mountain f(molehill)

I'm running the risk of turning this blog into a Festivus gumbo, one part Incompetent Absolutist Movie Reviews and two parts Ha Ha Ha Youz A Stupid Customer! Onward...

Panasonic makes televisions. They also make everything else, except for toothbrushes and dwarf pony saddles. Other than that, they have your ass covered. They make two kinds of televisions. One is called "LCD," the other is called "plasma." When combining the total number of television types made by Panasonic, one being LCD and the other being plasma, we arrive, after some serious squinting, at the number 2 or, written out, "two." Stop me if I'm going too fast. Are you at the age where you use your children as printer repair people? Yes? Then I am going too fast.
Okay. LCD stands for liquid crystal display, which sounds Super High Tech except that is it not because the Ironman watch you are either wearing right now or threw in your top drawer because it was a crappy present from an ungrateful relative, is made of the same technology. So, think of LCD as a really big digital watch, except that this watch is a lot bigger, plays tv and movies, and won't tell time or go on your wrist. Got it? No? Plasma televisions are made out of halogen light bulbs, and follow the First Rule of Jurassic Park Economic Thermodynamics: Heavy=Expensive. Ever picked up a single halogen light bulb? Not too heavy right? Okay, now a plasma TV has literally infinity billions of bulbs on the inside. If you tried to pick up a plasma using all your strength the force would blow your colon inside out and your feet would be driven so deep into the ground you'd be kicking Asians in the shins. You need at least two people to lift a plasma television, from Panasonic, one of two kinds of televisions produced by that company.

Television used to be like people, every single one was different (unless they are a different brand than you, then they're all the same), but then 9/11 changed everything. Today tv's (LCD+plasma=2(two) kinds) come in things called "models," because they're so attractive. Haaar! Actually, they're called models because each type is made to the same specifications and is expected to perform exactly the same for each customer. I'll say that again, with less words: each model is exactly the same. Can you hear me in the back? EACH MODEL IS EXACTLY THE SAME. Just the guys! EACH MODEL IS EXACTLY THE SAME!!! The kids in the front! EACH MODEL IS EXACTLY THE SAME!!! Now the women! I COULD COOK AND DO LAUNDRY AT THE SAME TIME IF YOU'D LET ME!!! Well, close enough...

A gentleman entered my department recently. I could tell this was going to be trouble; call me ambidextrous but I have a fifth sense for these kinds of things. He had purchased a Panasonic television from one of our competitors. Now, I'm not at liberty to discuss such matters with the public but I can say that it rhymes with Yuture Slop. He had questions about the functionality of his new television, and naturally went back to Queueture Flop to inquire further. Har! He came to us instead. We were able to confirm, eight times in total, that we did in fact have the same model using a little retail trick I learned. I'd like to pass it on, but...okay, you can keep a secret right? You take the model number of the customer's television, then hold it up next to the display model's price tag. Find the model number on the price tag, stare at it, then look at the customer's model number, then back at the price tag, then back at the customer's model number, back again, then again, and again, faster, Faster, FASTER until they start looking like the same thing. Now, this is crucial. If they do NOT look the same, if they aren't blurring together properly, then they are NOT THE SAME.

In this case, the numbers blurred together properly and we had an exact Television Model Coupling, meaning that the TNA was a positive match. Except there was a problem. You see, in the world of televisions and the stuff that goes through them, we are at the precipice of an enormous crossroad. Tv's used to look basically like squares, for every four inches horizontally there's three inches vertically. Now, boy howdy, have things changed. Not only has the resolution gone from around 200 lines of resolution to 1080, but the shape has actually changed. It's caused quite a ruckus in the thinking of conservative audience types, folks who think consarnit, mah pappy watchded tealo-vision on one a dem square boxes an' nat wud gud enuff fo him! It's not just the USS Enterprise from forty years ago that has a rectangle TV, now YOU can have one too! Instead of impotent, hamstrung, gutless 4:3 televisions we now have robust, virile, spleen-flexing 16:9 tv's! These are the kinds of tv's that, if you're not careful, will attack you on your own couch, leak excess telestosterone all over you and order you to make it a protein shake.

This shape-changing paradigm causes some problems. What if you were a total caveman, using your feet to drive your car and a hammer and chisel to drawn stickporn? By which I mean, what if you wanted to run a 4:3 source, like a tv show or VHS tape, on your 16:9 tv? Don't worry Amish, the Future has you covered with a wide array of zooming and stretching features, all designed to make the original source look like stomach tattoo on a pregnant chick. The Future is designed to make your current products Crappy Compatible (Crapatible, natch), rendering your entertainment lifestyle a model of syncronistic harmony. Until something goes wrong...

When comparing his own Panasonic to our floor model, the gentleman stumbled upon a shocking oversight: his tv was missing a feature found on the store model. I went into immediate Utopian damage control: "Sir, contrary to what you may believe, all the Panasonic PX-85's are equipped with the H-Fill zooming feature. There's simply no way your model is missing it for you see, Panasonic long ago perfected their Model Cloning Technique rendering the kind of individualism you're suggesting utterly impossible." I smiled blandly, indicating that he was foolish to belief that such a perfect system could be in any way flawed. He insisted, no, his was different, it wasn't the same as every other Panasonic PX-85! I increased Customer Patronizing Tone by 12% and tried again, still smiling. "I'm sorry sir, you must be mistaken. Perhaps you erred when reading the instructions, or were misusing the feature." He carried on, insisting his was unique, singular, special, all while his right hand rubbed his hairy sweating chest, picked his ear, then his nose, then grabbed a remote off the shelf and began clicking it frantically. I became worried at his increasingly loud outbursts and called for my supervisor. "Sir," my supervisor said, "You are mistaken. All the PX-85's are the same. They carry with them the same features, the same internal circuitry and as such are capable of reaching the same performance. To suggest otherwise would be...." he trailed off, unable to verbalize the implications of the alternative. The man wouldn't listen, he was lost in a state of panicking confusion. We realized we only had one option, for the betterment of the store, Panasonic and the man's very soul. I moved towards him, not too close because he smelled like old soup, and said calmly but urgently, in a low voice, "Sir, perhaps it would be best for you, for all of us, if you took your television back to Buture Glop and asked for an H-Fill infusion. They will understand." He looked at me, at my supervisor. We stared back, hard, hoping he'd come to his senses and take his television back for re-conditioning. He looked at the remote in his hand, which would soon be incinerated, slowly set it down on the shelf, and left.

We took a deep breath, fearful from the man's bizarre claim. After a while we were able to laugh, quietly at first but soon louder and with unrestrained jocularity. We told fellow employees who laughed, told others, and spread the story of the Crazy Man who though his TV was different. It was soon forgotten, filed away into the group's collective memory where lie all the crazy customer stories. Work went back to normal.

Yesterday, a woman came into work saying that her new plasma tv was missing a contrast setting, that she could only go from "Cinema" to "Vivid," and was supposed to have "Game" in between. I looked around, seeing if my supervisor was back from lunch yet. His absence confirmed, I looked the woman in the eye and said quietly, "Tell me more."