February 23, 2013
► A Service and Repair Report Card was received from Brian H. in Nashua, NH who had his salt chlorine generator repaired. He rated us Excellent on 16 points. “We’ve been doing business with Seasonal for twenty years and have had only positive experiences. Thank you!”
► Everything changes Sunday, 2/24: Advertising and weekly specials are: “Look at the Big Picture” Plus, A/G pools, patio furniture, pool tables, hot tubs, and bars all change too! The Game Table sale has ended, except for the floor models.
► The Lifetime Labor Warranty has been improved to make the extended discount 35% instead of 20%. We have also added storage charges and a minimum diagnostic fee for people who don’t pay to have something fixed, or who abandon their product.
► The Compressor Rental charge is now $39.99. This is the first increase in twenty years.
► Happy Birthday to Landon on February 23, and to Roz on March 2.
► Dennis has free tickets available to the Palace Theatre on 3/24/13 for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. These are front row tickets worth around $80 total, and include a free soft drink and coat check. If you would like them, please leave him a note with quantity desired, in his mailbox by 3/6/13. It is possible to exchange for a different date, but Dennis has to do it for you by 3/19, and you’ll probably miss the free soft drink.
► Thursday afternoon, there are four employee cars parked on the left, behind the big snow bank. There are only two parked on the right, where customers can see us: Landon and Stephanie. Landon is always in the best spot for visibility, on the far right. I just gave them both a $5 tip.
► From Anne-Marie: Just a reminder, when entering customers into RetailPro, please do not use dashes in the phone number. Just type in the 10-digit phone number without spaces, dashes, or parentheses. This allows you to be able to search the customer on a sales order or receipt by putting in their phone number instead of their name. Also, please do not use dashes in the addresses such as 10-B Luke Street – please enter as 10B Luke Street. If the same could be done on the Waterlab programs, that would be awesome, as it wouldn’t add so many duplicates to our mailing list to be sorted through.
► More News of the Weird: Obviously intense about potential child-trafficking, the government of Quebec, Canada, requires strict proof of a live birth, certified by a doctor or licensed midwife. However, the waiting list to hire either one is long, and Heather Mattingsly went with an unlicensed midwife, whose word the Directeur de l’etat civil declined to accept. Four months after the birth, the agency ordered Mattingsly to submit to a vaginal examination. After “calls from the media” (according to a Montreal Gazette report) persuaded the agency that such an exam was useless, it finally agreed, on Aug. 26, to grant a birth certificate if Mattingsly submitted a doctor-certified copy of her pre-birth ultrasound.
► Here’s and interesting exercise in ethics and marketing: Bob and Joe saw an ad in the Starkville Daily in Starkville, MS, and bought a mule for $100. The farmer agreed to deliver the mule the next day. The next morning, the farmer drove up and said, “Sorry fellows, I have some bad news, the mule died last night.” Curtis and Leroy replied, “Well, then just give us our money back.” The farmer said, “Can’t do that. I went and spent it already.” They said, “OK then, just bring us the dead mule.” The farmer asked, “What in the world ya’ll gonna do with a dead mule?” Curtis said, “We gonna raffle him off.” The farmer said, “You can’t raffle off a dead mule!” Leroy said, “We shore can! Heck, we don’t hafta tell nobody he’s dead!”
A couple of weeks later, the farmer ran into Curtis and Leroy at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store and asked, “What’d you fellers ever do with that dead mule?” They said, “We raffled him off like we said we wuz gonna do.” Leroy said, “Shucks, we sold 500 tickets fer two dollars apiece and made a profit of $998. The farmer said, “My Lord, didn’t anyone complain?” Curtis said, “Well, the feller who won got upset. So we gave him his two dollars back.” Curtis and Leroy now work for the government. They’re overseeing the Bailout and Stimulus Programs.