Comedy Demerits, and a More Pleasant Shopping Experience

I was inspired to come up with not one, but TWO fabulous concepts this weekend! This is rare, usually I think of something fabulous once, maybe twice per year. Not sure what's going on here.

Comedy Demerits: I'm still filling in some of the details, but let me know what you think of what I have so far. This was inspired by dinner with some family members this weekend, actually pre-dinner drinks at the bar with my brother and my dad. Anyway, one of those guys tried to be funny and failed miserably, don't remember who it was, and I thought that it was so bad that it deserved some kind of punishment. And so the comedy demerit concept was born. It doesn't sound too bad, but the idea is that if you earn enough of them, you are barred from being (intentionally) funny in public for a certain amount of time. For a demerit to be earned, there has to be some kind of consensus reached by the offended parties - offended parties being anyone unfortunate enough to be in earshot of said 'joke'. That way, demerits cannot be arbitrarily assigned by one person. Earn enough and that's it, you're officially not funny, and must remain in comedy seclusion for a yet-to-be-determined period, to reflect on the harm that you've caused. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm still working on the finer points, suggestions are welcome.

Hassle-Free Shopping: This one was inspired when Jenny and I ran into a Best Buy yesterday to pick up a gift for her nephew's 10th birthday. First of all, there's a salesperson in the games section, trying to convince Jenny to buy some contraption for the Game Boy Advance. Yes, that's how it always seems to work at Best Buy, an 'associate' is always there to try to sell you something you don't want (like the extended warranty) but never there to answer any questions you might have, which is just as well because I've actually oeverheard them make stuff up when they don't know the answer. But I digress...so after fending off the salesguy, we pick out a game and go to the register to pay for it. The guy at the register hits Jenny with the triumvirate - "Do you have a Rewards Zone card?", "Will you be using your Best Buy card today?", "With every purchase you can choose a subscription to either Entertainment Weekly or Sports Illustrated, are you interested?". What happened to just picking out what you want and buying it? Thus my second brilliant idea of the weekend was born, a new line of stores coming to your neighborhood soon, Leave-Me-the-Fuck-Alone Mart! The store name is subject to change, I'll admit it doesn't sound too friendly. But here's how it would work. You would walk in to the store, there would be employees in every department waiting to assist you. They would not be in their friend's department, chatting it up and ignoring customers, because my store would only hire people who have no friends. Not that it would matter, because employees at Leave-Me-the-Fuck-Alone Mart would not be allowed to speak unless spoken to by a customer. OK, maybe the check-out people could thank you and hope that you have a nice day when you're done paying - that's an appropriate sentiment - but that's it. There would be no store credit card, and we would NOT offer extended warranties on anything, even if the customer asked for one. Extended warranties are practically a scam, so we'd be saving customers from themselves. When a customer needs to return merchandise, we will exchange or refund immediately, without the customer having to give us all of their personal information and sign 3 different receipts. And there would be nobody greeting customers at the door; customers can greet each other if they're really dying for affirmation while they're out shopping.

That's all I've got so far. Hopefully next weekend will bear even more fantastic ideas! The odds are against that happening, but you never know.