In The Olive City

[kevin_standlee]

Possibly inspired by bovil's "Olive Facts" posts on westercons, I decided this afternoon to drive a bit farther south than I usually do on my two-day trips between Oregon and the Bay Area. Typically I stop in Medford, Ashland, or Yreka, but I got away almost two hours earlier than usual today and made excellent time despite the rain. From the Coburg rest area to just north of Roseburg I was dialed in to a Westercon 64 committee meeting, which also made the miles seem to fly by, believe it or not. I stopped at Roseburg, reassessed my travel progress, and called Holiday Inn and changed my reservation from Medford South to Corning. (Yreka and Redding were too expensive.) I got in to The Olive City about 8:30, took advantage of the offer from the Iron Skillet restaurant across the street (10% discount with hotel room key), and made ample use of the in-room wired internet connection to make the updates to the Westercon 64 web site that came up while I was driving south.

Around Grants Pass, the rain that had been dogging me cleared up and the sun came out. I felt for my sunglasses in my briefcase, but couldn't find them. When I stopped at the Pilot truck stop in Central Point (where I often stop; it's right next to that Holiday Inn Express I've used several times), I dug around in my briefcase more when I could look at it without risking driving off the road. No luck. I called Lisa, thinking I might have left them behind. She couldn't find them. I puzzled over it for a little while longer and finally found them sitting in their black case on top of a black piece of luggage and covered by a black tote bag. Not too surprising that I couldn't see them! (I called Lisa back to tell her I'd found them so she wouldn't worry.)

I got a bit annoyed at the Pilot people over a bit of foolishness on their part. The receipt from my gas purchase included a 99-cent offer for a 16-ounce cup of coffee. My travel mug is 16 ounces, so I took it in, filled it, went to the counter, and produced the coupon. They charged me $1.49. When I complained, they said that the offer on the form is only for disposable 16-ounce cups, not travel mugs, because it messes up their inventory. That's absurd. It means that I could have saved 50 cents by taking one of their 16-ounce cups, filling it with coffee, pouring that into my insulated travel mug, and throwing away the paper cup. I know it's only fifty cents, but the stupidity of the policy annoys me, and I hope to remember to write to Pilot to tell them how foolish it is.

Because I'm about 200 miles farther south than I originally planned to be tonight, I can sleep in a bit tomorrow morning without guilt. I do plan to try and swing over to Sutter and see my mother, even though it's Father's Day. Alas, I forgot to send my father a card!

Comments

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

Just as silliness, I wonder if you could have gone over, picked up one of their cups and said "then I'll take this too" and gotten the deal.

And how the hell does a paper cup mess up their inventory if what they're selling is coffee?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Actually I understand the inventory part. They appear to count the number of cups and compare it against what the registers say they sold. I've seen this system in other places, such as on Amtrak Capitol trains. In fact, from an inventory point of view, they aren't actually selling coffee; they're selling empty cups into which you get to pour coffee for free.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

Which of course means, that if you took a cup along with your travel mug, they should have given the discount.

[travelswithkuma.livejournal.com]

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[buddykat.livejournal.com]

While I understand the inventory issue (I used to work in fast food), I'm surprised that Pilot didn't have an even cheaper price for a refill (and a corresponding button on their register). After all, they are a truck stop, and they cater to truck drivers - who tend to have their own refillable travel mugs!

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, they had an answer to that, too: the 99-cent rate only applied to their Pilot-branded travel mugs, not other mugs. That sounds fishy to me, and it didn't say anything about that on the coupon, either. To some extent, I think it just comes down to the staff not knowing the company's own offers or how to enter them into their computers. The British term is "jobsworth."

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

I don't know if we could have gotten the refill discount at any of the food booths at the San Diego County Fair last weekend if we'd been using the previous year's cups, or not. Of course when you consider that the discount for using a refill cup there lowers the price of a 32 oz beverage from the we've really got you trapped into buying from us to just we've got you trapped into buying from us, it almost makes sense.

[galtine1.livejournal.com]

There's some rhyme/reason to the tracking of their own mugs for refills:

(1) they have an idea how many should be in use based on previous sales

(2) as long as they are the same size over time, they know the cost of filling that mug

(3) it's advertising (in a convoluted way) and encourages the drivers/regulars to use the Pilot mug vs. a generic one...showing popularity of their coffee when the the mug-user is elsewhere using it.

Where they are missing the boat is the encouragement of refills in any mug (like AM/PM). With the new computer touchscreen registers, it would just be a buttonn REFILL and a second option of PILOT/OTHER 16-20oz/OTHER 24-36oz/OTHER 52oz. (Or some combo there of) And as my instructor at CalPoly said: pennies aren't worth tracking when you are dealing with millions of dollars, so averaging each of those groupings for cost analysis vs. revenue/goodwill -- it's a no brainer to us non-beancounters.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Quite, considering that their rooking me out of fifty cents is making me reconsider every spending another cent on them, including spending close to $100 on fuel. (My minivan has a 27-gallon fuel tank.)

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I've been in that clerk's place, too. The odds that the register is not very flexibly programmed are high.

I do like the idea of taking an empty 16oz cup too; that would have a good maneuver.

[howeird]

Of course the weather cleared up at Grant's Pass. " Climate best by government test", y'know. Says so right there on the label. :-)