Service in Toronto

I'm calling it official today. The service in Toronto is horrible compared to the United States. The most frustrating run-in with bad service came today at Best Buy where I was trying to buy a new digital camera. First they were out of stock of the first 3 cameras I asked for. And when they told me they were out of stock, the guy helping me had a good chuckle each time I asked for another camera they were out of, or only had in pink. I finally got another salesperson who decided to sell me a pink camera, telling me it was red while I was in the store. So now I get to make a trip back to the mall tomorrow to take back my new pink camera. I've also experienced horrible service at the furniture store, book store, Starbucks, clothing stores, and quite a few restaurants. It seems that if you aren't dealing with the owner of the stores, you are dealing with horrible representatives of these corporate chains. Somehow these companies haven't gotten the store management and training together like they do in the United States. The workers here seem lazy, uncaring, and rude. I'm just shocked that these people are employed, and how consistent this level of service seems to be (again, excluding small shops where there are only a handful of employees). Comparing these employees to those I have met in the United States, Mexico, Taiwan, and the Caribean, Canadian service ranks at the bottom. Sorry Canada, but you need to train your employees to represent you with pride.

UPDATE: I learned something this weekend that helps explain the bad service at restaurants compared to the U.S. Apparently, service people must get paid minimum wage, even if they work on tips. This differs from the United States, where there is a different wage minimum when workers are making tips. Anyways, I still think management is horrible here in Canada. Come on let's get some service going eh?

Google Maps w/ Pictures

Hey everyone, I think I figured out how to use Google Maps with Picasa to create a map with my pictures on it.  Take a look.



View Toronto Pictures in a larger map

Eaton Center

Was just out running some errands tonight and snapped a picture of Eaton Center, which is supposed to be kind of like Times Square in New York.  There's a decent sized mall, a stage, and large tv screens and billboards in this one little intersection.  From that intersection in each direction there are lots of resteraunts and shops.  I'll go back and take a better picture (I'm just stopped in the car at a red light here).

I'm also experimenting with geo-tagging, so hopefully I'll be able to show you guys where this is on the map.  My hope is that as I take pictures of the city, I can add to a map I can share with everyone to fill in all of Toronto slowly.

Link to the picture of Eaton Center

Super Bowl....sort of....

First, congratulations to the New Orleans Saitns!  I was rooting for you, and I'm proud to see Drew Brees (from Austin, my hometown) do so well in such a huge game.  I went over to a friend's place here to watch the Super Bowl this year, and the first thing I noticed was the lack of fan fare at the grocery stores, TV, and bars.  Back in the US, there are always Super Bowl specials on chips, dip, bbq, lots of events at bars, and tons of TV commercials letting you to know to watch for their Super Bowl spots.  Which leads me to the biggest disappointment of this year's Super Bowl...THEY DON'T PLAY THE SAME COMMERCIALS DURING THE GAME!  Instead of getting all the best commercials of the year, I got to watch the same commercial telling me to watch the winter Olympics and buy a commemorative Olympics cup!  So some time this week I'll be watching all the commercials on YouTube just so I can talk to my friends back in the States about them, but it sure did change the momentum of watching the game too.  With Canadian commercials already being horrible compared to the ones I'm used to, it really brought down the excitement level during commercials.  Oh well, maybe they do hockey right, I guess I'll have to break down and catch a few games at some point....not any time soon though ;).

It's all about who you know

Hello again from Toronto,

I noticed another interesting side effect of the ubiquitous small vendors here in Toronto today...

So we ordered some lunch for the office today, but had run out of plates, which gave me the opportunity to experience another minor cultural difference in Toronto versus most of America due to the small vendors that exists everywhere here.  At the bottom of our office building is a small shop that serves coffee, pastries, and some lunch specials.  I have already noticed, a lot of resteraunts and cafes sell many convenince store type items, but today I tried to buy some paper plates from the vendor.  In America, I can imagine going to a lunch spot and asking for some raw materials and having the employee tell me they simply can't sell them to me.  Here though, I was talking to the owner of the store and was able to work out a reasonable price for some plates to get us through lunch.  But it made me realize, having so many small vendors run by their owners, there is an interesting dynamic which has been lost in America.  Here, like in Taiwan and many of the Asian countries, you get to make deals and get to know the owners of the shops.  I've already been given some free things here and there from getting to know the vendors around me, and like today have been able to make some odd requests that I would never even think about making in the United States.

In a time when things are becoming more impersonal with things such as automated toll roads, automated parking, vending machines, and internet purchases, I find this level of interaction with owners extremely refreshing.  There's also almost a whole other sense of currency you can use when you have personal relationships with the vendors.  The owners are continually trying to get to know you and to make sure you're happy to keep you as a regular (reminds me of the Cheers intro....where everyone knows your name).

Anyways, I will be testing this with other merchants here in Toronto and report what I find.  But so far, thumbs up to the local merchants.