Retail Hell Underground

Custy Responds To Walmart "Small Packages" Post

Target's Sandal Name Fail

From Huff Po: Target is planning to rename some shoes being sold on its website that are probably sending Spanish speakers the wrong message.

The store is currently selling at least four pairs of shoes entitled “orina,” which in Spanish means urine. And Target's not alone. Many other popular brands sell an “orina” shoe.

(Scroll down to see a photo of the shoes)

Target says it came up with the name for the shoes based on the Russian translation for the word, which means "peace" or "peaceful," according to ourbabyname.com. It's also used as a woman's name. The store became aware of the word's Spanish translation about a week ago, according to Jessica DeeDe, a spokesperson for Target.

"Realizing this name could be misinterpreted, we are taking steps to remove the name from the sandal," DeeDe told The Huffington Post.

Target isn’t the first company to sell a product with a name that doesn’t quite translate. In fact, the phenomenon is rather common. Ikea found that many of its product names translated to dirty phrases in Thai after the company hired translators to make sure its product names are appropriate, the Wall Street Journal reported in June.

Mondelez International, the name for Kraft Foods’ global snack business, closely resembles the term for an oral sex act in Russian, Crain’s Chicago Business reported last year. And when KFC first debuted in China, the fast food chain accidentally translated its famed slogan “finger-lickin’ good” into Chinese characters that meant “eat your fingers off,” according to Time.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

 

Amazon Attempts To Unload CD Albums

Virutal Currency Craze: Porsche Sells For 300 Bitcoins

From Huff Po: Somebody in Texas claims they just sold a Porsche for 300 bitcoins, the latest sign of a bitcoin bubble. Or the rise of our new bitcoin overlords.

An Austin family bragged Tuesday night that it had sold a 2007 Porsche Cayman S for 300 bitcoins, a virtual currency that has long been little more than a curiosity for financial reporters but is suddenly breaking into the broader consciousness, maybe just in time for the whole thing to go kablooey.

Rob Wile of Business Insider tracked the family down to verify their claim, and they showed him all sorts of official-looking documents they say are proof of the sale, which at the time was worth $39,000, or the book value of the Porsche.

The value of those bitcoins might be harder to pin down.

This week, the price of one bitcoin, a digital currency that is randomly generated, or "mined," by computers using DARPA levels of computing power, crossed $100, and the total value of bitcoins outstanding passed $1 billion. You may not be able to bounce a bitcoin into a cup of beer, but you can actually buy stuff with bitcoins, from participating vendors/pimps.

The value of bitcoins has risen tenfold since January, partly thanks to investors looking for a cash alternative amid the Cyprus meltdown and partly because of new federal regulations on virtual currencies that raised fears of government intervention but also gave the currency more legitimacy as real money. Bitcoins have also proven quite appealing to the crowd that expects Barack Hussein Obama to be rounding us all up into FEMA camps any day now, as Salon's Andrew Leonard noted recently.

But bitcoin is not going to supplant the dollar any time soon. After surging to a record high of $147 on Wednesday, the value of a bitcoin tumbled to $117 after a Japanese site called Mt. Gox, the biggest Bitcoin exchange, apparently struggled to keep up with a flurry of orders for bitcoin.

A bitcoin wallet service, Instawallet, shut down on Wednesday to better protect itself from hackers, who have recently hit Mt. Gox and the online payments site Dwolla with denial-of-service attacks.

And actually climbing on board the bitcoin train is kind of a hassle, as New York magazine's Kevin Roose found out recently when he set out to buy just one bitcoin.

A media frenzy has suddenly erupted, with mainstream news outlets scrambling to explain to people how bitcoins work and what they could mean (for arguably the best of the lot, see the one by Maria Bustillos in the New Yorker.

Media attention is never a good sign for a bubble.

Adding to the circus atmosphere, Business Insider honcho Henry Blodget tongue-in-cheekily raised his target price for bitcoins to $400 (echoes of his Amazon.com price target from his dot-com glory days). Blodget, who has called bitcoin the "perfect bubble," said that bitcoins could actually be worth $5,000, or $0, depending only on how much people are willing to pay for them.

Today, they're worth a Porsche. Tomorrow, maybe this guy's house in Canada, currently seeking bitcoins. The day after that? Who knows: Maybe 5,000 Dutch guilders, the price of tulip bulbs at their peak.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

 

Online Custy Review and Response

 

Online Dating Site in Czech Republic Uses Sex Doll In New Commercial

 

 

From Huff Po: Well, that was sufficiently creepy.

That isn't a short horror film or, as Buzzfeed describes, a "suicide PSA" above. It's actually a a commercial for Lidé, an online dating site in the Czech Republic. In it, a sex doll apparently "kills" herself after her lover (?) starts looking for love on the web, a plot that honestly wouldn't surprise us if it were made into an American movie. Come on, "Lars And The Real Girl" Part Two?

via www.huffingtonpost.com

 

 

What Amazon Suggests For Dating

 

Online Shopping Hell

 

Reinventing The Dildo

 

Tasty Turkey Titties!

 

There are no words *eyeroll*

Free Wii With Twinkies Purchase

Vocational School Hell

Okay RHU, Queer Geek to let everyone know I’m still on the job hunt. 

I haven’t thrown in the towel just yet.  So far I’ve got two interviews in another area of the retail hell field so hopefully one will pan out.  It’s good to know that I can still file unemployment and use the resources my taxes have paid into if I have to.  Believe me folks, I’m pimping myself out as best I can in this troubled economy.

For this post, I wanted to share something high-larious while I was doing the jobless thang.  After Big Fancy decided to lay me off, I was feeling sorry for myself for a few days that I kept looking into other possible options for the next phase in my life.  Then it hit me.  Vocational schools! 

You know the one where they advertised catchy slogans like “Do you want to learn pole dancing? Gun repair? Bernie Madoff Ponzi schemes?  Well you too can join the growing profession of students willing to be swindled into taking out billions of students loans into a career field that cannot guarantee job placement at Vocation College!”

Yes folks I almost went that route.   Here’s how it went down.  I was doing my usual filing my resume through various websites when one of the internet job sites popped a stupid browser window.  Now I should’ve known better than to fill out my personal info but according to the pop-up if I wanted to ACTUALLY get on the site, I would have to fill out my life history to bypass to the next step.  BIG MISTAKE.  The problem is that it generated to the vocational/training school network who immediately contacted me about various schools in my area.  My phone rings.

ME: Hello?

CALLER: Hello is this Queer Geek?  Queer Geek, this Joe Schmoe.  I work for Vocational Search Engine and we would like to connect you to several schools in your area.  It says here you are interested in the rewarding career in the health field.  Let me connect you…

ME: Wait…I just wanted information.

*Phone rings.* CALLER: Hello Queer Geek.  This Vocational School Number 1 and we would like to view the Power Point presentation on your e-mail.  See how wonderful our school is and tuition is a lot of money but don’t worry you can take out one of student loans.  Let me connect you to our enrollment and financial aid department…

ME: Can’t you just mail me the brochures?  I’m still trying to figure out my life right now.

CALLER:  Heaven’s no!  We want your money.  Let me connect you... *click*

I hang up the phone but not before the phone rings again.  Stupid me picks it up.

CALLER: Hello Queer Geek.  This Jane Doe from Vocational Christian School Number 2.  We want your money and want to tell you all the exciting classes and tuition fees as the Lord would have wanted.  Let’s connect you to our admissions and financial aid department.

ME: You do know I’m jobless and have no money right now?

CALLER: Just pray for the Lord and He will Giveth to You.  We have student loans that will pay for school as part of our Christian charity.  All we need to do is connect you to the right department…

ME: You do know that I like dudes, right?

CALLER: Ummm…uh…we’re not the right school for you.  I apologize that you going to burn in Hell. *Hangs up.*

I thought this was over.  Then suddenly, the phone rings again.

CALLER: Hello Queer Geek, this is Douche and I want to explain all about our exciting career school Vocational School Number 3…

ME: Look I appreciate you guys calling me.  Right now I’m weighing in my options so I can’t make any decisions right now.  Please just mail me your brochures and I will happily get in touch with your admissions office if I decide to go back to school.

CALLER: But that’s not how it works.  We want your money so we will harass you daily until you join of cult like Scientology.  Since you won’t join us now, we’ll call you tomorrow. *Hangs up.*

Sure enough, they did but I had a couple excuses up my sleeve.

CALLER: So Queer Geek have you made a decision on joining our school?

ME: You know I’m going to have to decline so you can take me off your calling list.

CALLER: What?  You’re unemployed.  What other options do you have?

ME: *lying* I’ve been offered a position elsewhere.  It is rather questionable depending on the illegality of it all but all I can say that I’m an avid smoker of the product and I’ll be involve with various groups of people in different degrees of undress.  It’s rather lucrative when you think about it as long as law enforcement does not get involved.

CALLER: Well I’m sorry we’ve wasted your time.  *Hangs up.*

In all seriousness folks, I finally told these vocational schools to stop calling me.  I’ve been doing some research and discovered that the real truth behind these institutions is that they make money through their astronomical student loans. 

In addition to that, the job market is saturated with medical assistants grads who can’t find employment due to the competitive nature of the field and the companies asking for one to two years of experience so the chances of finding a job is really slim.  Therefore, their advertising of guaranteed job placement is not true.  Also pay rate wise is no different than what you would be making full time in the retail hell industry so that is also a misnomer.

I then considered vocational nursing but I then I talked to my younger sister who is an RN and she beat the advice into me.  Don’t do it for the money.  Do it because you enjoy working and helping patients.  Also, you will be working with a lot of bodily fluids (and no this is not a porn set) so hopefully you have a strong stomach for this sort of thing. 

Hmmm, I have much to consider.

--Queer Geek

Target Online Merchandise Description Fail

 

 

Amazon Warehouse Hell

Let's hope they spent some money on air-conditioning this year.

 

 

Dollar Shave Club: F-ing Great Blades