Tuesday, June 15, 2010

world cup fever!

i don't know a lot about soccer. everything i know, i learned from bend it like beckham. but what i do know, is i love the world cup! well, i actually really love major sporting events: the olympics, the world cup, the world series, stanley cup finals, i'm even watching the nba finals (and i know even less about basketball). when i can't watch the game, i am consistently checking my phone for updates. i even woke up early this morning just to watch a game. but why? why would i wake up  to watch a game i don't fully understand? the world cup doesn't frequently come up in my conversations, so i don't need it to be relevant. i think it's because i love sports and what sports can do. the world cup not only brings together people from all over the world but it is able to unite countries despite any internal turmoil. my love for the cup has less to do with soccer and more to do with rooting for the underdog, the potential feel-good sports story...and rooting for USA.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

the end of an era

today i had to say goodbye to a part of my childhood. my cherished aim screen-name. even though i haven't used it in years, i never planned on ever deleting it.unfortunately a  spam hacker took over and started spamming the world and my address book (sorry yall). i will cherish my aim memories such as bsb chatrooms and 6th grade chats where i first discovered learned about PEN15.  i will never forget that one time when my class's foreign exchange student asked me to the school dance but i read it too late. i'll miss those seventeen magazine emails i used to get and that missy elliot chime. bye bye hockeyprincess. bye bye.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

PSA: Never shop at ULTA in fairlakes!

It really takes a lot to to make my blood really boil. I have had some pretty annoying shopping experiences but nothing bad enough to warrant a complaint email. Unfortunately, on this splendid Mother's Day, this has changed.

First of all, as someone who studied retail and consumer behavior at Wharton, the top business school in the country, I learned that negative consumer experiences can turn a person off from a company for life! They will tell more people about a negative shopping experience than a positive. And it is more expensive to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. As someone who has worked in retail, in both beauty and fashion, I have been trained to NEVER yell at a customer, no matter what the situation is.

So, today, my mother and I went to Ulta to do some shopping. I was looking to pick up some Smashbox primer and a nude nail polish and she was looking for a Bare Esentuals kit she saw in our Ulta flyer. After one sales associate helped us find the kit my mother was looking for, we went to look for nail polishes. I thought I found the perfect one by Essie so I tried it. That's when this little blonde comes up to me and instead of politely informing me of their "do not try" policy, berates me!  She yelled: MA'AM YOU CAN NOT TRY OUR NAIL POLISHES BECAUSE OF HYGIENE NOW YOU HAVE TO BUY IT! I replied, Excuse me, that is not posted anywhere. I was completely taken aback by how absolutely rude she was to me and the fact that she was not yelling at the other woman looking at the OPI nail-polishes a yard and a half away. She continues to accost me by saying: I CAN'T POST SIGNS YOU HAVE TO TEST COLORS ON THE PAPER. I replied, What papers? There were not any papers in sight. She proceeds to go into the cash-wrap and aggressively hand me a paper to test it on but says YOU HAVE TO BUY IT! My mom, fed up, said: You can not just talk to my daughter like that. I want to talk to your manager. She says: I AM THE MANAGER! That's when my mom starts to get into it with her and I just think, oh who is this bitch?!

I don't know if it's in Ulta's training manual to just automatically accost customers when they make a mistake. The matter of the fact is, if she had pointed out the policy to me in a polite manner I would have been fine. I would have even purchased said nail polish. But no, this bitchy manager decided that she would try and bully the ethnic girl. I never cry racism but I did not see her go after anyone else in that nail section and I know they weren't trying polish on any paper either.

We did not buy anything today from Ulta. Instead we went to Sephora in FairOaks where the customer service was excellent and there were testers to use. After years and hundreds of dollars, we will never return to that Ulta store again! Whether we will boycott the entire company, is yet to be determined. But I would never treat a customer the way I was treated and will not shop at an establishment that treats me with such disregard.

 oh hell no,ULTA