Whatever happened to good old-fashioned honesty?

Of late my mom and I have received a number of unsolicited phone calls where the caller ID lists the phone number twice--for example, a call from (386) 233-3694 will have "3862333694" in the name field--or where the caller ID lists the phone number (such as (800) 831-9690) but has "Unknown Caller" in the name field.

I believe the Canada Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission ought to mandate that this practice stop. If you want to be taken seriously and treated warmly as a company, this practice is far from acceptable, as it suggests you have something to hide. Further, it suggests that you might have the means to alter the caller ID data to make it appear as though the call is originating from some place other than where it truly originates.

Mom and I are very observant of the caller ID feature of our phones. If we do not recognize the area code or phone number at all, or if we recognize the phone number as that of a proven telemarketer or telemarketer-like company, we will not pick up the phone. Occasionally the caller from such a number will leave us a message, and if we find from the message that the caller is legit, only then will we call them back.

There's an old Bell Canada ad from 1985 that makes a very excellent point: "A satisfied customer is a repeat customer." Granted, the ad is itself about telemarketing, but it's about legitimate telemarketing, not the unsolicited variety. And the unsolicited variety of telemarketer is never going to have a satisfied customer because the very nature of his business prevents him from getting first-time customers in the first place.

Whatever happened to good old-fashioned honesty?

Metro is wasting its money

I can't understand why Metro insists on hiring people to hand out copies of their newspaper. To me, it's a waste of money. It's a free newspaper, and so they're already losing money relative to what they would make if they charged for it. They have already spent money on the manufacture and distribution of their green newspaper boxes--and these things are a one-time cost. Why then should they incur the continuing cost of hiring human distributors? Aren't the newspaper boxes good enough by themselves? Does Metro think we're blind, that we can't see these boxes for ourselves?

Words of wisdom from the little prince

Today is the tenth anniversary of the day that my ex-girlfriend and I met online for the first time. She and I had a great thing going in the beginning, but it eventually turned sour, with the ultimate result that our breakup was not an amicable one. Normally I’m able to keep my emotions in check and let the anniversary pass without much regard for the day’s significance. But today has been different, not just because of the milestone but also because it showed how thoughtless people can be.

As I usually do, I went to Starbucks to mark the occasion. However, this particular Starbucks had permanently closed off an upstairs seating area, and the tables downstairs were all occupied. Somehow it isn’t the same to order something at a Starbucks and not be able to have the meal there--especially if you want to be alone. Then I went to the mall across the street and found its food court’s tables all occupied. My only remaining course of action was to go to a chair or bench in one of the mall’s corridors--and all of them were occupied to some degree. So, after having spent the last twenty minutes or so trying to find a place to sit down, I finally sat on a bench beside a garbage can and got set up to have my comfort food.

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the janitors came by and wanted to remove the garbage can lid so he could replace the garbage bag inside--and this after I’d just sat down and put my food on top of it. How cruel could he be to think his job to be important and my need for emotional space not to be?

Let me share something with you from Antoine de St. Exupéry’s The Little Prince, where a similar situation occurs between the prince and the narrator character. The narrator is busy working on his airplane engine, and considers it to be “something serious.”

Annoyed, and pale with rage, the prince says: “I know a planet inhabited by a red-faced gentleman. He’s never smelled a flower. He’s never looked at a star. He’s never loved anyone. He’s never done anything except add up numbers. And all day long he says over and over, just like you, ‘I’m a serious man! I’m a serious man!’ And that puffs him up with pride. But he’s not a man at all--he’s a mushroom!...

“For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it’s not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It’s not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It’s no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he’s doing--that isn’t important?

“If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that’s enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself, ‘My flower’s up there somewhere...’ But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it’s as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn’t important?”

My ex-girlfriend was that unique flower to me. While it’s true the janitor could not have foreseen my situation, there was nothing on the planet to prevent him from anticipating that I would need my emotional space. Could he not have moved on to the rest of his garbage cans and then come back to the one I was sitting beside fifteen minutes or so later?

You cannot imagine how hurt I was--not only at the janitor’s cruelty but at his refusal to apologize once I explained what today was for me. He didn’t care: “I have a job to do.” Well, I had a relationship to mourn. And in his eyes that wasn’t important?

The little prince begins to sob, just as I was on the brink of doing. “Night had fallen,” writes the narrator. “I dropped my tools. What did I care about my hammer, about my bolt, about thirst and death? There was, on one star, on one planet, on mine, the Earth, a little prince to be consoled!...How clumsy I felt! I didn’t know how to reach him, where to find him...It’s so mysterious, the land of tears.”

Words of wisdom. I wish more people would follow them...

Receipts are important

I’ve spoken here before about how I, as a business, need my receipts when I file my income tax. At any time in the six years past the date when the Canada Revenue Agency assesses my tax return for a given tax year, they can choose to audit me. If they do that, and I don’t have a receipt to help back up an expense claim that I’ve made on one of my tax returns, I might have to pay a penalty.

I strongly suspect that a large part of the reason--if not the reason--why the CRA imposes a maximum time limit of six years is that the ink on most receipts can easily fade to the point of illegibility. This is more often the case with receipts printed on thermal paper. However, there’s something that can speed up the process of fading out the ink, and in my experience there’s no place this can occur other than fast-food restaurants. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve had to pull a receipt out from under a hamburger or a box of fries or even a Coke in order to keep it dry--or had to get a serviette to wrap a wet receipt in so that when I put it in my wallet, the other receipts could stay dry.

I’ve also encountered lots of situations where I got an Interac slip but no receipt per se, or if I paid cash, I didn’t get a receipt at all unless I asked for one. This is unacceptable. Stores should always give out receipts, whether their customers want them or not. I’ve said in a previous post that stores have no way of knowing whether they have self-employed individuals among their customer base, and I feel they should always assume that their customers are self-employed except for those customers that they happen to know are not.

For businesses and professionals, there is an income tax form called the T2125, the Statement of Professional and Business Activities. (I used to file a T2032, but because the business and professional forms were so similar to each other, they got combined into the T2125.) It allows these taxpayers to claim certain expenses in order to offset the amount of income tax they pay. Among these allowable expenses is one for meals and entertainment, for which these taxpayers can claim half the total amount. Not surprisingly for a musician, the list of such meal expenses for a given year can get rather long--the last such list I submitted with my income tax ran nearly three pages.

You might think, “Oh, well, so what if one receipt gets spoiled like that, or you miss out on getting only one receipt?” That one receipt can make a big difference from an income tax standpoint. On page 2 of Schedule 1 of the 2009 T1 General income tax return, lines 30-36, you will see that income tax in Canada is paid at four different rates depending on the amount of net income reported on line 260. If the amount is $40,726 or less (as is usually the case with me), then income tax is paid at 15%. If the amount is above $40,726 but below $81,452, income tax is paid at 22%.

Now, we’re nearing the end of May. There are seven more months to go before the end of this year, and anything could happen in these seven months. I could end up still playing the organ for the churches, or I might find myself signed to a major record label. Or something else could happen that I don’t expect. Either outcome could make a huge difference in the amount of income I get this year. The point is, I don’t know which of these outcomes is going to happen any more than I know whether your mother, for example, is alive or dead. And these stores don’t know that either. Why then should they act as though I’m just an average Joe, a hobbyist musician with no intention of treating my music work as a business?

For argument’s sake, let’s say I get the record deal and my net income, after expenses are taken into account, jumps to $40,728 by the end of the year. Now what if I want to report my income on line 260 as, say, $40,724 (taxable at 15%) because of an $8 meal expense, but I can’t properly substantiate that expense because the restaurant either never gave me a receipt at all, or got the receipt wet to the point of illegibility? I can’t claim that expense, and my line 260 net income remains at $40,728. 15% of $40,726 is $6,108.90. 22% of $40,728 is $8,960.16. This makes a potential difference of $2,851.26. All because of one little $8 receipt. I know of a bagel shop on Wellington who doesn’t seem to understand that this possibility could occur with people among their customer base, and I have decided that for this and other reasons, I will not patronize them any longer. And that’s a shame because I’ve been going there for twenty years.

So I’m asking those of you who work behind the counter at such places: Always give a receipt out. And be careful when you handle your customers’ receipts. Many of your customers may not need their receipts, but there are some who do--and all in one piece, at that. You don’t want to make the CRA’s auditing work harder for them than they need it to be, do you?