New owners at a formerly favourite restaurant means a new bad attitude which has left a bad taste in my mouth.

About a year ago, I would have told anyone who cared to listen to run, not walk, to the little Best Burrito restaurant at 195 West Broadway, in Vancouver, B.C., across from Mountain Equipment Coop. The restaurant was little but served huge burritos full of freshness and flavour, at a very reasonable price. I ate there almost every day last summer but didn't go there all winter.

Returning last week, after a season's absence, I could see it was somewhat different. Certainly the hands-on owner I was familiar with wasn't there. New owner I was told. The burrito had slightly different ingredients, and strips of beef rather than shredded, which I prefer, but it was good and still fresh and hefty.

The staff who prepared my burrito, gave me a new loyalty stamp card. The next day I ate there and the same staff stamped my new card a second time. Realizing I had a loyalty card from the previous owner which was shy but a single stamp, the staff member insisted I use it next time to fill it and they would honour it. I had the old card stamped and thus filled on my next visit.

Today I was in for a shock -- this is what I've written on the Google+ review feature for Best Burrito:

I loved the original owner's burritos, but there has been a change of ownership and attitude, They started me on a fresh loyalty stamp card, but i was told on my next visit I could complete the old owner's stamp card which was shy just one stamp, and then redeem it, I had it stamped on my next visit. However today when I tried to redeem the fully stamped card, a staff member told me, quite loudly and brusquely that that was the previous owner's and they didn't have to and wouldn't honour it. I tossed the old card and left the partially-stamped new card for whomever wanted it. I won't go back there, I really do not believe that is the right way to treat a customer.

Don't mean to rant, but I have provided customer service -- I'm not happy about how I was treated and I wanted to share that.

 

Jezibelle Knucklez. a South Granville prospector -- she knows secrets, yes she does!

Another Jezi post ►

Nearly 16 months without a cigarette. I quit in late December of 2011. What's my secret? Respiratory-related illnesses. Indeed, when I would have something like the flu, my cravings for cigarettes would diminish in proportion to the severity.

I had previously used a bout of flu or bronchial-whatever to quit smoking at the end of 2007 -- I held out for eight months. At the beginning of 2008 I started working at the Vancouver Masonic Centre, doing custodial, event set-up, etc.. In some aspects, I found it to be a poisonous workplace. I used stress as a excuse to start smoking again (if we allow that to happen Timmy then the terrorists will have won!). I didn't try again until the end of 2011.

I only started smoking in my twenties; I was a wee-young graphic designer, in the middle of a fairly nightmarish magazine roll-out, which turned was a scam, BTW. Out for a stroll with a co-designer -- we were sooo tired, and playing the game, "I could so fall asleep on ..." that concrete, that car, etc.. She piped up that she had something that would perk us up (like bad dialogue from Reefer Madness!). She gave me an unfiltered Gauloise cigarette -- kind of an Adam and Eve moment; we ended up living together. I recall it sure did wake me up then, and I continued smoking for nearly 30 years -- ouch!

My lung power will never entirely recover, but I'll take what I can get. Sure I miss hacking my guts out in the morning, who wouldn't? But I don't smell like a human-sized ashtray, and I save some money.

Shown above is my black Sansa Clip Zip + music player. It has 4 GB of built-in storage, and takes micro SD cards. By itself it's an okay music player, but it's real strength is that it's one of a number of digital music players whose  firmware can be easily replaced with a third-party, opensource firmware called Rockbox. Many people would say that a Sansa running Rockbox is better than an iPod:



Rockbox is almost too configurable, in both look and sound. There are walk-through installers for Windows, Mac, and Linux, The site offers a wealth of information including which players are supported. If there is a drawback it is that the supported players are older hardware, and increasingly hard to find; the SCZ+ is one of the newest players supported.

The Black SCZ+ shown above was a replacement for a white model which was rendered read-only one day. I attribute this not to the player but to Linux/Ubuntu, as I've had this happen permanently to a micro-SD card, and temporarily to an external hard drive. I managed to restore the micro-SD by getting an SD card-size adapter, which had the physical switch to toggle write-protect on and off. I have also managed to un-bork the white SCZ+ by reformatting it on a Mac which naturally still saw it as write-enabled.

"I do like a lot about Ubuntu, but I find the same thing: too often when you are up against a roadblock, a google search shows that the answer is to bring up the terminal and type a string of random characters."

Posted by: Merlin, on Aug. 31st, 2012 to macobserver.com