Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Online Shopping

A couple of days ago, I was perusing the Chapters.Indigo online store. Christmas shopping. I'm a keener.

Having a 6 year old daughter, the title "My Princess Treasury" sounded promising. I clicked on the link to investigate the latest crappy Disney book. As a scrolled down the page, I glanced at a heading,

"May We Also Recommend".

Now, call me naive, but if one was looking at Princess books, one might make the quantum leap of thought that one would be interested in exploring OTHER titles catering to the 6 year old girls market. One might. But not if you run the "May We Also Recommend" section of the Chapters.Indigo online store.

Most fortunately for my 6 year old daughter, I did not purchase the book that Chapters.Indigo thinks a person who is looking at MY PRINCESS TREASURY might also want to buy.

Hence, my lucky child will not find the following under the Christmas tree this year.


Guidelines for Postrelease Mitigation Technology in the Chemical Process Industry.

I don't even know what that title means.

The second recommendation was equally as impressive.

Glow in the Dark Aliens.

Sadly, the website didn't have a picture of that book. I totally might have bought it if I knew what it looked like. In my experience, children who love pink princess treasury books also LOVE creepy glowing aliens.

To be completely fair, I gave Chapters.Indigo the benefit of the doubt. Anyone could have a bad day, and I thought, perhaps the person pushing buttons behind the screen had inadvertently spilled his coffee across his keyboard, so I refreshed the screen.

And then it recommended I buy a book on Jesus.

I felt rather insulted.

But they finally got it right this morning. When I went online to find the picture of that chemical book, I put in the title of My Princess Treasury.

Evidently, the guy that spilled coffee on his keyboard was fired and they got someone who truly understands the concept of "May We Also Recommend".

That new hire (who I'm sure is a mother of a 6 year old girl) recommended I purchase this.

Christmas Drinks.

Which totally makes sense. Because if you're going to be forced to read yet another poorly written Disney book about Princesses, you're going to need a drink to go with it.

Give that girl a raise.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's hilarious.

Artificial intelligence. It's an oxymoron.

MahoneyMusings said...

Yes...I seem to recall you writing a bit about that yourself!

Anonymous said...

http://womanwhotalkedtoomuch.blogspot.com/2008/04/when-computerised-recommendations-go.html

Check out this little link. How do I make that a hot link? Drat!

You'll just have to cut and paste.

Zarebski said...
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