Octopus

Tourism Season

2008-08-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought Eastern Washington would be such a hot tourist destination. Sure, we have wonderful sunny summer weather, an amazing river and a truly incredible park system. There are also great wineries and some fabulous restaurants. (Check out Olympic Blue in Kennewick for some of the Northwest's Finest.) So, maybe it is not unreasonable to have a lot of tourists showing up to visit. It's just that lately it seems to be a little over the top.
Here at The Octopus' Garden we are used to having a stream of tourists come through our doors. It is the sort of thing you expect after being Eastern Washington's Number One Tourist Destination for the last 57 years straight, but this year has been something else.
Australia? The Netherlands? Walla Walla? These are the crazy exotic locales people have come from in just the last couple of weeks.
Things have become so bad that we were told by a local friend that she has not come in lately, because things have been so busy. As you might expect, this concerned us.
We thought about it and talked it through and came to a conclusion. Her problem was not so much that we were busy as much as it was the fact she felt a little out of place among the throngs of tourists. As part of our ongoing effort to provide amazing customer service without putting a whole lot of effort into it - we came up with a solution.
We are going to start offering free after hours classes to locals. These classes will teach them how to blend in with our growing stream of overseas tourists.
Lessons will cover: Fake Accents We Have Learned From Watching Cartoons, Airport and Travel Stories to Memorize and Retell, Strange Native Dishes Which May or May Not Exist But Are Really Fun Describe, and Details on Signing Up for Your Free But Incredibly Valuable Tri Cities Tourism Passport.
Classes are free, but filling up fast.

Extra Credit

2008-08-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

My brother is a great guy. He took the time to show me how I could easily set up a blog - this blog. He also teaches computer science at the local community college.
When he teaches he is fond of using real life examples to illustrate his points.
It has occurred to me that in the near future he may steer his students into checking out this blog as an example of something so easy to do even I could do it.
So, here is what I am thinking. If you have been directed to read this blog as part of a computer science class, you should print out the following statement and turn it in to your teacher:

Any teacher assigning this blog as an example to a class agrees to award copious extra credit to any student turning in a hard copy of this statement.

I'm no lawyer, but I am pretty sure that this is going to work. Good luck with the rest of the class.

Viral Marketing

2008-07-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

At The Octopus' Garden we take pride in being on the cutting edge of marketing technology. Oh sure, our website isn't really up and running. (Despite all of the requests flooding in from all over the world.) And we are still trying to figure out what POS system to use in the store. Oh, and the computer we use is so old (in computer years) that technically hip customers and young children laugh at us when they spot it.
Nonetheless, nevertheless, nevermore (And other compound words in the same progression.) we are on the cutting edge of marketing technology. How many other small town gift stores have their own viral marketing campaign? None, that's how many. Or at least not a lot that we are aware of. So, Octopus' Garden = cutting edge.
Even if other small gift stores are involved in some sort of viral marketing, we have been assured that we will "own" the biggest, most visible campaign. By next season everyone will be talking about The Octopus' Garden. If you are a marketing genius, you may have guessed what our campaign is going to be.
That's right - we bought the naming rights to next year's flu season!
Think about it! Every time someone has sore joints, a fever or gastrointestinal distress they are going to hear our name. And more likely than not they are going to hear our name from a trusted authority figure, a doctor! Does marketing get any better than this?
We have made a huge investment in this campaign. As a matter of fact, we sort of committed more money than we actually have on hand. Sure, we are going to have to cut a few corners to make ends meet, but it is going to be worth it when everyone is out getting inoculated against The Octopus' Garden.

What Reporters Should Say

2008-07-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

We had a call from someone identifying themselves as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times today.
We were so busy trying to figure out which one of our friends was pretending to be a reporter from the Los Angeles Times and what sort of joke they were trying to pull, that we really didn't have time to think up great answers to the perfectly legitimate questions being asked by the apparently real reporter.
So, we would just like to suggest that when reporters call someone they might want to say something like this, "Hello, this is Bob Smith. I am a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and not one of your friends setting you up for a joke."
See, had we known right up front that the whole thing was real - we would have found some way to work in the fact that we are Eastern Washington's Number One Tourist Destination. So, instead of having a chance to get in a perfectly fine, self-serving plug we only answered his questions. How much fun is that?

Those Phone Calls

2008-07-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

We are receiving an increasing number of spam phone calls at the business. The telephone rings, you answer it and a recorded message starts telling you about business credit opportunities, or available loans, or Credit Card processing. You have to wait for the entire message to play out before being given an option to be on their do not call list. For a while we would enter the number indicating an interest in the service and then tell the person answering to take us off their call list. This wasted some of their time for wasting ours, but not nearly enough to be satisfying Lately, we have started a pizza strategy. When the live person picks up we either try to order a pizza as if we have reached a pizza parlor we were calling, or we try to take their order for a pizza. Today, when we were put through to an answering machine we left a two minute rant about pizza.
Doing this is oddly satisfying. With any luck we tie them up for a few minutes and then mess up their concentration by making them think about lunch or dinner.
You know this is going to backfire on us when we get a recorded message from a real pizza delivery service. Maybe they will call around lunchtime

Hey, What the...

2008-07-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

So, my nephew says, "Hey, What the...?" and slaps his hand against his forehead. Which is pretty much how we felt at The Octopus' Garden when we saw the size of our award from The Totally Fictional Council for Washington Tourism. In the photo they sent us it looked huge and impressive. It also looked like it was made out of metal or at least a high quality shiny plastic. Anyway, the thing turns to actually be the photo they sent - the award is the picture. And when you look close at the inscription in the photo you can tell that it isn't even a real inscription. Sure, it says, "The Octopus' Garden - Eastern Washington's #1 Tourist Destination," but it is written on a piece of tape they have used to cover up whatever inscription was really there. Maybe we should have paid our dues this year after all. Anyway, we are going to find some way to prop this thing up in the trophy case. Make sure you see it - next time you are in the store