Saturday Scribbling: Commercemas Tip for the Disenfranchised, A Major Difference Between the US and Canada, and Ice Scraper Marketing

I’ve decided to kick this Saturday Scribbling post off by trying to help those of you out there who, like me, are completely sick of the whole Commercemas thing and wish it would just go away and die already (not that it’ll ever happen, but a guy can hope, can’t he?)

The trick to getting Christmas out of your system and moving on is to do as many of your gift exchanges and parties as early as you can possibly do them (ideally, before Christmas Day). Go to whatever parties you absolutely have to go to before Christmas (and of course, duck the ones you can get away with ducking); exchange whatever gifts you can beforehand; and just try to do as much of the Commercemas stuff as you possibly can to get it over with.

I did that this year, partly by design and partly by accident, and ias a result, I was able to do my own thing and work (for the most part) while everyone else did their Christmas thing. I had done all but one Christmas-related thing by December 22, and as a result it was the best I’ve felt about a Christmas holiday in at least the past 10 years, just because I didn’t have to think about it anymore.

You won’t have to shop on December 24 with the rest of the idiots (not that I’ve ever done that anyway; I’m usually done the vast majority of my shopping by December 1st and usually pick a quiet afternoon during the week and load up a Wal-Mart cart in 1 hour or less).
You won’t have to think about whether or not someone’s going to get you something you do or don’t want (you’ll already know.)
You’ll have done all the silly useless parties (there’s one client party and one quiet get-together with a client that I actually enjoy at this time of year, but the rest of them are a complete waste of time).

You’re done. You’re free of all the idiotic worries that everyone goes through the last few days before Commercemas. You can focus on other stuff. Trust me; if you hate Commercemas, this helps. You can thank me December 25, 2008.

And on that note, let’s segué into…

A Major Difference Between The United States and Canada

On Boxing Day, I had some work to do for a client of mine that required the use of Authorize.Net payment processing services (more on Authorize.Net in a future post, hopefully). Since I’m Canadian and Authorize.Net primarily offers their services to the US market, I had never used Authorize.Net before, I have worked with five other payment processors in the past, so I at least have some experience with how to set up most of the aspects of an e-commerce website; the one variable in this equation was that I had never worked with Authorize.Net’s API.

As a result, I got stuck at the point where information is returned from the payment processor to the site I was working on. It wasn’t anything too significant or serious, but it was enough that I needed a little bit of help. I engaged in a live chat with a “Joe C”, who proceeded to assist me just enough over a 10-minute live chat session so that I could get to the answer I wanted and continue on my merry little way.

At first, I was impressed with the level of service I had received. I had a question, and I received an answer. That’s all I ever expect from a support rep; I don’t even have to be given a direct answer, as long as I get enough information to find the answer I want. I’m really not that hard to please that way, and I don’t ask for help all that much.

Those of you from the US are probably pretty confused at this point and wondering, “so what? That’s what a tech support guy is supposed to do; provide support for a problem.” If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re dead right, and therein lies the deeper point: I would never have gotten the answer from a Canadian company that quickly, if at all. There are three major factors that would have held me up in this regard:

1. The observance of Boxing Day as a non-retail statutory holiday throughout most of Canada. If a non-retail company (e.g. an ISP) is even open throughout Boxing Day, the company is operating with a skeleton crew at best and is unlikely to have a member on staff qualified enough to answer questions of a non-routine nature.
2. Christmas has all but metamorphosized into a week-and-a-half-long holiday. A frighteningly high percentage of businesses elected to close their doors from December 24 to January 1 inclusive, effectively giving workers a holiday from December 21 to January 2. Industrial and business-to-business areas of the Greater Toronto Area are practically deserted, and have been for at least the past week.
3. December/January hibernation. Even after January 2, most people who return to the workforce do so as if they have just woken up from a very long nap…or perhaps a severe Christmas hangover. As a result, the workforce is still half-asleep and never seems to fully wake up until sometime in the middle of January.

In the United States, you treat Christmas for what it is: a day off. Around here, it’s an excuse to roll up in a blanket and watch reruns. There’s a serious problem with work ethic in Canada, and no one’s talking about it yet.

Ice Scraper Marketing

The headlight on my car burnt out last Friday, so I decided to use a part of Commercemas Eve to go get it fixed, figuring there probably would be a lot more last-minute shoppers than there would be people wanting repairs done on their car (side note/tip for everyone: not true, although I only had to wait about an hour.) I went to pay for the headlight and was surprised to receive the ice scraper below from my friendly neighborhood Canadian Tire cashier.

Take a look at the ice scraper, and see if anything strange strikes you about the message on it:

What a lovely message, isn’t it? “Welcome to our smoke-free car!”, brought to you by the genius 6-figure civil servants at Smoke Free Ontario. People are going to see that ice scraper in my car, and they’re going to be so impressed by the message that they’re never going to smoke again! Happy days are here again!

Oh wait…I, like most people, keep my ice scraper in the trunk of my car. I drive a hatchback and have intentionally removed the piece of my hatch which keeps people from looking into the trunk from my backseat; this was necessary because I haul a lot of computer parts and other things in and out of my car. Nevertheless, no one’s looking in the trunk of my car besides me, and I suspect most of you are the same way. Even if the ice scraper isn’t in your trunk, you probably keep it under one of your seats or somewhere else that no one would ever see it.

But wait…what happens when you take the ice scraper out of your trunk? People will see it then, right?

Wrong.

Anyone that has ever lived in Canada knows that Canadian winters require the use of gloves that are only slightly smaller than catchers’ mitts and that would cover up the handle of the ice scraper, thus blocking any possibility of anyone viewing the message; not that it would matter, since anyone who would view the message would have to be on the outside of the car, since the more observant of you would have noticed the message is on the outside of the handle, not the inside.

If smoking in the car is a really big deal, either don’t have people in your car that smoke or do what I do with all of my cars and remove the ashtrays. That’s a lot more effective than some stupid ice scraper.

Permalink

Bookmark This Post