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After my little rant Friday about Burger King I decided to do something about it.  I called their customer relations department for answers.  The customer service rep I spoke with was very nice, and her reaction to the stickers saying no cameras was one of shock.  She honestly didn’t know what I was talking about and thought it was absurd.  She immediately put me on hold and started trying to contact someone who could give her an answer as to why there is this no camera policy now.

After 20 minutes she gave up trying to find the answer internally and asked for the location of one of the stores where I’d seen the stickers.  I gave her the location, and she tried to contact the owner.  With no luck she called the store only to be told no manager was in.  She even said “Mam, I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.  I’m going to file a complaint about this because this is a franchise store, and we need to know if it makes a policy change”.  I was told franchise stores can make their own policies, but they have to notify corporate when they do so.

I explained to her this wasn’t the only store I’ve “heard” of this happening at.  I’ve seen numerous photos on flickr from other patrons along with stories of them being hassled for taking photos.  I explained that I am a blogger writing a story on this, and I asked if it was possible to email my findings, and it was.  I sent in a list of all the links I’ve found with stories from other people regarding the no camera stickers and their experiences.  She added that to the complaint, tried contacting the owner of our local BK one more time, then took down my information.  She promised to have someone call me back within 2 business days, and I got her information as well including her extension so if my call isn’t returned I can call back to her directly.

Fast forward to today.  I found Hubby rummaging through the kitchen without any luck, so I asked if he wanted to ride to town to grab a bite to eat.  I so wasn’t in the mood to cook, plus I wanted to ride by Burger King to snap a photo of the stickers on the door to add to my previous post.

We hit up the Burger King drive through again, and pulled up to the window.  I immediately noticed the sticker was gone.  It had been located in the lower right hand corner of the drive through window, and all that was left was the sticky goo where it had been removed, but the window hadn’t been cleaned.  The manager just happened to be running the window, so I asked him about it.  I made mention that I’d seen the sign a few days ago, and he said “yeah, we took it down because we’re having too many complaints.  We had 2 birthday parties canceled because the parent’s couldn’t take photos of the party.”

I told him I thought the policy was absurd to begin with, and I myself had called corporate to ask why no cameras were allowed without ever getting a straight answer.  He said he didn’t know why the stickers were put up in the first place, but it was a request straight from Burger King, not the franchise owner.  All he knew was they put the stickers up last weekend and were asked to remove them this weekend.

Sounds to me like they’ve got an awful lot of complaints about a policy they couldn’t justify.

So this morning Hubby woke up a little early. Perfect excuse to grab some breakfast right? Normally we’d hit up Hardees, but since he only had a very limited amount of time we couldn’t afford to waste time sitting in the very long Hardees drive-thru line. Instead we opted to hit the empty Burger King across the street.

Pulling up the the window I immediately spotted something new…a sign on the window reading “no videotaping or photography permitted”. I, being the smartass I am sometimes, I totally would have started snapping photos if I’d had my cell phone on me, but I didn’t. Denver Metblogs does have a photo of the new window stickers, so feel free to check it out.

Instead I knocked on the window until I got the guy to come back, then I asked for an explanation. He claims it’s because cameras distract the employees causing it to take longer to complete their jobs.

Bullshit.

So, I guess this means if your kid is having a birthday party at Burger King you’re no longer allowed to tape any part of it, right? There’s no snapping photos of your kid sitting there with their little cardboard crown smiling away anymore. What’s up with that? One of my favorite photos of myself as a kid is me sitting in BK with my little BK hat on sipping on a milkshake. Yes, I was a truly adorable child, but we’ll save that for another day.

When I asked the guy about it he said “if you want to have a party contact our manager. We may be able to arrange for a professional photographer.” Seriously? What kind of crap is that!

I have a few thoughts as to why Burger King could possibly be banning cameras.

1. There’s the possibility that they don’t want their logo or anything related to them showing up in any photos or videos anywhere due to copyright reasons.

2. Maybe BK is tired of all the prank videos showing up on Youtube and such?

3. Maybe they’re tired of people like me snapping photos to prove how crappy their food is! It’s become a habit for me to carry my camera with me inside all stores and restaurants I visit because if something is bad, I’m going to get evidence of it.

4. Oooh, maybe it’s got something to do with Dateline’s “Dirty Dining?” story where Burger King was rated the dirtiest chain after hidden cameras visited the chain among many others. Coincidence? Check out the report for yourself.

I guess we’ll never know until we receive a statement from Burger King themselves. I planned to email them for a statement as soon as I got home, but it seems Burger King is no longer accepting emails. It looks like I’ll have to wait for their corporate offices to open at 9am so I can call for their reaction.

I may just return to Burger King later today waving my camera around in plain site until I get their attention, or maybe I’ll snap a few photos with my cell phone to show them just how hard it’s going to be to stop people from taking photos. Do they realize how easy it is to pretend to be looking at something else on your phone while you’re really taking a photo? What’s next? Will they ban camera phones completely?

Seems like someone’s gone off their rocker if you ask me.

I’m the world’s worst when it comes to saying “no”.  I guess I’ve always been that way because I like to help others.  It’s just a part of me to always be there for my friends and family when they need me in every way I can.  Because of that I guess I get myself roped into situations sometimes that I really don’t want to deal with.

I know when it comes to my home business I’ve financially hurt myself in a lot of situations.  I’m not shelling out cash to fix something, but there have been many times when I’ve had friends say “I know this is your job, but will you fix my computer for me for free?”  I always say “yeah, you know I will.”  That’s no big deal because it’s normally a small task that I can accomplish in a few minutes, but this morning I had a run in with a friend who really pushed me to the point where I finally said no to him.

He wanted me to build him and his two roommates all new computers.  We started going over costs of parts, options they have, etc, and by the time we were done pricing the thing it’s going to cost close to $1500 just for parts.  I don’t blame him, he wants something kick ass, and I was willing to give it to him.

So, after figuring all this up I tell him I’m not going to go over the top with charging you, so I’ll give you the friend discount.  I’ll build the whole system and only charge you $50 extra instead of charging you hourly like I do everyone else.  Our conversation went like this.

Me-  I’ll charge you $50 for the build and setup instead of hourly like I do my customers.

Him-  You’re going to charge me?  

Me- Yeah, I can’t do the whole job for free.  Do you know what goes into building a system like this?  If you were a normal customer I’d charge you hourly plus extra for adding the liquid cooling.  Building this isn’t going to be simple.  We could have all kinds of problems I’ll have to deal with.

Him- Nevermind then.  I’ll just order the alienware I was looking at.

Me- But the alienware costs twice as much, and won’t have half the features you want.

Him- Yeah but you want to charge me.

Me- Dude, did you call me because you knew I could build you a kick ass system or because you thought I’d build you a kick ass system for free?

Him- If you want my business do it for free.

Me- Building it for free, I don’t get any business from you.  Dude, I’m not a computer charity here.  Order the alienware.

Him- *click*

He hung up on me, and I know for a fact he won’t be calling me back anytime soon.  Seriously, why do people feel the need to take advantage of others like that?  I’m not going out of my way to spend countless hours or even days building something for him just so he can get out of paying someone to do it.  He’d already be saving big time just for having me order and build the system instead of buying an overpriced Alienware just for the name, but no he can’t afford to spend $50 so I get something out of it.

Fuck him then.  If I built or repaired everything for free I wouldn’t have a business now would I?  I feel like going into the store where he works and telling him he needs to give me a t-shirt for free because he’s my friend, and that’s what he’s supposed to do.  I can use his 10% discount?  Not good enough man!  Didn’t you just get pissed at me because I wouldn’t give you free service with my job?

Back in the beginning of December DH wrecked our Chevy Blazer.  It wasn’t his fault.  He hit a patch of black ice, and there was nothing he could do.

Since we have Nationwide for our insurance we figured everything would go pretty smoothly, but that’s not the case.  We contacted our insurance and the Blue Ribbon claims certified body shop, and it took them 2 weeks to even see the vehicle to give us an estimate of damage and what could be fixed.

We’ve had many problems with the body shop taking their own sweet time getting things done, and now finally 1 month and 2 weeks after the wreck we finally were able to pick up our Blazer today.

I was super pissed.  This is the shittiest body repair job I’ve ever seen.  It looks like the only thing they were able to do properly was matching up the paint color.  I’ve had cars in the past that had distinct color differences after repair work, but this was worse than that.  The entire left rear of the Blazer was trashed, so they had to replace the bumper, left quarter panel, tailgate, and life gate, and the glass on the back window and left side window.

The repairs look horrible.  The bumper is visibly uneven on both sides.  There’s about a 2″ gap on the left side, and if you stand behind the vehicle you can tell that the bumper looks warped.  They didn’t reuse the old bumper.  They replaced it with one from a junk yard, and it looks like they used one that was warped.  The back glass is tinted twice as dark as the rest of our windows, and closing the hatch is impossible for me.  Before I had no problem closing it, but now it has to be slammed to latch.  I couldn’t do it no matter how hard I tried.  It would just bounce right back up, so I had to get DH to slam it shut for me.

When inspecting the paint I found a ton of gashes on the roof of the car right above the back glass.  Those gashes didn’t happen during the wreck, and they weren’t there before.  All I can figure is they happen when the body shop people were installing the back glass and lift gate, and it looks horrible.  They didn’t even try to repair it when they painted the back half of the vehicle.

Needless to say I’m having a huge talk with the insurance adjuster tomorrow.  I’m not happy at all.  I tried to contact him today to get someone out here to take photos of the job the body shop did, but he hasn’t returned any of my calls yet.  All I know is this isn’t something I will accept.  I have a lifetime guarantee with the blue ribbon claims that covers not only the parts used but the workmanship for as long as I own the vehicle.