I feel it’s a mainstay of any modern person’s holiday experience: returns. You asked for a medium, but need a small, or got a 38″ belt, but need the 34″. At least, that’s my story. As somebody interested in processes and corporate interactions (and making them better), I found two really obvious needs at two separate retailers this holiday season.

Problem one: American Apparel. They have nice products; they are well made, in America with supposedly sweat-shop free labor. “It’s consumption you can feel good about.” I asked for a blue velour top of theirs for Christmas. I got it, but it was a little too big. I decided to take it back to the local A.A. retail store that is ~1 mile from my home to get a small instead.

When I went in (with the receipt, by the way), the clerk told me they could not accept returns of products ordered through the website. “We’re two separate companies. We don’t take returns from the online store. They have to be sent back to the online store returns department.” Are you kidding? “Two separate companies?” WTF? But it gets better…

Today, I get an E-mail that my return has been received by the returns processing center. Rad. The disposition of my return? Backordered. The replacement item is backordered!?!? So let me get this straight: customers can’t return products ordered from the online store to the local retail store (even though every other store allows this), *and* they want me to waste my time, money and fuel sending something back to California (when they are probably going to send another back to my local store eventually to restock), *and* they are going to waste fuel, money and time of theirs sending me something (from California) I could have picked up less than one mile from my home? Wow. That’s a lot of inefficiencies–and it frustrates customers. Seems like a no-win on everybody’s part. The fix is really easy, too.

Problem two: maybe not really a problem, but it could be improved. The story is that I received a 38″ belt from Urban Outfitters for Christmas. I really needed the 34″ belt. I went to the local store and, unlike American Apparel, they accepted the return (without a receipt), and issued me a gift card. Fair enough. I then, conveniently, used this card online to order a replacement in the right size. So far my experience was great, except when I got the belt, it looked sort of “dead”.

Physically, it was in good shape–but it looked “manufactured” and untouched by any human. Intellectually, I think we all know the items we buy are not made just for us–but we like to think so. I think we all yearn for the sense that a product is perfect for (just) us and somehow “special”. That “necessary illusion” is broken when you receive merchandise with tracking barcodes and protective plastic wrappers still on them. When a company like Urban Outfitters tries so hard to make shopping an “experience” (in their retail stores), why do they break the experience this way? I guess the alternative is to remove the wrappers and risk damage during shipping, but how about tissue paper? Or branded wrapping? Isn’t consumption supposed to feel *good*?

This past weekend, Alex and I walked around Braddock, initially for a project of mine, and then just for fun. I wanted to capture a set of pictures of a train going by. The theory was this: wait for a train to go by, hold down the shutter release with the camera in continuous-shooting mode to capture the entire train. Lastly, stitch the images together using one of the many available panorama stitching tools out there (one great one is Calico, by the way).

To finish off that thread of discussion, it doesn’t work too well–the change in perspective as the train goes by makes it hard to stitch the pictures by hand, and all the automatic stitchers I tried are confused by the peripheral objects (e.g. the railroad crossing or a building in the frame) being in all the frames, in exactly the same place. When you run the photos through the stitcher, you just get a perfect “pile” of 150+ images, one on top of the other!

Anyway, back to Braddock, Alex and I walked along the railroad for a mile or two towards the USS plant. We found some interesting stuff, including waste products from a spoon stamping plant, probably being brought to Braddock for recycling at one of the many metal recycling places nearby. We also stopped by UPMC Braddock for a drink; there isn’t much else open for food on Braddock Ave.

At one point in our walk along the tracks, a truck from the Union Railroad maintenance-of-way department approached us. I totally thought they were going to ask us to leave. We were technically trespassing, after all. Instead, they just waved at us, and drove right by(!).

I’m convinced it was because Alex and I were walking together. My theory is that people are less likely to balk at what they probably see as “a typical couple having a romantic walk down the tracks”, opposed to, for instance, just me there to document the urban infrastructure. Maybe not, though. Braddock has a reputation for being “artist friendly” (the mayor is trying to encourage artists to move to Braddock). We were actually there to take photos of the infrastructure (*and* have a romantic walk down the tracks–at the same time!)

I see these trucks from AT Systems in and around Pittsburgh almost daily. They have, on the side of them, the slogan: “AT Systems. The system is the solution.” Here’s a picture from Flickr (not mine, by the way).

The slogan got me thinking about security. I suppose in the security business, the one thing that is a “solution” is not to make it impossible to steal–for you can’t really (ever) do that. Instead, the solution is to provide a certain amount of “transparency” and documentation if/when theft does occur in order to catch the thief. I’m assuming that’s what their slogan refers to–the “system” or process of documentation/chain of responsibility they have being the solution to keeping valuables safe in the face of risk of theft.