Edged in Blue

The RIAA has decided you’re a thief just for ripping a CD to put on your iPod. Never mind that Apple, Microsoft, and other download services have already come up with DRM schemes based on that very principle. No, the RIAA not only believes you’re a thief just for buying their product, they want to hack your computer in the name of the War on Terror.

So what do people think of an industry that prefers screwing its customers to finding a way to survive? Here’s a hint. The movie industry knows this this the future. That’s why there’s a writers’ strike. Wall Street analysts, however, can only shake their heads at the recording industry’s stupidity. (Scroll down. Warner Music gets a nice long rant.) As for the artists, they’ve pretty much stopped caring, a trend that started in 1999 when these guys turned their backs on even independent labels to survive.

My advice to the recording industry? Stop overcharging for CD’s. Stop harassing your few remaining customers. Stop committing acts of terrorism because some poor kid doesn’t want to support the coke habits of record company executives. Sooner or later, people will simply stop buying music that has anything to do with the major labels. But they will still buy music.

What makes you think there’s a shortage of music out there?

Then again, maybe there’s hope for you guys yet.

I’m not holding my breath.

So I vowed to kick the freelance writing career into high gear. I would finish reading Steve Brewer’s books over vacation to prep for an interview Jon Jordan asked me for in September. I would work on the new novel. I would open up my shiny new Writer’s Market and look for markets that would fund another drunken island-hopping spree in Lake Erie.

What’d I do?

Build web sites.

Yeah. Mike, Nerraux, you were right, You have to be insane to make this part of your freelance bag of tricks. Fortunately, no one has ever questioned my sanity. They just assume it’s not there.

In my own defense, though, I procrastinated on both sites.

Today, I sit on the couch, drink beer, and scratch myself while watching Battlestar Galactica: Razor on DVD.

The two worst jobs I ever had were a Burger King I worked at for about three weeks in 1985 and CompUSA. Looking back, Burger King was not nearly as bad, the bi-polar assistant manager with delusions of grandeur notwithstanding.

CompUSA? Well, let me put it this way. When I received my offer to come work for BigHugeCo, where I’d been laid off in 1997, I followed the Dotcom Boom mentality of “I need to think about it.” I thought about the more civilized work environment and 35% salary increase long enough to go buy a pair of dress shoes. Then I spent three weeks trying to get fired from CompUSA.

They wouldn’t bite.

Now comes word that CompUSA is closing its doors. Good riddance. In its heyday, CompUSA might have been geek central, the place to go when you wanted to build your own box instead of paying outrageous sums to Compaq, Dell, or Packard Bell for one. By 1998, when I worked for them, it had become a monument to customer abuse and employee discontent.

We are talking about a company that regularly put it’s customers on hold for 45 minutes and punished employees for clocking out one minute late. (”Overtime is not permitted nor tolerated at CompUSA” was the corporate mantra.) One coworker I know was asked to help the general manager use those new-fangled CD burner thangies in exchange for burning copies of any software off the shelf my coworker wanted.

Microsoft and Adobe got a little upset about that. So was the GM fired for allowing this? No, he fired my coworker. Within a month, 3/4 of the technicians had moved on to other, better-paying jobs with better work climates. Initech in Office Space would have been a major step up from there.

I left CompUSA for good on New Year’s Day, 1999, vowing never to return. And for the next seven years, I made good on that vow. When I finally did re-enter the store, searching for cheap speakers for laptop, I was shocked. While gone were Packard Bell, IBM, and most of the Compaqs, the store itself hadn’t changed at all. Well, yes, it did. I was the only customer in the place, and I still had to wait to get service.

There was no reason CompUSA couldn’t compete with Best Buy. While Best Buy has everything under one roof, CompUSA’s focus made it just geeky enough to find a niche. Instead, America’s one-time “Computer Superstore” had a cold corporate climate that inspired customer frustration and employee disloyalty to the point where some called it “CompUSSR.”