Turtlefoot Enterprises, Mach IV

It is one of those impossibly slow days where absolutely nothing is happening in a wealth-garnering sense. The weather is fairly nice, there are high school football and volleyball games which everyone is attending, and to top it off the week's releases are profoundly lackluster. Even the random traffic passing by on the highway before the store is minimal. As a result, Fernando has spent most of the day reading Fark and ruing the fact that the new vanilla-walnut flavored coffee creamer he procured about a week prior had not been the wisest of purchases.

The phone rings. Fernando jumps at the call because, hey, maybe this means he will lessen the deficit he will have incurred through having had the store open today! He looks at the caller ID.

Turtlefoot Enterprises. You never expect them.

“Okay, what did I do and to whom to deserve this?” Fernando asks aloud. No one is around to answer, for even his Guardian Spiders have gone off to the Land of the Unending Sleep. He sighs in resignation and meanders over to the phone, picking it up on the fourth ring.

“Hello, Dominion of Movies.”

“Hi, is this Fernando?” It's a new person, neither Kevin nor the sultry lass from before. This woman's voice is irrepressibly bubbly and chipper. It reminds Fernando vaguely of hearing Tara Strong in...well, just about any role she's ever voiced.

“This is he.”

“This is Nepal, calling from Turtlefoot Enterprises! How are you?”

Yes, yes, obligatory social niceties. “I'm well. Yourself?”

“I'm great! The weather is pretty nice here, how is it for you?”

Now for the small talk. Okay, not like there's much better to do. “Actually, it's been fairly bad. Lots of clouds and rain. Frost in the morning. Typical October weather, really.”

This does not dissuade Nepal's cheer. “Oh, that must be good for business! It's nice now that fall is here and summer is over! Kids are back in school, people want to stay inside now and have everything fall into place!”

“Well, if there's not a football game of the high school or professional variety, nor any other kind of sporting event, nor any other kind of event. Then things tend to fall into a different kind of place.”

“Oh, Fernando, I'm sorry to hear that!”

“What will be will be. One has minimal control over the choices others make in life.”

There's a brief moment of silence, perhaps as Nepal mulls over how to turn the conversation away from its headlong rush to the bottom of Bleakness Chasm and back on track to Positive Land. Surprisingly, this does not happen; instead she barges full-tilt into the sales part of her spiel. “Fernando, have you reconsidered signing up with Turtlefoot and getting your movie for much less than what you're paying now?”

“Sadly, I have not. The stars have not yet aligned.”

Finally, her facade of mirth cracks and allows a minute bit of frustration or disappointment to seep into her vocal tone. “Oh, well, we'll be in touch then down the road then. Have a good evening, Fernando!”

“And you as well.” Nepal hangs up.

So continues the Turtlefoot Saga.

Round Three: Fight!

Fernando was helping a customer when the phone rang. Since he couldn't very well ditch to check the caller ID, he scoops the phone from its cradle. “Hello, Dominion of Movies.”

“Yes, is this Fern?” It is a woman's voice, the kind of woman's voice which is heard in stereotypical noir scenes, sultry and ephemeral like wisps of jasmine-scented incense floating in a dimly lit room.
“May I ask who is calling?”
“This is Kuwait, calling from Turtlefoot Enterprises. We just thought we'd call and check in with you to see how things are going. Business is doing alright?”

Ah, Turtlefoot Enterprises. It had been nearly a year since Fernando had last bandied with them, but the contact-person at the time had been Supreme Salesman Kevin. Mild curiosity piqued as to why Fernando spoke with a sexy-voiced woman, but he was not so curious as to be baited into a conversation he didn't want to have. “Things are well enough. I shan't complain.”

“Well, good. That's good. The weather has been alright there?”
“The weather has been unseasonal here,” replies Fernando. “But, listen, I don't want to take up any more of your time. You still aren't a fit for me, so I'm still uninterested.”
“Oh, I understand. Well, if you change your mind you've got my number and you can give me a call most any time and I'd be glad to help.” Kuwait says this with a throaty chuckle.
“Excellent. Good day.” Fernando hangs up.
“Who was that?” asks the customer, one of Fernando's regulars.
“People trying to sell me something using a fun new tactic. Unfortunately for them, I had my emotional centers surgically removed so I am unaffected by appeals to my baser instincts.”

And so the communications freeze between the Dominion and Turtlefoot Enterprises resumed, only for it to break some time later like two horribly compatible people who only tolerate one another for the occasional sex-romp.

Da Update

Fernando's distributor sends him an email one day. It seems they are instituting a new credit card billing system and they need Fernando to resubmit his information for use in this new system. If he does not do this thing, his service could be interrupted and his orders could be tardy (which...yeah. Just yeah). At least this time it is done via computer and does not involve using the antiquated and tortuous technology called the fax machine.

So, Fernando follows the link in the email to the revamped but still unnavigable company website and meanders his way to the account profile setup. He fills in all the assorted fields, makes sure everything is correct, and clicks SUBMIT.

He is redirected to one of those “do not hit refresh” pages where a little curved arrow turns, letting him know that the company's servers are churning their silicon hearts out. After a few moments, Fernando is shunted to a different page. This one is blank but for some size 8 text which reads as follows:

“Your information has been submitted to our system however there was an error when attempting to add the card to your account management page An associate will review your information.“

God damn it, distributor. And hire some web designers who know what punctuation is, while you're at it.

Not This Poo Again

It's New Release Tuesday! The biggest Tuesday of the month, by far! Many anticipated titles, some of which Fernando has promised to set aside and reserve for customers who had asked. Titles like Paul and Jumping the Broom and Your Highness.

Titles which Fernando's distributor failed to get into his hands.

It has been whispered by some that Fernando is the sort to pride efficiency in his endeavors and belief in the inherent immutability and overall lack of trust in life. Fernando had held out a naïve hope that his distributor would evidence change after many spouted murmured words of apology and promises of reform. This obviously has not come to pass.

So now Fernando will be visiting Wal-Mart for some of his releases.

Persistence Is Not a Virtue

It's a rather cool, cloudy Thursday afternoon. Fernando is sipping from a freshly-filled water bottle. The phone rings.

Oh, goody. The rental distribution people from about three months ago. Fernando thought he was finished with them. But, business being business, Fernando cannot simply allow the phone to go unanswered. Dammit.

“Hello, Dominion of Movies.”
“Yeah, hi, Fern. It's me, Kevin, calling from Turtlefoot Enterprises. How are you?”
“I'm...fine.”
“Great. Let me tell you something, Fern, and I don't know if you've heard the news, but that thing that Netflix did the other day is just phenomenal. I couldn't believe it, and let me tell you that the phones have been ringing all day with video stores calling, letting us know that they need stock for the upcoming months. So many people have...they're just so upset over this that they've canceled their subscriptions entirely. And that's good news for people like you, because it means they've got nowhere else to go for the movies being released over the coming months. I mean...lemme ask you, Fern, you've got friends who use Netflix, right? Are they as upset about this as the people I know? I mean, come on, give people actual value for their money, right?”
“I guess so,” answers Fernando. He hears a faint inhalation as "Kevin" readies to continue his pitch. “But let me stop you so you won't waste any more of your time. I'm still not interested in what you guys have to offer.”
“But, Fern, tell me, how exactly this won't work out for you. The depth and breadth of titles we can offer has worked for so many of our customers and it can work for you, too.”
“Well, yeah. They're your customers. You provide them with that which they view as adequate value for their money. I would not receive an adequate value for my money, hence my disinterest.”
“Listen, Fern, I can give you references to a number of my clients. Ask them and I'm sure--”
“Sure they'll say marvelous things, yeah, I know. That's why you would mention these clients to me in the first place.”
“If you'll just help me out and tell me how it--”
“The plural of anecdote is not data. That's all the help I'm giving you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a store to run. Good day.”

Will Fernando experience a Round Three down the road?

Order Minimums

Fernando has had, as has been related, a number of snafus with his distributor as a result of their recent “corporate restructuring.” Fernando assumed these hiccups could be managed and worked around and that eventually things would settle down and normalcy will resume with everyone being happy.

Oh, Fernando. How silly and naïve you are.

Fernando's new releases were absent once again on this Tuesday and, in this case, Fernando had not even received the email stating his order had been processed and his account debited. Now that was bizarre, since he had at the very least received confirmation emails in the past. So he phoned the distributor and got hold of his account representative.

“Butcher and Clothier, this is Annie.”

“Yeah, hi, Annie. This is Fernando from the Dominion of Movies.”

“Oh, hi, Fernando! How are you?”

“Troubled, quite frankly. I don't have my releases for today and I have not even received the email I usually get letting me know my order has been processed. I'm calling to find out what my order's status is.”

“Okay, let me pull up your account and take a look....”

Annie taps away at her keyboard as Fernando waits. After a few moments, she says, “It seems your order has not yet been processed. It is set to be processed and delivered tomorrow.”

“Um. That doesn't really help me for today. Why the delay?”

“Let me check.” A brief pause. “It seems your order for this week was under the minimum.”

“Minimum? What's this about a minimum? There's never been a minimum before.”

“Well, this has been in place since February.”

Ah. That's when the much-lamented “restructuring” occurred. “I've never run into problems with order minimums before. Never. This week is considerably busier than ones in the past. I've got The Mechanic, The Rite, Roommate. Three weeks ago it was just filler crap like Sacrifice and Blood Out. There's no way that week met the minimum and this week doesn't.”

“It must have.” She says this in a neutral, matter-of-fact tone that suggests her interpretation of events is infallible.

So Fernando does what he does best: he finds concrete evidence to refute her blatantly incorrect statement. He digs about in his filing cabinet, retrieves his invoices from April, and fishes out the invoice in question. “I spent $109.37 that week. There is no way that my multiple copies of those three movies for this week come to less than $109.37, unless you guys have decided to start offering new DVD releases for less than $10 each.”

Faced with such irrefutable evidence, Annie can only respond, “I don't know what to say to that.”

Fernando sighs in consternation that she can't fess up to her mistake as Annie continues, “We'll also bundle in your movies for next week.”

“That in no way helps me with my lack of new releases for today.”

“I'm really sorry this happened. I'll make sure this doesn't happen again.”

“Please do so. I'll call you if any further issues crop up,” Fernando says with finality.

“Okay. Sorry again. Bye.”

“Good day.”

Fucking deplorable.

For Your Information

Continuing a train of thought from the previous update, Fernando's distribution company underwent some “internal restructuring” at the beginning of the year. Part of this restructuring was firing Fernando's old account manager, a wonderfully genial lady who'd been working there for at least fifteen years, and replacing her (and a number of others) with “new blood” in order to save money on salary and benefits, Fernando's cynicism presumes.

He's become convinced that they're doing it wrong because Fernando has suffered at least one semi-major fuck-up every month since February. Little things like competence go a long way to finding oneself in Fernando's good graces, and likewise failing at one's responsibilities goes a long way to finding oneself on Fernando's shit list. Perhaps the company is still being quite competently run, but Fernando's not seeing it from where he is situated. If he is being shunted to the bottom of the importance barrel because some more profitable location needs the copies Fernando would otherwise possess, that's fine; he owns a podunk video store in Podunksville, Podunkia. He doesn't for one second fault a company for trying to make money. That's what they're intended to do.

But he does fault a company when it completely ignores the needs of its patrons (provided, of course, they aren't deserving of such derision in the first place. Fernando can't think of anything he has done that might offend their sensibilities...except of course for this and other chronicles that he has shared with the world). Fernando likes making money just as much as his distributor, and if his means of income generation is negatively impacted to too great a degree he won't hesitate for one moment to seek out a way to recoup those financial losses. And if that requires no longer ordering Universal Studios videos from his distributor, so be it. One reaps what one sows.

Moral of the story: don't fail, and Fernando will have no problems with you.

Back-Order Woes

Fernando receives his ordered movies for May 3^rd, 2011, and sees listed on the invoice The Dilemma. Unfortunately for him, there are zero copies in the box and there is a big, fat 0 in the shipped items column. So Fernando does the business-responsible thing and fires off an email asking when he could expect to receive the copies he needs in order to appear competent at procuring inventory for his business.

“You should be getting them end of the week,” is the response Fernando received. Fernando is okay with this, and more importantly he is able to shunt the responsibility of film absence up onto the distributor's shoulders with promises of the film's arrival by Friday.

Friday arrives to a distinct lack of The Dilemma. Fernando shoots off another, somewhat less-polite email asking what the deal is. He receives an apologetic response promising—promising--that he'll have his movies come Tuesday. The blame for a lack of movies was placed upon Universal Studios' apparent inability to duplicate enough product to meet demand.

Well, whatever. Except, come the following Tuesday (today, by odd coincidence) when Fernando receives his movies for that week, there's still no The Dilemma. It is, however, listed and marked as still on back-order. So Fernando sends a third email, this one chock-full of snark, inquiring as to the status of his order and whether or not his Universal movies are still on perpetual back-order. He receives a prompt answer, and opens the email with bated breath to read...an automated response. Apparently his account manager at the distribution company decided to not be in the office today, but don't worry! She'll be back tomorrow!

It's cool, though. Fernando is probably going to start going out of his way to pick up Universal comedy releases from Wal-Mart so he can ensure he has the movies that he needs when he needs them.

On Bridge-Selling

One Wednesday afternoon Fernando found himself speaking on the phone with a representative from a movie distribution company, something of a coincidence seeing as Fernando's current distributor had just recently fucked up royally and managed to get him zero of the copies of Little Fockers he'd ordered, forcing him to pick them up at the local Wal-Mart.

This man took Fernando's meager abilities at salesmanship and pooped all over them. He knew his stuff. He mentioned things in the industry that only someone who had actually worked in the industry would know (as opposed to people who sit in a distribution office). Fernando wishes he had the sales chops this guy did. All in all, he did his job very admirably and sold Fernando on his company's business model, which he made sound as if it had been carved by Christopher Lee himself using a mithril chainsaw on a metric ton of unicorn butter.

But despite the man's overbearing charisma, Fernando is not an idiot. Anything that sounds too good to be true most often is.

So Fernando did some snooping on the internets and turned up some kernels of information that the nice salesman had neglected to mention during his piece. Like the fact that Fernando would have to pay a $40 per month subscription fee to use the company's services. Or that for Fernando to get the super-low prices he had been quoted he would need to order a great many movies...not aggregate, no, but from each distribution company. So he'd need a glut of Universal followed by a glut of Paramount followed by a glut of Lions Gate followed by a glut of Weinstein Brothers and so forth. The size and composition of Fernando's customer base is such that he has minimal use for a large variety of indie and foreign films or, conversely, twenty different copies of Black Swan or The Next Three Days. And this does not, of course, even touch on the logistics of inventory management in finding space for all these additional, mandatory films.

What peeved most Fernando is not the fact that these constraints existed so much as that they had been kept veiled and would likely have sprung up as an unpleasant surprise after a hypothetical contract signing had gone through. Of course, Fernando could always void the contract, but that would require him to pay, according to discussions of this company's business model that Fernando had espied online, $250 to the PoS (that's point-of-sale, you pottyminds...though the alternative expression is also rather apropos in this circumstance) software distributor to give him an alphanumeric code that would allow him to cancel his $40/month account. Rather shady, all told. But Fernando supposes that is what stellar salesmanship and burgeoning success in business is all about.

So when the gentleman called back the next week to attempt scheduling an in-person sit-down with one of his company's representatives, Fernando informed him that these services were not something in which he was interested at this time. The sales representative of course apologized and attempted to regain Fernando's trust by offering him “incentives” for keeping the company in mind, but Fernando did not allow his opinion to be swayed.

Fernando would rather deal with the occasional no-show movie, for which he is not charged, from his current distributor than sign on to a company set upon screwing its customers out of money through subscription and cancellation fees.

Packaging

Each week, Fernando has to, of course, saw through a number of plastic wrappers and security stickers and lord knows what else in order to move the enclosed plastic disc from one holder to another. In eighty percent of these cases, the process is straightforward and painless: a slide of the razor over the top to break the plastic seal and security sticker and then a quick one down the side to allow peeling of said plastic seal. Ten percent of the time there is no plastic seal, so Fernando just has to cut through security stickers. Five percent of the time there is the annoying double-security sticker that forces Fernando to make an extra cut along the bottom.

The remaining five percent of the time the packaging of the movies in question is so godawful moronic that it defies logic and should require whoever came up with said packaging to take a remedial course in packaging at Michigan State University (no, f'real, they offer a major in packaging).

The worst offenders are “beyond big hit” titles. Things like the Twilight movies, which have a wrapper surrounding the paper sleeve that holds a fold-out house with its own plastic wrapper and security stickers. Sometimes there are flaps of paper attached to the inner moviehouse by some sticky-tac.

Fernando thought he had seen them all. But then came The Social Network.

Imagine, if you will, a rectangular box. This box has a plastic wrapper around it, and has inside of it a slide-out smaller container that holds the actual DVDs. The wrapper is cut through and it turns out the image on the front of the package is not painted onto the package, no, but is a U-shaped piece of paper that is actually not attached to the package proper at all. And, yet, this piece of paper is the only object that provides any obvious clue as to what the contents of the inner box are.

Fernando wonders if Mark Zuckerberg perhaps had a say in how the film of his life story would be packaged, but then remembers that the case has something resembling privacy settings.

Riding the Delivery Truck to Hell

Fernando's distributor is, for the most part, fairly competent. Once in a while it provides him with irksome snafus, but overall Fernando is pleased with his video source choice. Fernando's distributor's parcel delivery service, however, leaves much to be desired.

See, Fernando's distributor has a reciprocal deal with said parcel service in that the former gets reduced shipment rates on their orders while the latter is the exclusive means of delivery. This is great for the both of them, but it occasionally leaves Fernando hanging not unlike a kitten dangling so cutely and helplessly from a tree branch. Because said parcel service has, put mildly, a great potential for ineptitude in delivering that which Fernando most needs (namely, his weekly releases) in a timely manner, it is inevitable that Fernando will not actually receive his weekly releases in said timely manner on occasion. And when Fernando lacks weekly releases to be rented by his loyal customers, it becomes more difficult for him to accomplish such minuscule tasks as paying for electricity and water, making payments on his debt, and having what passes for spending money so he can buy himself nice things once in a blue moon.

Fortunately, there exist tracking codes that tell Fernando exactly how delayed his movies are so he can damage control as much as possible at the Dominion when the hammer inevitably drops. Sometimes they linger in Illinois or South Carolina or New Jersey (why they would choose to linger there is another mystery), or are en route and will be delivered between 3 and 5 PM, which is marvelous as tardiness is far preferable to outright absence. Today, however, Fernando's movies decided to languish in the closest largeish settlement to Fernando, a scant twenty-three miles to the east. Estimated delivery date? Wednesday.

Fernando does not know whether he should be selfish and feel morose over his own slightly depressed income or sad for his customers because they are forced to wait a day to enjoy such theatrical marvels as The Karate Kid or Human Centipede.