“Hey, honey – let’s jump in the Subaru and head over to Eden Alley for some tomato bisque and a salad.”
“Mmmm! Be right there – just putting on my Plaza Body Armor.”

Doesn’t he have to commit seppuku or something?

Seriously… There are two things about Gates Barbeque that have always baffled me: 1) The greeting, “Hi, may I help you?” yelled in an ear-splitting, almost accusatory voice as soon as you enter the building (are you really supposed to know what you want that soon?), and 2) the lack of any apparent organization behind the counter, resulting in long waits in a crowded space next to the register. I love KC BBQ, but when deciding among the many great places to get it, Gates usually gets written off first when I remember these two irritations. It doesn’t seem like enjoying a good meal should require getting yelled at and then being asked to repeat your order several times.

Gates should take a hard look at, say, Oklahoma Joe’s, another busy BBQ joint, but where the line keeps moving because there is a smooth, well-conceived workflow behind the counter. Okie Joe’s is a much smaller operation, yet it has received national recognition, including the infamous eat-here-before-you-die endorsement from superstar chef Anthony Bourdain. Gates may have more commercial savvy and presence in supermarkets, but can’t really boast the same in terms of prestige. Hm, wonder why?

I dread having to go inside the Apple Store (doesn’t matter which one). But I needed an Apple product yesterday, and didn’t want to go online, pay shipping, and wait a few days for it to arrive. So I went, asked someone for help finding the item, and was told (snottily, like I’m supposed to know) that I have to talk to someone in a different-colored shirt for help. (Um, okay there, sport, I’ll play along.) So I did that. Then I was told I have to see yet someone else in order to buy the damn thing. Then that person said how I want to pay determines who handles the transaction and in what part of the store. (The people working the “Genius Bar” looked annoyed when I first approached them to pay for my item, on the assumption that the desk sure looked like a checkout stand.) Anyway, then they couldn’t tell where my receipt was supposed to have printed among the various receipt printers supposedly scattered throughout the store. The employee seemed to have trouble just finding one of those printers. So she dismissively said they’d just e-mail me a copy and walked off. ARE YOU SH*TTIN’ ME?? I’ve never seen a more disorganized, service-unfriendly operation.

The Apple Store is a textbook example of what can go wrong when the ethos of ‘think different’ is applied to running a storefront operation. Within Apple’s collective consciousness, the way they do business probably makes perfect sense. But from this customer’s perspective, it is wasteful and unintuitive. On my last visit, there was probably twice the number of employees the store really needed to handle an already high customer load. Why can’t someone with the expertise to answer technical questions also be the same person who quickly rings up a sale and (easily) locates my receipt? And why do patrons have to wander around like idiots trying to figure out how to pay for something when the only thing that remotely looks like the checkout stand is not the checkout stand?

This strange division and excess of labor might be easier to accept were it not for the attitude. Not at all unlike the stereotypical elitism of designer clothes salespeople, employees in the Apple Store have that same air about them: “I’m not sure you’re cool enough to own this.” Those two facts alone could easily account for Apple’s low market share just among personal computers. Not only are you paying more to support a bloated sales force and flashy, costly packaging, but you’re paying more just for an idea, that is, for the designer computing lifestyle you hope Apple might deign sell you.

“Whad’Ya Know” has to be the most intellectually vapid, pointless, and colossal waste of airtime on public radio. My friend Debbie put it simply enough, “There’s just. Nothing. There.” But she’s right; the show is two hours of Michael Feldman making smug replies to uninteresting guests and taking cheap shots at the audience members too dim to realize they are being made fun of. Ironically, I picture Feldman in high school as that smarmy suckup with a bad complexion who thinks people are actually laughing with him (picture the Upchuck character on MTV’s Daria). Anyway, even the angry wails of Womansong (airing the same time on KC’s other independent station) are less painful to listen to than Feldman’s attempts at humor.

Of course, if we’re just talking about individuals, it’s a tossup which public radio personality is more tragically unfunny, Feldman or Mo Rocca – a debate for another time, I suppose. Anyway, they’re playing “…Birth Control and Beer,” so I gotta go turn up the radio.