It's Christmas Time In Hollis, Queens...

So, I am currently enjoying my first delightful holiday season in the retail business.  Now, I love my job at bose, even if it isn't my chosen career path, but this shit is starting to burn me out.  I've come to the realization that Ipod is the bane of my existence.  We sell them to go with the SoundDock speaker packages we make.  Never in all of my years of dealing with human beings have I seen one person go up to a salesperson and essentially say "I don't know what this is, I don't know what it does, I have NO idea of the basic principles behind it's operation, but I NEED one, GIVE IT TO ME!!!"  I get the stupidest fucking questions regarding this thing... I swear.  For instance... the Wave music system, an item COMPLETELY unrelated to an ipod, I get questions like "Is this an Ipod?", "Can this be converted to an Ipod", and a myriad of other gems.

I actually got into a fight with this one dude the other day because he wanted to hook up his Ipod to a Wave.  I explained to him that this could be done but it would require the usage of a special adapter.  To which he asked "If I hook it up that way, is it going to sound as good as a CD" to which I responded, "The sound quality will only be as good as the MP3 you are playing, the connection has nothing to do with it."  At which point this Rhodes Scholar asks me "So, If I hook it up that way, is it going to sound as good as a CD"  I just lost my shit and said "You're comparing apples to oranges, CD's are one of the best sounding audio mediums commercially available right now.  The vast majority of MP3's sound little better than a cell phone.  So, in short answer, yes it might sound like crap, but that is the fault of the MP3, not the connection of the ipod to the system."  That shut him up, and clued me in that I should probably loosen my sphincter a little.

Yeah, another joy I encounter is people trying to pull off ridiculous things in the cheapest (and most incorrect) way possible.  This one couple were trying to do a Home theater system that supplied 2 extra rooms with sound, while still being able to accomplish 5.1 sound in the main room.  Now, that's not EXTREMELY easy to pull off, but with a little effort and a lot of money that can be done, and it has to be done right.  The only way to accomplish EVERYTHING they wanted without burning down their house would be first to get one of our complete Lifestyle systems and then running wire to seperate amps with speakers and remotes.  Now this would allow for 5.1 sound in the main room, and independantly controlled sound and music in the other two rooms.  But these people didn't want to hear anything about that.  No, these geniuses were going to start this undertaking off by buying in wall speakers for their secondary room (what they were planning to run it off of is beyond me).  At a later date they were going to buy a standard 5.1 reciever and then splice the speaker wire running off of the b channel so it would run to two different speakers... but of course, that would not allow for 5.1 surround sound at the same time.  And these people were dissappointed this course of action wasn't possible.  I just felt like grabbing them and saying "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO JURY RIG A FIVE THOUSAND DOLLAR SYSTEM OUT OF A BARGAIN BASEMENT SURROUND SOUND SYSTEM WITH BOOGERS AND DUCT TAPE!!!"  Meh... I also get the rocket scientists who think you're going to rig like twelve different rooms of speakers off of a Wave.  Christ people, it's a FRICKIN' clock radio... It's not going to power your entire house... Let me clue you in, if we made an amp that could power all those speakers and could fit in a wave... we wouldn't be making radios...

Whew... now I got all that off my chest I feel much better.  Besides all that pissing and moaning... stuff is pretty cool there, I get to play with a lot of cool shit... and it beats spearing chickens.