’m leaving here with a new camera. I’m going to go over to cameras and get a replacement while you talk with Chris.”
In cameras stood one employee, talking to Gramps.
Gramps had come to buy a digital camera.
Actually, he’d just come to look at them.
Actually, he’d just heard about these newfangled things.
Gramps was killing time.
Gramps had all day.
Gramps had questions. Where do the pitchers go, then, if there’s no film?
Well, they can be stored on a floppy, a microdrive, a smartcard, a memory stick. Or some units have an onboard CD burner.
I see, said Gramps. And what do all those mean, exactly?
Sigh. The clerk gave me a sign to tell me he’d be there in a moment. I was, after all the epitome of the Customer Who Knows What He Wants - I wasn’t looking at anything, I wasn’t moving, I was just standing off to the side like a big throbbing red dwarf with spiky lines coming out of his head. I considered going full Gore on Gramps - sighing, stalking, rolling my eyes.
How many’em pitchers they take, anyhow?
The phone rang. “Scuse me,” said the clerk, and he answered the phone. Answered a few questions. Seemed to take his time. I kicked myself for not having my cell phone. I’d have called him right there and asked him to come over and help me since phone calls obviously take priority.
But I waited, and when my turn came I was quick: “ZR-10. Exchange.” I held up the 4-year Service Contract, making sure to smile. He nodded and sped off to get one. I watched Gramps - he festused his way to a woman sitting in a chair, waiting for him. Her expression said she’d been waiting for him while he jawboned clerks since 1957.
The clerk brought back a camera. I took it back to the Deev window to see if we’d be Deeving anytime soon. The Deeving clerk said, with no small amount of triumph, that they’d used the camcorder and it worked just fine, hence no Deev.
“You didn’t even ask me what was wrong with it,” I said.
He gave me a look of pure hatred. I had him there. He knew it.
“What’s wrong with it,” he said.
“Are you going to make the decision, or Chris?”
“Chris,” he said.
I smiled! Broadly! “Then I’ll talk to Chris.”
Chris came out from behind the Deev Room door. He’d read the memo: hate this customer. He asked what was wrong with the camera; I told him. Halfway through my explanation he nodded and swapped out the cameras.
“Normally I wouldn’t do this,” he said, “because it’s more than 90 days.”
“But you’re doing it,” I smiled, “and I thank you.”
He handed me off to a clerk who did the paperwork. “Fill in this and sign here,” she said. I did so. She ran the ticket through a printer, and to my astonishment I saw that it printed several paragraphs above my signature. I saw the words “I have read and agreed to all the return and refund policies printed on the back of this receipt.”
“That’s a nifty trick,” I said. “Asking me to sign a blank sheet, then printing testimony over my signature.”
She had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. None.
And that’s why I am buying my new big TV from Audio King. Not BezBi. Deev this, you sullen jackals.