YSaC, Vol. 328: Not just Craigslist, Vol. 3
We’ve had a few posts from kijiji.com in the past, and today I’d like to share a couple of posts from other online classifieds sites.
From backpage.com comes this help wanted ad:
… Aggravated Office Manager
posted: May 22, 2009, 03:02 PM
We need an office manager for local retail store. Good verbal skills are necessary, great starting wage, potential for advancement, no certification required.Great opportunity for someone who is outgoing with a pleasant personality. We will provide all required training for our staff.
Salaries start at $750 to $1,000 per week.
I can’t even think of what word they meant to put in the title. Motivated? Sure. Ambitious? Makes sense. Aggravated? (But with a pleasant personality, of course.) Are they going to train me to be aggravated? Or do they expect that skill set already and will train me to be outgoing and pleasant? If it’s the latter, my mother has been trying to do that for years and it’s not gone well.
And then, from OLX.com:
Suddenly, shots rang out…
in the food court of one of the area’s busiest shopping malls. It was Saturday afternoon. Hundreds of people, consisting mostly of kids and women, were chaotically scrambling for cover. When the smoke had cleared, it looked like the scene from a movie set. Lots of bloodied bodies, muffled moans of pain, and cries for help. Can you imagine yourself, or your loved ones, caught up in such a nightmare? I can’t, which is where the concept of [Crappy online mall aggregator, or COMA for short] originated. [COMA].com is a web-based mall, consisting of a virtual hodge-podge of stores, which, unlike conventional malls, specializes in wholesale items, great deals, bargains galore, discounts, low prices, and great selections. You’d be hard-pressed to find a bricks and mortar establishment with more varieties of stores ( and more are being added daily ). I put [COMA] together with the hopes of keeping my loved ones out of the malls ( and my nightmare ) as much as possible. It has been pretty effective so far. The kids have been the hardest sell, probably so because their main reason for going to the mall is to socialize. I’ve gotten rave reviews from them about the site, however, so it has been somewhat effective on them. So take a tip from the kids. Take a trip to www.[COMA].com. You’ll be glad you did. You’ll not only save money on items that you purchase, but you will save gas, because all of the stores deliver to your door. So come see why, at [COMA], our name says it all.
Well, maybe the name I gave you says it all — your store is a crappy online mall aggregator. It’s poorly designed, and whoever is writing your copy has no idea about the proper use of apostrophes or conjunctions. (Seriously: “You’re childs toy’s”? Really? Apparently the online bookstore in this COMA doesn’t have any dictionaries or writing books.)
Worst of all, you’re preying on people’s fears to drive business to your site. “Shop with us, and you won’t get gunned down in Abercrombie & Fitch like a commerce-driven dog!”
Maybe not, but I also won’t get that guy standing in the food court offering me samples of bourbon chicken, now, will I? Until you figure out how to offer free samples of bourbon chicken through the internet, I’ll take my chances in the mall.*
*Though I’m not going into Hot Topic. You can’t make me.
[Thanks to Sarah for the “Aggravated Office Manager” listing, and thanks to the folks at OLX for calling my attention to their site by offering me money [which I didn’t take] to promote them here. (I’m too damned ethical — I also didn’t take a free piece of jewelry from some site that wanted me to link to them.)]
Can you imagine taking a bus to work. It seems innocent enough, as you begin your day. Only that bus has to go a certain speed (let’s say 50mph) or it will explode. But there is no dark-haired hero with poor acting ability to save you. Imagine crashing into a orphanage and exploding, taking out the puppy store next door. Against the cool morning air all that can be seen are flaming orphan & puppy limbs, raining like the worst nightmare armageddon could provide, a sight that would give satan himself the heebie-jeebies.
Imagine going out of your house. Maybe you’re checking the mail. You could be playing catch with your son. Or your daughter, no need to be sexist about this. You get three, maybe 4 steps out of the house, when an meteor falls on you. Yes, directly on your head. The horror, you are crushed by a meteor. Your neighbors posted the video on Youtube, and your family has to hide in shame in France and risk death-by-mime.
Clearly you should do all your living/social/shopping experiences online because anytime you leave the house you risk death. We encourage crippling fear and understand your Agoraphobia.
I wish all ads were written like this. I would remember those stores so much better than all those regular .com stores… Seriously. Amazon should start advertising like this… That would bring in a lot more of my business.
Oh, you made my morning. Thank you!
Flaming Orphan & Puppy Limbs is IF’s Radiohead cover band.
Also, i just went to the website. That place is ridiculous. Nothing online should be that ugly in this day and age.
The entire website looks like it was built in Microsoft Powerpoint. I shouldn’t expect much from someone so slimy, but still.
It’s also a stupid idea. All it does is send you to other websites. So to go to his convenient mall, all you have to do is register and set up separate billing and shipping accounts at every site for every product you buy. Good thing there are no websites that sell a variety of things (except amazon, ebay, qvc, overstock, google, yahoo, shopping.com, and only thousands more)
I think riding a unicycle 50 miles to a meatspace mall that features only half a dozen crappy stores and crazed murderers would be more convenient than using this dude’s website. 😛
That was a brilliant mental image. Thank you!
X3
I’m aggravated, can I get the job?
Also, doesn’t Google also have links to all those sites from major retailers that also sell online?
Yes, but if you use Google the internet might explode, and think of the children! Won’t someone please think of the children!!
Oh!! The huge manatee!
Your children will be trapped in a never-ending pornado and will thus become corrupted, Satan-worshipping anarchist communists who like eating babies and peeing on images of Jesus!
That second ad made me Aggravated!
Maybe the entire office is aggravated and all it needs is the right office manager? The ad did say they would train the staff so the new manager could spend time on making the office less aggravated….
So, does this mean I should abandon using Amazon in favor of the Crappy Online Mall Aggregator in case the FBI decides to kidnap me through my modem?
I would like to see this crappy website as much as anyone, yet coma.com is another business, and the full name crappyonlinemallaggregator.com isn’t a registered domain. WTF!!??
Cut and paste the first sentence or two of the post and just google that.
Right — COMA is an acronym for Crappy Online Mall Aggregator, which was the fake name I gave the business.
I always remove names, phone numbers, or actual business names, but you can easily find the ad if you google it.
I just clicked on that link and that was the coolest thing ever.
Go to OLX.com and look up “Suddenly, shots rang out…”. But you’re probably better off not bothering. The poor design of the site might make your brain melt out your nose.
Eh, that was supposed to be a response to grug…
And I still can’t reply. XD
Crappy? But…I’ve finally found a place where I can buy a Dale Earnhardt flag AND a mirror etched with a picture of a palm tree that’s NOT a garage sale!
Pretty great idea to put “crappy” in your business’s name.
funny how this site is pretty much dedicated to criticizing various online postings’ spelling and grammar errors (amongst other erroneous things), but the post begins with spelling the site “kijiji.com” incorrectly. hm.
Oh noes! OMG! I shall have to shut down the site posthaste.
Or, alternately, fix “kajiji” to “kijiji”. (Given that the former actually redirects to the latter, I doubt I caused any serious damage.)
Thanks for pointing it out, anyway. Please feel free to read through the entire site and find more. Report back.
@drmk:
I’m gonna go at the first one from my area of expertise. I’m a lawyer (not a laywer) and, in my jurisdiction, the word “aggravated” as used in the names of several crimes denotes that the offender is armed with a dangerous weapon. I’ve been to several “local retail stores” where having a dangerous weapon might be a necessity for a manager.
I didn’t know being aggravated was a selling point for a manager, though it would go a long way to explaining things with management.
Perhaps I could try to add aggravated assault to my resume? I do need more selling points, that’s for sure.
And the people at HT are much friendlier than any other store I have yet encountered. (The entrance and music are just to scare off preps.)