Blacks Photography, 12:10pm. Lawrence and Yonge.
I bring my purchase of a battery charger up to the counter. The clerk scans the charger and then asks: “Your phone number?” His hands over over the keys in anticipation.
“I choose not to give it,” is my standard response. I don’t even give out my postal code if asked. If I’m challenged, I don’t give them my money. Plain and simple.
“We’ll need it for referencing your purchase if you need to return it,” he sputters upitty, as if I’ve just asked him to sodomize himself with his UPC scanner.
“You don’t keep records of the receipt numbers on your bills?”
“Oh all right,” he says and taps noisily into his cash keyboard.
I’m just as uppity, bitch, when it comes to dinner time and I’m interrupted by telemarketers.
8 thoughts on “No, You May Not Have It”
i thought all the scat freaks used polaroids. i can’t recall seeing any of that in my tenure there.
i still have some of the pics in a box under my bed.
Steven, I didn’t know you were a 6’5″,hair like David Sylvian post-Japan, screechy Miss Thing!
andrew, I too use to work at an Astral Photo while in school. We use to have three photo albums in the lab: hot guys, hot girls and weirdos. Astral photo labs was the first time I ever experience scat photos, long before stumbling around teh intertubes.
After you left, I went to the back room and cried.
confession: i used to work for that nasty company, back when i was a grub.
there’s only one reason to give your phone number, and that’s if you’re leaving film or camera equipment to be worked on. i was a lab guy and about one in every twenty people would forget about their pictures. of those, maybe one in five would not be reachable and we’d throw all the prints out after about six months. that led to hissy fits on occasion, which was always hilarious.
note: yes, we do look at all your pictures, and we dupe the funny/sexy/weird ones for our own collections. you have no privacy and you never really did (stick with digital unless you have a darkroom).
I once signed up for something with a fake name but my real address. I got spam mail with the fake name on it. I really should confront them with this, because I know exactly who sold my address without permission (Columbia House Canada; I’d recommend avoiding them, but really, you can get cheap stuff if you play it right).
Try this:
Clerk: Phone number?
Butch: 123-456…
Clerk: Come on.
Butch: What?
Clerk: That’s not your phone number.
Butch: Are you calling me a liar?
Clerk: Um…no.
I will give stores my postal code, but not my phone number. Oh, wait. Kitchen Stuff Plus at Yonge & Bloor has my phone number. I think I have some free frequent KSP dollars to spend there. Yay! Umbra frames!
I couldn’t care less what they need the info for, be it postal code or telephone number, like you I think it’s absolutely unnecessary info when you buy something… so I always give a fake, whatever letter/number combo that pops in…
As for telemarketers, I’ve started to say a while back:
Oh… he’s died, please don’t call back
or my favourite if it’s a bank:
Sure, I just declared bankruptcy a few weeks ago, I’d love a new credit card…
I figure, if they cannot ask for my name properly, if they ask for Mr or Mrs M Paquouettey, it comes from a purchased list and they have no clue anyway. I’ve also put a few of them on hold while I went to get Mr or Mrs M Paquouettey… they never called back either