Bistreem, P.I.

Today, I got to play detective. Yes, I donned my best trench-coat, gulped down a couple of shots of whiskey, lit up a cigarette and - following the half hour of intense and painful coughing and nausea due to me not being a smoker - hit the dark, rainy streets of Oslo to embark on my crusade against evil in the brutal world of musical instrument retail; to thwart the plans of evildoers, rescue damsels in distress and fire off a seemingly endless line of witty one-liners. Action! Thrills! Mystery! Dames! All this and more in this edition of Daring Tales of Musical Detectives (only $0.59)!

Ok, so all that was blown slightly out of proportion there, but I DID get to help thwart (oh, how I love that word... thwart!) an attempted fraud. Which is good enough for me, really - all the excitement of detective work while safely seated in your office chair.

Anyway, this morning at work I got a call from KLM - the airline company - regarding an insurance claim from one of their customers. This fellow (I will refrain from mentioning nationality, seeing as that part of the world is getting enough bad press as it is) was demanding reimbursement for damages his instruments had suffered during a trip with KLM, and had produced a paper of certification of inspection of these damages by a retailer/workshop here in Oslo. However, the store that he claimed had written this paper had our name, but a different store's address, no VAT number and no phone number, and thus Maria - the Danish customer care person handling the case, who was trying to solve this from her office in Amsterdam and having a great deal of trouble doing so (thus qualifying for the damsel in distress part, I suppose) - had found our website and phone number, and called to ask if we had written this paper.

Since we occasionally do write these papers for customers, I had her fax me the papers she had gotten from the customer so that I could look into it. I must say, the scam artists of today do put a lot of work in their... paperwork. The papers themselves looked pretty good (complete with dates, names and signatures, it was even stamped) until inspected a bit more closely, revealing a less then stellar grasp of written English (even by Norwegian standards), and a non-existing company name (as mentioned earlier, it had our company name, but the address of another store).

I thought I'd give the guy the benefit of the doubt, so I gave the other store a call - knowing they do repairs for these kinds of instruments - to check if they'd had a look at the instruments mentioned and written the document for the guy. Indeed he HAD visited their workshop to get such a paper documenting the extent of damages to his instruments, but he hadn't actually brought any instruments to the store, and they had refused to write such a paper without actually SEEING the instruments first. Basically they'd sent him off to another store, and not given it any more thought until today. They weren't too happy to hear about this incident, and since one of their employees was one of the three people mentioned in the paper and who had allegedly signed it (name and signature was there), I faxed them a copy of the papers as well. Document fraud is punishable by law in Norway just as in most other countries, so they would look into pressing charges - even if the chances of locating this individual (he was not registered at the home address given - yeah, I checked the phone book) are less than very, very slim.

I called Maria back to let her know about my "investigations", gave her the other store's phone- and fax numbers and told her that we all thought this sounded like a big, fat fraud. She was extremely grateful for the help and even asked if there was ANYTHING she could do in return - being the gentleman that I am (*cough*), I told her it was my pleasure and also in our interest to stop frauds like these from happening.

Of course, in retrospect I kinda regret not asking for a discount on my next flight (my girlfriend's family lives outside of Norway and we travel with KLM when we go to visit them), but then I again, a hero never asks for payment, right?

I'm planning on going to work with a big red "B" on my chest tomorrow...

Low fidelity, high noise

Ever had one of those days when you feel like everything moves past you at lightening speed, that whenever you turn around there's a new task at hand, that for every phone-call you answer there are two more on hold, that for every form you archive there are ten more waiting to be reviewed? That you're working your butt off, sweating blood and tears, and that everyone just takes you for granted? That you're the only one who can answer the questions about how this and that product works, why there are items missing from the latest product delivery, why the server is down and how to use the credit card terminal? That the blood in your veins are 75% caffeine, that someone stole your lunch from the fridge (again) and that your boss just asked you to work overtime this weekend?

And when the day is over, and you leave your underpaid work (for which you are highly overqualified, of course) and return home to find that the only energy you have left barely lets you collapse on your coach in front of the TV/computer screen, only to doze of a few minutes later and wake up in the middle of the night, realizing you have to leave for work again in a couple of hours?

By Grapthar's Hammer, I'm glad I don't have a job like that!

Here, on the other hand, are some of the interesting characters you meet in my line of work (musical instrument sales):

• The Auditionist: Enters the store at opening hours, finds himself (or rarely: herself) a chair and a guitar, and starts playing. Sometimes, they'll sing, too. Loudly. Not that I have anything against Creedence Clearwater Revival, but once you've heard "Rolling On The River" performed on an out of tune guitar by someone whose voice have a strong crow-like quality, it loses some of its charm.
• The Worried Parent: While I can understand that buying a guitar/keyboard/kazoo for their child prodigy may be an arduous task, and that every musical instrument salesman (in their eyes) is as trustworthy as a used car salesman and only out to rob you of your hard-earned money (probably earned in a job as described in the opening paragraph of this blog entry), I do find it tiresome to be labeled as a jerk for not giving them a 30% discount on their high-quality 99$ beginner's instrument.
• The Hardcore Haggler: Look, I know there is some kind of unwritten rule that you're supposed to haggle in a musical instrument store - heck, I'll even play along if there's the possibility for a sale in the horizon - but asking for a 50% discount because you bought your first guitar in the store 20 years ago is a little far-fetched and shows a disturbing lack of understanding about our mark-ups and the inner workings of a store. You know, actually making money off the products you sell and stuff?
• The Manual-thrower: Manuals are scary things. Not only do they accurately describe the functionality and operation of that high-tech thingamajig you just unwrapped, it also contains wise words regarding the dos and don'ts of said thingamajig. So, while I am happy to explain to you that lowering your newly acquired gizmo into an acid bath may not be the best way of treating it, and yes - it will probably stop working if you do so, I do not have to listen to your complains about the product's failure to comply to your rigid quality expectations. It's a microphone. You plug it in. You sing. If your voice sounds horrible, it may have something to do with your voice, or the fact that you just put it in an acid bath.
  

Note: this is all written with tongue firmly in cheek. If you have ever bought an instrument from me and feel hurt by this, please let me know and I'll throw in a free kazoo the next time you buy some strings or a cable (it's hard enough to get rid of the blasted things as it is).