In this poor world there is a particularly nasty pestilence, which makes life almost impossible to stand. It is called rebate offers. I am not talking about the infernal but so transparent tricks, which are called partial rebates. Surely no one in his right mind saves and tries to use a rebate offer which gives him no more than 10-20% rebate on a product he did not want in the first place.
No I am talking about the full gift vouchers, this mortal poison in paper shape, which the devil must have invented a day when he had a particularly nasty hangover.
The company where I worked last year was haunted by the gift voucher demon, and every employee was given a voucher of 50 euro to be used only in some of the country's shop chains. When I say "given", I exaggerate of course. Each employee had to fight his way to get one, standing in line for about three quarters of an hour. Ironically, three quarters of an hour for 50 euro corresponds to the salary of some of the employees, but that did not deter them, as they already had been infected by the "free gift" virus.
You now ask yourself why on earth the company did not simply add 50 euro to everyone's salary for December as a Christmas bonus. Surely it would have been much more convenient and efficient to distribute, and surely the employees would appreciate getting money they could spend in any shop, instead of papers that only could be used in shops on a secret list of obscure chains. The company admittedly pays less for the vouchers than 50 euro, but the shop keepers would not sell them unless they would make a profit in the end with higher sales figures. So each employee gets less from a voucher than from cash.
There are two main reasons for the voucher.
The first one is that a Christmas bonus of 50 euro on your bank account would be such a ridiculously small amount, that people would not feel the warmth of the company's kindness.
The second one is that an evil demon had possessed the company management.
I am also possessed. Do not approach me, or I will spread the disease on to you.
A few weeks ago, I realised that the vouchers I had got last year were about to expire, so I had to spend them. Now! Otherwise I would loose money, and that, as everyone knows, is a sin.
I went to a nearby city to spend the money in the big department store there. Exceptionally the department store was closed, and so was everything else, due to a public holiday, so I had to take the train back home without having used my precious vouchers.
The following week, I went to the department store F, in my home town. I walked from department to department browsing shelf after shelf trying to find something, anything, which I actually wanted. It took me about an hour, before I had managed to pull together a small collection of objects which cost about 50 euro altogether. I did not actually want any of them, but they were things that I might use one day, like the SDCard I am storing this tale on. When I got to the counters and proudly produced my vouchers, I was met by friendly scorn by the clerk.
"We do not accept them, sir. I am sorry." He smiled his most evil smile as he said this.
Full of despair, I left the goods on the counter and left with my voucher.
I then spent another 30 minutes in the department store D, before I could get them to confirm that they would take the vouchers, if I only managed to find something to buy. I grabbed a tripod for my camera. I did not need it of course, but it happened to cost 49.90, and at the time the price was the only thing that mattered.
However, the curse of the vouchers persisted. I thought more and more about the things I had not bought in department store F, and the more I thought about them, the more I was absolutely convinced that I needed them. So the following week I bought them. Cash. Which of course is exactly what the evil genius who invented gift vouchers want you to do.
One of the cards I bought, a SanDisk Ultra II, which can be plugged directly in the computer without USB adapter, worked very well for at least three days. Then it died. I must have spent about two hours trying to revive it formatting it in different devices, cameras, PCs, Macs and always failing.
So today I went back to the department store F with the card and without the receipt, which I had looked for for an hour at home without finding it. Luckily department store F has an excellent computer system, and in less than 20 minutes they had recovered my receipt and printed a copy. Which I had to take the after-sales service on the fourth floor. The elevator came after five minutes. When I arrived at the fourth floor, I discovered that they had not actually given me the printed invoice, just shown it to me. So I took the elevator back down. It did not take many minutes before I was able to get the attention of the clerk, who had printed the invoice and within less than five minutes, she had also given it to me. The elevator was now full of a family with a pram and children who could not decide whether they should get out at the second floor or not, but after I politely kicked them out, I got to the fourth floor. After ten minutes I managed to catch a clerk and show him the non-working card. He took it suspiciously and tried it himself somewhere in an inner room. As far as I am concerned he may have tried it in a camera, a PDA, a PC and a pencil sharpener. He then looked up the receipt in his computer, shook his head, pressed a bunch of buttons, shook his head again, but this time with a glimmer of a smile on his lips and then he printed two new receipts and disappeared. Less than ten minutes later, he came back from the ground floor with a new card of this less than reliable kind. He proudly gave it to me and praised my good judgement in buying such an excellent product.
All in all, these free vouchers cost me 50 euro and three days of my life.
And on Monday I will stand in line to get the free vouchers for this Christmas 2006. Oh, I so wish there will be no Christmas 2007! I would not be able to afford the gifts I will receive.
2 December 2006
by Magnus Lewan