Current mood:	not so giggly any more
Current music:	Indochine - Je Demande A La Lune

A work-related tale.
It's actually good. Read it.

A little bit of a preface here: The 'Serenity' comic has been hot property. We've sold out of it four times, and this is only the first printing of the first issue, which has been out for two weeks now. We've been getting calls from Calgary to see if we still have any copies left. Yesterday, joy of joys, we managed to wrangle one in, with a sticker price of $19.99 because, of course, we had to go through the not-Diamonds secondary market, and we don't want to sell it at a loss either. Incidentally, it was the Captain Malcolm cover, which was the first to go off our shelves initially.


Capt. Malcolm.

In comes a customer, and he was intending to buy the very expensive comic. Only he does not want to pay the $19.99. He wants to pay the US cover price. Prices stand firm, heated discussion takes place. I'm working the phone, so sadly I don't get in on the details. The customer leaves, unhappy and comic-less.

Turns out that customer was Nathan Fillion.


Nathan Fillion.

Like I said, I was on the phone, so I missed out on little details like that (I didn't recognize him, obviously. Hey, I've only ever watched one episode of Firefly!). Anyways, the story eventually finds its way to the internets, and whereas before we were dealing with one angry actor and his closest friends/family who he would relay the story to, now we get to deal with his fanclub.

There were a total of four messages on the voicemail. Two of them asked for an apology, and were calm and straightforward. One demonstrated the brilliance of internet persons who make good on their threats of action: "Hey Darrel, you suck." The final one was someone pretending to be from Dark Horse Comics (they publish the Serenity comic), threatening to not let us put any of their titles in our store. Advice to the anonymous woman who called: if you want to make us believe you, first a) leave a call-back number, because business is business, and b) know that we don't deal with DH directly.

The kicker is that someone, possibly Rick R. Zimmerman, Assoc. AIA, needs to fix their fax machine, as it sent out around fifteen faxes, all the same thing. I'd hate to spoil the contents by posting it here. Ask me, because I asked Darrel for a copy (there were fifteen, after all) and I got one.

So now to end this on a high-ish note. Sadly, I suck at conclusions. I feel I ought to mention that the story's been pepped up a little for comedic effect, and naturally biased, but it's all true. Since this is the internets, no doubt the same stunning mind that brought us "Darrel, you suck" is going to find this and make a stink out of it. Sure, I could be reasonable and go into nice, calm explanations, but that wouldn't make an interesting post, would it? And my LJ lacks in interesting posts.

The end... or is it?

I expect a few more messages on the voicemail tomorrow.

Holy crap, an EDIT: (2Aug05) I've noticed that there's a nice new swarm of fans ready to descend upon my humble LJ like locusts. Welcome. Feel free to post, but for the love of God at least take the time to read the other posts before you do. You'll find most of your questions already answered, and you won't end up sounding like a broken record.

I'm now blocking comments on this entry. I'd rather not. But it's come to my attention that I'm being seen as the 'official' mouthpiece for Warp One, or an 'official' source of news on this matter. I am not. I never intended to be. I don't want to be. This is why I'm blocking all future comments.

The original entry was, as I've mentioned already, meant to be an amusing anecdote for my friends. I answered questions as they came along because I felt that there were issues that needed to be clarified, and so I did my best without being too committing because, as I've said, I am not a mouthpiece for Warp One. I'm just some guy that happens to work there. I mostly deal with role-playing books and boardgames, anyways.

We've hit over a quarter-thousand posts here. Thank God I don't allow anonymous posting, or things would have gotten stupid fast. For those of you who took the time to be rude, I don't need to tell you where to go. For the majority of you who have been polite, listened, and constructively added to the dialogue, I thank you. Very much. Some of you folks are pretty cool.

A few things to note:
1) If I end up wiping out all the comments by changing the settings, my bad. This is the first time I've done this.
2) I'm leaving the original post up. I know someone would have cached it anyways, so this way at least I can be certain that my original post, in all its poor-story-telling glory, will remain unaltered somewhere. Hopefully (see #1) all the comments will remain too.
3) Someone's going to suggest it, so I'll nip it in the bud: no, I was not pressured by my bosses to do this. And yes, they're aware that I've made these posts.

So thank you, goodnight, and so on.

EDIT (4Aug05 part 2): So it looks like I did wipe out the comments. Shit. Sorry everybody. Post is still staying locked, though.