Chronicle of a Legend

If you remember my earlier post about my trials and tribulations at Jamba Juice, “Affecting Real Change,” you’ll love this recent update.

I thought after my last talk with the District Manager, and then Store Manager at the 13th & 6th Ave location, that things would change. They did for awhile, but then settled back into their old ways. This smoothie was the final straw —>

Clearly not a full 16 ounces, I wrote JJ another raving fan letter.

Like last time, the Customer Service rep copied the Jamba Juice style guide into an email for me:

Hello Michael,

Thank you for taking the time to share your recent experience with us.  We greatly appreciate the chance to make things right for you and for other customers as well.

On behalf of all of us here at Jamba Juice, I would like to offer you our sincerest apologies for the inconsistent smoothies we have been serving you lately. I know that you contacted us back in April on this same issue and I feel awful that it is continuing. A 12 oz chunky straw should have 9 oz smoothie and 3 oz banana. A 16 oz should have 13 oz smoothie and 3 oz banana. As far as the smoothies go, the smoothie should be about an inch from the top and mounded in the middle to just touch the lid. In order to be successful, we must be consistent.

I will forward your feedback the general manager, district manager  and the regional director for the 6th Ave and 13th St. stores for review and follow up with the teams.  We have to be consistent to be successful and we thank you for your help.

We will address these inconsistencies right away. Please don’t hesitate to contact me directly with any additional comments or concerns.

Have a great day!

Sincerely,

Alexandra Rodriguez

This was promplty followed up by the District Manager:

Hello Mr.Bohn,

My name is Larry Marcus; I am the district manager for the Jamba Juice store on 13th and 6th ave. First let me apologize for the troubles you have had with our product, I truly am sorry you have gone through this especially more than one time. I certainly do not want to make excuses because the bottom line is you need to get what you pay for.

I have spoken to the manager in that store and asked him to please make sure we are watching our team members to make these products correctly. I am going to send you a couple of 16oz free smoothie cards in the mail, please contact me directly if this happens again so I can get on it immediately. You now have my direct email address so contact me at any time.

I truly want to thank you for letting us know so we can fix our issues, I always tell my managers how many customers have had the same problems but do not say anything and just do not come back. So again please any future issues let me know and I will get with the teams to fix the problem.

Marcus Larry

Basically, the same response I got last time. While I love JJ, I’m only willing to give the 13th street store a few more chances once my free smoothie cards arrive. If things start to falter again, I’ll might take the advice of Webcoder, and hit up the Brand Marketing manager on Linked in and send her a quick note.

As always, affecting real change,

-Digitalbohn

written by digitalbohn

Found this while crawling Digg, pretty amazing hang drum solo.

written by digitalbohn

If you’re up on your Internet Meme’s, you’re undoubtedly aware of the “Rick Roll” phenomenon. If you’re not, Wikipedia sums it up pretty well. “In a RickRoll, a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the Rick Astley video,” specifically his 1989 single “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

It’s been making its rounds over the past year, but is making a full-force appearance today, April Fool’s day. YouTube is linking all of it’s Featured Videos on it’s homepage to the video, bringing the phenom further into mainstream culture. The NYTimes is probably the first major source to get “Rick-Rolled.” They wrote an article involving an apparent Rick Roll at a women’s basketball game at Eastern Washington University. They later posted a correction, that the video was a fake, and admitted that in their attempt to expose the Rick Roll meme to the mainstream, they had been Rick Rolled themselves.

Wired Mag even managed to get a snippet of a recent interview that Astley had done with the LA Times about his sudden re-appearance in pop culture.

written by digitalbohn

I usually take the first 20 minutes of my day at the office to grab a coffee and surf around the web, Digg usually being my starting point. I don’t normally like re-posting Digg’s, but one that I came across this morning was so sick I felt obligated.

You can check out a handful of the better ones here, which includes the video above. The Pulp Fiction and Big Lebowski ones are two of my favorites, but since they both contain fairly strong language, I figured it best to link to. A quick YouTube search of Kinetic Typography pulls up a more comprehensive list, though arguably not as polished as the first compilation.

There’s something strangely intriguing about visualizing speech, and it’s amazing that the creators of these videos can portray things like inflexion and attitude with typography.

written by digitalbohn

What is the fascination with Schwag, especially in the media/interactive world?

I’m sitting here staring at a pile of laundry from SXSW, including almost 20 shirts (most pictured above) that Jim and I managed to snag from the exhibition booths, parties, and even on the flight back to NYC. And it wasn’t just t-shirts. We picked up dozens of stickers, mouse pads, cozies, notepads, and even a tin of organic wheat grass.

Over the past year I’ve amassed quite the collection. I have an entire shelf in my home office filled with notebooks. A box full of t-shirts in the attic. A bag full of branded footballs, basketballs, a cupboard full of cozies, pint glasses and mugs. A drawer full of bottle openers, key chains, and pens. Even a branded mini-fridge that fits a six-pack.

I guess Silicon Valley loves giving out schwag as much as I’ve contracted a habit for collecting it.

written by digitalbohn

Jimmy Deep and I made it on Yahoo! Tech Ticker while we were at SXSW 2008. From about :40 to :59, you can see Jim to the right of Sarah Lacey’s head, and I’m the bald(ing) guy just to the left.

It’s been a bit crazy around here for the past few days. We got our new puppy finally, Tucker.

He basically runs around for an hour, then sleeps for 3, but he’s the man already.  He’s only 10 lbs now, but will probably be up to 70 within the year.

Check out some pics of him.

written by digitalbohn

After the Sarah Lacey train-wreck interview with Mark Zuckerberg, we rolled through Austin for our 4th night here.

We hit up some great events, especially the Pop Sci party that lined up some awesome bands, like the Lemurs. They definitely tore the house down, so much that I bought their album, which is something that I haven’t done in probably 2 years.

written by digitalbohn \\ tags: sxsw2008

It’s been over 2 years since the last digitalbohn epoch, and I’m finding very early on that it’s not easy to re-find your online voice.

Rest assured, there’s no better catalyst than SXSW, so I’m confident that it’ll re-emerge full force, at 200 mph, with bullhorns on the hood and flames on the side.

-Mike

written by digitalbohn

Last night was the first big night of SXSW 2008. Google and Avenue A battled it out for the first party slot. The Google party was packed, with a line 2 blocks long. The Avenue A party was also somewhat packed, but their ran out an hour early at $2,700…fairly lame.

Things got a bit weirder at 10pm at the 16bit party. It was located across I-95, on the other side of the train tracks, far into the ghetto. The line was around the block, so my man Jimmy Deep broke into the venue by breaking down a fence, a trend that Kevin Rose then followed.

All this covert work to get into the party was somewhat in vain, as the main event was a crazy freak show band. Yeah, a freak show band. Not only was the band terrible, but the “freaks” were not all that freaky, more strange than anything.

Either way, we closed down the party again.

written by digitalbohn \\ tags: sxsw2008