Overreaction: Woman Burns Down Strip Mall Because Of A Lack Of Shopping Carts

A woman is accused of setting this fire that destroyed
a strip mall because she couldn't find a shopping
cart at a Dollar Tree store in the complex

We're getting into the Christmas shopping season, and we will see more and more people overreacting to shopping mishaps.

It has already started.

A woman in Washington State burned down a strip mall because she couldn't find a shopping cart, television station KOMO reports.

Yeah, no shopping cart is a bit of a bummer, but she might have taken this a teensy, weeny bit too far, don't you think?  

According to KOMO, the 64 year old woman, who couldn't find a shopping cart, made a comment to a store employee about burning the Dollar Tree store she was at in Kent, Washington.

The women then went into the greeting card aisle then came out 90 seconds later to announce the store was on fire.

And it was. Employees tried to put the fire out, but it spread too fast. Eventually, the entire strip mall containing five businesses burned down.

Nobody was hurt, thank goodness, but this woman put a bunch of people out of work, endangered lives and destroyed peoples' livlihoods because she couldn't get a damn shopping cart.

Needless to say, she's in a heap of trouble so she might be locked up for awhile, thank goodness.

Of course, melting down in a business is a popular pasttime, apparently. Consumerist has a helpful list of such incidents, including times when a Wendy's customer trashed the restaurant because she was dissatisfied with the food, or the time a Burger King customer punched a worker because the food wasn't ready fast enough, and a Macy's customer who bit a clerk during a dispute over a price.

I guess shopping and dining really is stressful

Just take a Valium, OK?

Why I Think I'll Shop At REI. Black Friday Related, But Not What You Think

I'm giving huge cheers to REI a sporting goods and outdoor equipment company with a wide reach.

Here's why. According to The Atlantic and many other media outlets, REI announced that on the infamous shopping day Black Friday it would close all 143 stores, its headquarters and even its website.

As for REI's 12,000 employees? Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, will be a paid holiday. These employees also have their marching orders from REI's CEO for Black Friday: "Go outside and do something."

REI's gambit is good or employees, who won't have to work on Thanksgiving like many of their counterparts in the retail world.

Nordstrom and Costco, for instance won't open on Thanksgiving Day, bucking an obnoxious trend among retailers in recent years.

Maybe we are finally starting to get rid of Black Friday stupidity. According to the Atlantic:

"More generally in the economy, though, Black Friday fatigue has been on the rise. Last year, there was a wave of Change.org petitions and social media campaigns calling for both retailers and consumers to boycott Black Friday.

While it's still one of the biggest shopping days of the year in the U.S., a report from the National Retail Federation found that only 55 percent of holiday shoppers spent money on Thanksgiving weekend last year, and that 42 percent of their spending was online.

REI's announcement reflects more than just how tired its customers are of Black Friday; it reflects how tired many Americans are as well."

As I've whined about before, I've always hated the Black Friday spectacle of people waiting in long lines in bitterly cold predawn mall parking lots so they can bust the doors in of the local StupidMart to buy their Door Buster TV.

There's even a web site dedicated to the carnage called Black Friday Death Count, which tracks the seven deaths and 98 injuries associated with Black Friday chaos since 2006.

So hats off to REI. I think I'll do the same thing their CEO suggests: Go outside and do something on Black Friday. Then maybe, I'll check out their web site the  next week and see if I can reward them for their efforts with a little holiday shopping.

Great Christmas Gifts For Kids! Including Winos, Drug Dealers And A Perverted Tarzan!

Ellen Degeneres shops for toys so you don't have to.
Or maybe you will have to shop after all.  

You might have heard about the Breaking Bad doll controversy. Something about having kids play make believe with drug dealer dolls.

Well, count on Ellen Degeneres to find more wonderful toys for your kids to play with. Just in time for Christmas!

We have the wino and cop dolls, the Tarzan doll, who, as Ellen puts it, doesn't really need Jane, and ET's finger, which has found a new way to call home.

We'll let Ellen explain it, since she's way, way better at it than me. Get your paper and pen to start making those Christmas shopping lists!

H/T to sister Lynn for alerting me to this:

Woman Lets Dog Die In Hot Car So She Could Shop At Walmart For 13 Hours

Every year, we're "treated" to news of people leaving kids and pets in hot cars, where they die of heat stroke.

This woman is accused of leaving
a dog to die in a hot car in Florida
while she conducted a 13-hour
shopping marathon at Walmart.  

Many are tragic accidents. People get so preoccupied that they forget they left their kid behind. It seems impossible to believe, but all of us sometime don't pay attention, as they rush to be on time for work or school.

True, we should have a hightened sense of awareness when it comes to our children and pets, but still. The parents and pet owners didn't mean to kill their children or Fido.

Then you get idiots like Cassaundra Rasmussen, 49. Police said she left her dog in the car, in a hot parking lot, in late June, in Florida. Why? She had to go shopping at Walmart.

Worse, it wasn't just a quick trip into the store. She was in Walmart for 13 hours, according to police.

How can one possibly browse the, um, gleaming shelves of Walmart for over half a day? And worse, never remember during that time that her dog is in the car?

Is Walmart that compelling? That it's worth leaving your dog in the car to die?

A passerby did spot the dog in the car while Rasmussen was in Walmart. But by then it was too late. The dog had been in the vehicle for too long, in that terrible heat, with no food or water, for too long.

What gets me is she is only facing a misdemeanor charge of cruelty to animals. I guess that's the only thing under the law that might stick.

But still, the Internet can be a buzzsaw, and I'm sure Cassaundra is feeling the effects.

That's actually a good thing, except I worry people will take things too far. If Cassaundra is guilty, then a misdemeanor charge isn't enough for me. But I also hope the punishment via social media doesn't get so bad that she breaks before she understands what a horrible thing she did.

Shopping does seem to be  priority for some people.  A woman in Johnson City, Tennesee is accused of leaving her two kids alone in a car for 90 minutes while she shopped at Old Navy. 

Luckily, those kids were rescued.

I hope they are the only two people who think shopping is so exciting it's worth killing kids and pets over.

School Let Out For the Summer A Minute Ago, So It's Time For Back To School Sales!!

Last weekend, high schools in my area held their graduation ceremonies and the kiddies in all grades are now enjoying their first full week of summer vacation.  

Kids just got out of school for the summer.
Time for back to school sales!  

Which, in the world of retail logic, means their parents must drag the kids off THIS INSTANT!! for back to school sales.

Yep, they're on, according to Consumerist. Retailers always seem to start their sales seasons earlier, and earlier. You can probably pick up Christmas items now. Or at least soon.

But you'd better hurry, because I'm sure the Christmas season clearance sale will start in August or something.

All this advanced season stuff means you can't actually buy the stuff you need when you need it.  In retail land, and retail land only,  it doesn't make sense to sell t-shirts and shorts in June, bug spray in July, or swim suits at the beginning of August.

We're only supposed to buy things we won't need for many months yet. Maybe they hope we'll lose what we bought, and have to buy it again?

That's one way to maximize profits, I guess.

The retailers indeed say seasonal creep, be it Christmas or back to school is good for them and somehow good for parents. 

"Some schools start back up as early as the third week in August, so it's not really early," said National Retail Federation spokeswoman Kathy Grannis last year in the Tampa Tribune.

What, it takes two months to stock up on school supplies so you have to start now?

Then again, some people apparently live to shop and need an excuse to do that. "While 47.8 percent of parents will start back to school shopping one month before the school year starts, a full 22 percent will start two months out."

Because shopping for your kids in icy, air conditioned, sterile malls is apparently more fun than playing with your kids in the summer sun.

Gotta go. I need to shop for a new pair of shorts for summer. Oh, wait. Summer officially starts in a few days. I can't buy shorts. I'm way too late. Summer clothes are so February. I guess I'll have to shop for a ski parka instead.

"Sky Mall" In Flight Catalog Is A Wonder To Behold

If you forget to bring something to occupy your time on a flight, airlines come to the rescue with these AWESOME catalogs in which you can buy, buy, buy!! Everything you never thought you needed but really do.

This guy looks like a car crash victim after the
air bag goes off, but it's a pillow for sleeping
on a plane! From Sky Mall! Get yours today!!!  

So it was on a recent journey from Burlington, Vt. to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, (with a stopover in Chicago)

The flight had  Sky Mall, and I never knew there were so many products I just had to have.

Take computer mouses. Mine's a standard grey, inexpensive, unremarkable little thing. Why shouldn't I go fancy. Like one that looks like a little yellow Lamborghini. Why be boring? Drive your web surfing with the best! A Lamborghini!! .

If I'd gotten tired on my flight, SkyRest could have come to the rescue. It's this inflatable thing you put on the tray at your airline seat and you're supposed to sleep against it. It kind of looks like an airbag that has gone off in a car during a crash.

Somehow, thinking of crashes on an airline flight isn't restful, so I'll skip the SkyRest, thank you very much.

In the pet section, we have something for people who have a dog and no yard. It's a patch of fake grass you put maybe out on your condo balcony. It's where Fido can do his business. It even has a little fake red fire hydrant to get your pooch in the mood to pee. How clever!

But wait, there's more!  I quote the brochure: "The Premium Porch Potty offers an automated rinse and drain system that utilizes embedded sprinklers and an optional water timer to assure the cleanest environment possible."

Yeah, and I'm sure the people who have balconies on the floors below you just love the daily shower of dog crap and pee as you happily and easily wash the Porch Potty.

Now that Fido has done his business, it's time for fun in the sun! Make your pool party special by getting a Singing Gondolier. As the Sky Mall states: "Turns your pool into an enchanging Venetian canal!"

Or at least the noisiest chlorine puddle in the neighborhood.

The contraption is  a little motorized boat that meanders around your pool. On the boat is a little guy with a white hat and striped shirt, holding a paddle, who "serenades you with 3 traditional Italian songs."  The guy's name, I'm not making this up, is Luciano Poolvarotti.

If Venice is this tacky, I will never go there. Let it flood

If Luciano Poolvarotti doesn't make your property fancy and artistic enough, theres some great statues in Sky Mall for all your landscaping needs. Turn your yard into a horror show unique attraction with "The Zombie of Monclaire Moors"  which essentially looks like a terrified boy being sucked into the hell beneath your crabgrass infested lawn.

If that doesn't work, there's the Bigfoot the Garden Yeti statue, which resembles a hungover orangutan. Or try the "Peeing Boy of Brussels" which is basically a statue of a smug looking boy who is definitely peeing and seemingly challenging you to do something about it, you wimp.

If you want something a little friendlier, ther's the "Delightful Dancing Ducks" which is an image of three ducks who look like three very drunk waterfowl trying to imitate the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.

All this and more is available in Sky Mall! Maybe we should just take random flights around the country and shop to our heart's content.

Or maybe not.

It's Thanksgiving. Abandon The Turkey and Head For The Malls, Say Our Retail Overlords

There is a lot of hue and cry this Thanksgiving because a lot of stores now insist on opening on the holiday to have their gawd-awful sales.

Many people inexplicably think Black Friday
stampedes like this one are fun and want to
experience it on Thanksgiving, too. 

Of course rips employees of these retailers away from their family dinners, all so that people who hate their families can flee them, go to the Walmart and buy these hated family members clothes of abysmal quality that will fall apart the first time the gift recipients try them on.

I have trouble articulating why I'm so annoyed that stores are open this year on Thanksgiving.
After all, grocery stores, movie theaters and other businesses always opened on the holiday.  But the big stores that are opening this year just seem such an escalation of ridiculous buying mentality the retailers are trying to brainwash us into.

I'm certainly not going to any of these stores to shop today. I'm instead opting to spend the day with family in West Rutland, Vermont, a town that, by the way, has no Macys,  no Walmart, no Kohls, no big retailers, period.

The big Black Friday, and now Black Thanksgiving sales always bothered me anyway. I know the crazy shoppers want to be there to be in a possibly fatal stampede so that they can get a big screen TV that will go on the fritz by February.

And if these people want to do that, fine, as long as it doesn't involve me.

Still, scenes like those in this video compilation make me sad:





Some people, and even some stores, have taken a stand against this whole mess of shopping on Thanksgiving, with mixed results. (Black Friday, with all its carnage, seems set in stone.)

I noticed a Pizza Hut manager in Indiana was fired because he refused to heed the demands of the local Pizza Hut franchise owner  that he stay open.   Because EVERYONE wants a nice big deep dish pizza for dessert after a Thanksgiving feast.

 Tony Rohr's bosses, which own several Pizza Huts in Indiana and Illinois said he quit, but not exactly.

"I am not quitting. I do not resign. However, I accept that the refusal to comply with this greedy, immoral request means the end of my tenure with this company. I hope you realize that it's the people at the bottom of the totem pole that make your life possible," he told the franchise owners in a letter.

Naturally, he Pizza Hut thing went viral Wednesday and became a PR nightmare.  The Pizza Hut  Facebook page became a litany of outrage. To be fair, Pizza Hut corporate headquarters might have been blindsided with what the Indiana franchise owner did.

Pizza Hut responded to media inquiries by saying most Pizza Huts close on Thanksgiving, but independent franchisees make the decisions on whether to stay open. Pizza Hut said they wish the Indiana situation could have been avoied because they respect employees' decision not to work on Thanksgiving.

Still, Pizza Hut corporate should have issued a directive to franchisees to shut their doors today.

In a more successful vein, Costco, which actually pays its employees a halfway decent wage and treats them well. (and still manages to make a good profit, hmmmm) is closed Thanksgiving because they want to give their employees the day off. The logic, which I like, is they work hard enough during the holiday shopping season.

Nordstrom and BJ's Wholesale Club are also staying shut today. Good for them!

And you know those bargains you think you're getting on Black Thanksgiving or Black Friday? Not so much.

According to the Wall Street Journal, that toy, or appliance or sweater that's billed as "50 percent off, what a deal!!!!" was never meant be sold at the so called full price anyway. It's an illusion.  Full prices was never full price. Says the WSJ:

"The red cardigan sweater with the ruffled neck on sale for more than 40 percent off at $39.99 was never meant to sell at its $68 starting price. It was designed with the discount built in."

In other words, if you go to these Black Friday or Thanksgiving "sales" you're being played for a sucker.

But I guess people love living the illusion of getting a deal.   They like being suckers. A few retailers, like Macy's and JC Penneys, which tried to stop the Big Sale mentality found that nobody would come to their stores to shop unless they had these false sales, according to the WSJ article.

Then there are the real crazies. People have been camping out in front of stores like Best Buy for as much as 10 days before the Black Friday sales. 

They're quoted as saying they wanted to be first in line, and they'll save money, but how much money would they have made working instead of hanging out inside a tent in a wind swept, cold parking lot for a week and a half?

And if you have nothing better to do than hang out in front of a gizmo store for more than a week, you really, really need a life.

You Have To Buy Your Christmas Stuff Now, October Probably Too Late, Retailers Say

It's Labor Day weekend folks! Time to get your Christmas shopping done!

Yep, the nation's retailers, as they do every year, want you to buy all your Christmas stuff months before you need it. And if there's stuff you need now, like sunscreen, barbecue supplies, too bad! You should have thought to buy that in February, you moron!

Better get your Christmas shopping done now
if not sooner, say retailers  

The retailers decreed long ago that we are not to buy stuff when we need them.  That's why winter clothing appears in stores in July at the latest, Halloween candy appeared in June, and all the Christmas stuff is out now.

I keep seeing these vague explanations of why retailers give us all this "Christmas creep." where goods appropriate for the holidays appear on store shelves now, instead of November or December when you actually need it.

Retailing is supposed a rough and tumble business, and to get your dollars, the thinking goes, they have to be the first with seasonal stuff. Which is why we're awash in Christmas decorations here in August at the same time half the nation is baking in a heat wave and people want to buy nonexistent beach towels and swimwear.

Or, they say, people love holidays like Christmas and retailers are obliging them by offering them holiday stuff now. Of course I haven't seen any polling that proves this.

Really. I only know a few people who are that enthusiastic about Christmas, and there are specialty stores that cater to them.

My theory is retailers are trying to make us buy stuff months before we need them because they hate us. Or, more politely, they just want our money.

The basic fact that they want our money is fine. They have to make a profit. But the business model I like is long gone. It used to be stores sold us quality stuff at a time of year we wanted it. We'd get what we want, the stores would get our money and both the store and us were happy that everyone was happy.

What they're doing is training us to panic. We now know we can't buy things we need when we need them, so we have to rush to buy them six months before they do us any good. They triggers our hoarding instincts. If we perceive things are going to be scarce when we need them, we panic and get more than what we need now.

So we end up stuck with the 12 Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer figurines we never needed but decided we had to buy because there will be no Christmas gifts available for purchase around Thanksgiving.

Plus we're out the $9.99 (plus shipping!) for each of these useless Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer figurines we, and nobody else really wants.

It's hot and sunny outside in Vermont today. I need sunscreen. But I'm out. Should have bought more in February. Thanks, nation's retailers. Only you forgot if I die of skin cancer, I can't buy any more of your useless goods. So maybe you won't get rich off me any more.

In any event, I've got a business proposal out there for anyone who is interested. You'll make billions out of the idea and you'll make the Waltons Family of Walmart look like paupers.

The deal is, if you go with this idea, you have to give me just one percent of the profits. I'll be a billionaire, too, under this scenario.

This is the plan: We open a national chain of department stores that sell things only when people need them. Imagine the joy of finding ample supplies of Halloween candy in mid-October, plentiful back to school clothes in August, beachwear in June and tons of Christmas decorations in early and mid December.

I bet our stores would constantly be mobbed with happy customers. It'll be the most successful store in the history of the nation.

Trust me.

Meanwhile, In The Mall Parking Lot, A FIGHT!!

Talk about a "security guard" not being able to secure a situation!

Near a mall in Ohio, a truck rolled off a road and plunged into a deep ravine. From the vantage point of a nearby mall parking lot on a hill, people started taking pictures of the wreck.

...and Action! Biker lady tackles obnoxious
security guard. Nobody behaved well here.  

But a mall security guard wasn't having it, no siree!

See, taking pictures from anywhere on the mall property is Just. Not. Allowed. Because....because.....well, probably no reason, but rules are rules!

So our security guard goes into action. Hilarity ensues. The picture takers think the security guard is pathetically funny. They're right.

Our guard threatens to take the cameras away.  Like she could do that. Especially with that tough looking crowd.

She demands everybody leave. She demands everyone delete their pictures. Nobody complies. She threatens to call the cops and have the picture takers arrested. Everyone shrugs.

Finally, our security guard gets just a wee bit too much into the face of a biker chick. Probably not a good idea.  The biker chick reacts like you'd expect.

And so we get this very, very, classy video of some high class people doing high class things near a high class mall near a high class ravine.

So far, no charges have been filed, but the security guard has been fired

Enjoy the following clip of people, especially an inept security guard, behaving badly.

If Online Shopping Spreads to Real Stores, We're Doomed!

Yes, I know the video in this post is just an advertisement for Google Analytics, which means I'm now shilling for them even though I don't mean to, the ad is an eye opener.

You know all the ridiculous hoops you have to jump through when you order stuff on line instead of walking into a store and buying what you need?

The video is a hilarious and sobering look at what would happen if the way companies sell stuff to us online moved their methods to the grocery store.

All proving the point that online shopping needn't be so annoying.

Watch and enjoy:

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The Mall From Hell Is near Sacramento, California

For some reason, I don't like shopping malls. It's just my bias. They're fine, really, if you like Cinnabon, especially.

But most of them to me are boring, selling the same stuff to the same people over and over. Yawn.

But some malls are worse and more starstruck than usual, and my nomination for the worst mall is the Galleria Mall in Rosewood, Sacremento, California.

The ill-fated Galleria Mall in suburban
Sacramento, Calif. burning in 2010

Why is it this particular mall always has bad karma?  A brawl on Black Friday led to a viral video of two guys really going at it. Apparently, they were fighting over tennis shoes. As if a 1.3 million square foot mall only had one pair of shoes for two morons to fight over. Plus, later, a car was trashed in retailiation. 

This isn't the first round of bad publicity for this mall. A couple years ago a flash mob showed up to sing Christmas carols, but their bouncing and dancing almost collapsed the place, leading to a hasty evacuation. (Structural engineers later declared the place safe for more Christmas shopping)

The flash mob incident hit right after the mall reopened after a crazy guy barricaded himself inside a GameStop store set a huge blaze in the mall  in Oct, 2010 for no discernable reason.

So I'd be afraid to do my Christmas shopping at this mall. Imagine trying to buy some clothes as a gift at the Gap, and I don't know, maybe locusts or poison frogs would kill me before I had a chance to swipe my debit card.

This mall sounds like the place the B-52s sang about in their 2008 song "Funplex," a place that sounded in the song to be a delightful horror.  I'm especially intrigued by the referenence to the Funplex food court restaurant called the Taco Tiki Hut. Sounds wonderfully tacky. I'd eat there, just for goofs. The B-52s paint the scene in their lyrics:

"I'm your daytime waitress
at the Taco Tiki Hut
I'm your daytime waitress
Here's your stupid 7-Up"

Yep, pretty much sounds like the service I get at a typical mall.  I wonder if the Taco Tiki hut also has stupid draft beer. I'd need it in that mall.

It still would be fun to start a Taco Tiki Hut franchise, just to see what would happen.

Just for fun, here's the video for the B-52s "Funplex" As always, they're hilariously chaotic. I want to invite them to my next party. Watch:





 

Black Thankgiving Christmas Shopping Begins My Season of Woe

The stores are all flogging "Black Friday" shopping the day after Thanksgiving, and more and more of them are pushing "Black Thursday," trying to get people to put down their turkey drumsticks pronto on Thanksgiving and get shopping, NOW!

Everybody knows I hate, hate, hate, the whole Christmas demands that we shop until we drop. I'm not even sure why I have such a viceral contempt for the constant harping to buy, buy, buy.

Who in their right mind would want to be in this
crowd during the Thanksgiving holiday?

I guess it's because of my disdain for anything that smacks of desperation. The constant ads, the continual push to begin the so called shopping season earlier, the news reports that suggest it's our duty to shop ourselves off our own fiscal cliffs for the supposed good of the economy, really scream "desperation."

We're supposed to be happy about all this, too. The ads are feature the cloying jingle bells, smiles, warm fuzzies, all in the name of dictating that emotions other than glee are hereby banned.

That's another thing that drives me crazy about the Christmas shopping season. I'm generally a happy person, but I resent it when somebody else demands that I be happy. What right does anybody tell me how to feel?

The shopping frenzy is always a turn off, too. Every year, the news is the same. People trample each other dashing through the doors for the "door buster" sales. Door buster here being literal, since they always have to fix the doors people mow down to get at their flat screen TVs.

People fight, ripping the latest hot toys out of each other's hands, because if their kid doesn't get said hot toy, the world would end, supposedly. 

Even if you don't get caught in a riot and a cloud of pepper spray during the Black Thursday/Friday sales, do you really want to burn through three tanks of gas in the traffic jams on the way to the mall? No thanks.

And what about the people who have to work at the stores in all this madness? Especially on Thanksgiving, when they probably want to be with family. Sure, some want to work on Thanksgiving to collect a bit of extra money, but I'm not sure everybody wants to deal with bloated, nauseated and nausous customers. demanding the impossible.

The stores are also all laughing themselves to the bank.  Their Black Thursday and Friday sales have a few items with low, low prices, but all the other items have jacked up price tags. The retailers know people will spend an extra $100 while they think they're saving $5 on a some stupid video game.

Not everyone has my negative attitude toward Black Thursday/Friday, of course. Somebody arrived at a California Best Buy a week before the sale began to save money on flat screen TVs and such.  To me, if you can afford to camp in a Best Buy parking lot for a week and not work, you can afford full price for a flat screen TV.

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing inherently wrong with retailers trying to sell their stuff.  That's what they're supposed to do. Many people like the sales frenzy. It's a game, a hobby, a social experience, a way of life. More power to them. I just want to be left out of it.

 I also like giving Christmas gifts to people I like. There are aspects of shopping that can be kind of fun.  But like Christmas oveall, the demands of the retailer take something that is inherently a good idea, doing something nice for someone, and turning it into an ordeal that they demand we enjoy.

Yes, I know it's illegal to be negative during this season, but I will anyway: I want no part of Black Thursday and Black Friday. Pass the turkey and the gravy, please.

A $100,000 Chicken Coop. Buy Now!

Seems everybody these days is getting back to the farm, growing vegetables in their yard, keeping chickens for fresh eggs in a shed out back.

This chicken coop comes with
raised garden beds and sells for
only $100,000.

The point of these home grown egg is, of course, their freshness tastes awesome, and you can save a little money.

Unless you rely on Neiman Marcus for all your chicken coop needs. Their new Christmas catalog is out, replete with their usual over the top fantasy gifts. From this catalog,  you can buy a nice chicken coop for your hens for the bargain basement price of $100,000.

Yes, I know the chicken coop is the price of a fair number of houses for people, but your chickens deserve only the best. Even better than what many people live in.

The Neiman Marcus chicken coop is inspired by a French Versailles palace, and has raised beds attached to it. I guess so you can do your gardening while waiting for the eggs to appear.

I suppose this chicken coop is worth it, if you want to coddle your goose that lays the golden eggs.

If you're not into chicken coops, there's other items in the Needless Markup  Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog. You can buy a walk on role in "Annie: The Musical for $30,000.

My mom loves owls and owl art, so there is a painting called "Snowy Owl" by Robert Wilson that goes for the rock bottom price of $70,000.

Or, you could get a dinner for 10 cooked by four top chefs for $250,000.

Cash and  credit cards accepted.

Was United Airline's Misplaced Kid a Sign of Bad Corporate Culture?

Every business that has ever existed has made mistakes. Because they're run by people. And every person who has ever existed has made mistakes.

So when a company screws up, you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, at least until you see whether they try to make things right.

According to a blog post that has hit the national news in the past couple of days,   United Airlines did not get it right. Spectacularly so..

According to the Bob Sutton Work Matters blog, nobody from United would deal with an unaccompanied 10 year old girl on a flight to Chicago, who was to make a connecting flight to Michigan. The girl was AWOL, then found in a terminal. Nobody would help the girl, even as she pleaded for help from somebody, anybody, according to Sutton and the girl's parents.

Everybody at United seemed to believe the girl was not their problem, even as the kid's frantic parents tried to get somebody, anybody to help the girl get to her destination.

United employees were completely unresponsive, according to the girl's parents. They were on hold for hours on end with United, to no avail. Only when they appealed to female United employees' maternal feelings for their own children did anybody help at all.

The girl eventually got to her destination, minus her luggage, no thanks to United. And the parents reported that when they filed a formal complaint to United, they were not allowed to write it themselves. They had to dictate it to a United employee, who wouldn't let the couple review the complaint for accuracy.

Only when the negative publicity crap hit the fan for United did they begin to respond, apologizing to the family.

Sutton wonders, as do I, why some big companies believe they should avoid providing customer service to people who pay for those services. The short answer, of course, is because they can. They figure people don't have good alternatives to what they're offering, so they can abuse their customers.

Yes, it costs money to pay employees to help customers sort out misunderstandings and mistakes. And Lord, yes, some customers are just self centered, whining, cheap complainers who try to get anything they can from whoever they can.

But, it would be nice to build good will through customer service would it not? Wouldn't it pay dividends in repeat customers who spend lots and lots of additional cash on these businesses?

Sutton blames a pervasive corporate culture at United for the lack of customer service, He contrasts it with JetBlue, which has made its share of boneheaded, very public mistakes. But Sutton said JetBlue at least tried to make things right with affected people.

It seems like there are two corporate cultures in America. One, which seems to be the case at United, is all about making profit and nothing else. Of course, a business is there to make a profit. That's their function. But in this culture, customers are an impediment to profit, because they want things that cost the company money, thereby taking the cash away from CEO's and shareholders.

In this corporate world, the logical conclusion to their philosophy is people should give them money for no discernable goods or services, and be grateful for doing so, because the companies deserve it for no reason, I guess.

This philosphy sometimes works, unfortunately, in a world where entities merge until they have a monopoly. So if you're not satisfied with Company A, you can't go to Company B because there is none, it's been gobbled up by Company A. So you're stuck with Company A's awfulness.

The other, better American corporate culture is to make a profit through selling goods and services good enough to make people want them,  and to make sure the purchase makes these customers feel good, that they've had a good experience. That way, the customers might come back for more, tell their friends how great the company is, and the company will reap more profits.

And boy, does it feel good when a company is super responsive. For instance, in the past couple years, I've had snafus involving orders from LL Bean   and Johnny's Selected Seeds.

In each case, their employees or their computer systems made minor, honest mistakes, which I contributed to by not being clear with what I wanted when doing business with them.

But in each case, when I called the companies to straighten things out, I was immediately connected to customer service representatives. I was not placed on hold, the people I talked to were pleasant, they straighted out the problem very quickly, apologized for any inconvenience, and even made up for things by offering a coupon.

You can bet I've since been back to the three firms to order or buy more stuff. And as you can see by what I just wrote, I'm not shy about telling people when I'm happy with a company that does a good job.

Too bad other companies can't take that lead.