Turned off

The quest for the "Always Turned On" t-shirt hasn't gone well. It looked to have a good start, with a helpful and supportive comment posted almost right away. Then I got this friendly email from the Visitor Services Department:

Dear DAVID

Thank you for sending us your question regarding Atlantic City.

PLEASE CONTACT OUR VISITOR WELCOME CENTER AT 609-383-2727.

HAVE A NICE DAY!

What would you do if you got this email? Call that number and repeat your request, maybe? Well, that's what I did, and I got an ear full of holler for my troubles. The woman answering the phone literally yelled at me to "go to the website" to buy the t-shirt. I told her that I didn't see any link to do so, but she replied, "Well I know it's up there!" In other words, I'm the moron. So she goes online, and starts reading the page to me. Fine, I say, where do I go to order the t-shirt?

"We can't send things out through the mail!" Is the response I get. Why, then, did you tell me to go to the website to order a shirt? "I didn't understand you." Maybe this woman went to the Christie Vilsack school of learning to communicate or something; I thought I used standard English.

The upshot of the conversation was that I was a moron for calling, I was a moron for thinking that they might help me, and I was especially dim-witted for thinking that they had t-shirts with the logo. When I asked, "well, do you sell t-shirts there?" I was told no, only golf shirts.

Yeah, that would look really freaking sharp--a golf shirt. WTF? What was the look I was shooting for, just a few hours ago? Oh yeah, hip and irreverent. Golf shirts just scream that, don't they?

I know that the visitor's authority didn't have the money to launch a national marketing campaign for the new slogan. But is it really asking so much that they print a few t-shirts up?

Every fly-by-night website and business has its own t-shirts, baseball caps, and gear. Did anyone think that this might be a good way to get out the message?

So I wrapped up my quest with a nifty reminder why I left Atlantic City in the first place: people talking down to me and treating me like I was stupid because of their own ignorance, and a generally collapsed sense of imagination.

So when I do my big international TV shoot next week, I'm going to wear my suit with a Hawaiian shirt or something underneath to show my irreverence. Maybe I'll even bust out the "chick magnet" shirt. It's literally a t-shirt that says "chick magnet" in big yellow letters. It'll get me noticed, but I'll probably get slammed for violating truth in advertising, since I don't magnetically attract immature chickens.

Anyway, I wanted to say mahalo for the reality check (now that I'm thinking about Hawaii because of the shirt reference). What on earth would make me think that, in conjunction with this "award-winning" (pdf link) new slogan, the visitor's authority might have printed up some t-shirts. Getting my hopes up like that before getting the big let down (golf shirt?) leaves me, frankly, turned off.

posted by Dave at 2:48 PM

Turned off

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