Sounds to me like it was one of the more pleasant possibilities at a PLCB store.

From this most impassioned fan of Canadian indie bands – thanks to XM 87 (“The Verge”) and CBC Radio 3 (Hi Lana!), a humbly tonal tribute to His Slurping Boy, ‘cos he’s
“No Champagne Socialist”
Selected Captchas, refreshed: obstacles Boswell…eggshell investigation…essentially capped (!) – as Benny Hill would say, “It’s true I tell you!”

It makes me laugh to think that this story told from the other side–”Unbelievable day dealing with people worried about champagne-related issues; I thought he’d ask where to find the ‘Antoinette cake’ next”–would be one of those instructional tales regarding why the Bolshevik Revolution had to happen.

You dont want to deal with Champagne-related issues? Then don’t work in a wine store. Don’t want to deal with power-drill related issues? Don’t work at Home Depot. You ought to ask yourself why you think customers who want to buy Champagne deserve half-ass treatment, Trotsky.

Could this be the place those two young Russian women were supposed to report for work?

Every time you tell these stories I have a mini-seizure and my eye starts spasming like Clouseau’s boss. I can’t believe, can’t believe, can’t believe a state runs things that way!!!!!

Re: PA State Workers
There’s an old joke:
Q: What’s yellow and sleeps 4?
A: A PennDot truck
Bada-Boom…

It seems that we have here two separate issues, one within whose precincts we may need to cut any mass-retail/big-box staff a bit of slack, and one in which the staffers are indeed the authors of the troubles of their customers, and thus their employer. I refer in the first instance to any undue expectations of arcane mastery of the internal contents of the wares, on a par with that of customers well-to-do enough to consume them regularly, and such as would be gained at leisure, as opposed to the general knowledge one might expect from on-the-job training and accumulated savvy therein.
When I worked in Borders Books and Music stores in Virginia and in Maine throughout the 1990s, I was, to put it mildly, an extreme outlier in my having arrived via a missionary zeal and a calling to spread as much of my detailed knowledge of books to as many customers as possible within an eight-hour day; I often stayed in the back room after hours to browse the computers further still toward my own stockpiling.
But, alas, I was the necessary exception to the rule in that regard – there’s no way in Dante’s you-know-what you’re going to fill an entire 50-clerk store with apprentice Audens, Barzuns, Trillings and Wilsons – not on $15-freakin’-thousand a year f’chrissakes, Imsorryitsjustnotgo’happen!!! Anyone who expected otherwise is an illiterate in the economics of retail; the value-added productivity of labor in such stores does not admit of the equivalent of billable hours for professional expertise. If you have Jeopardy!-ready stores of learning, fine, just don’t expect an extra nickel above your $7 hourly pay for it, Johnny PhD. Without Portfolio.
And when it came to, say, computer books, I and 90+ % of my comrades might as well have just fallen off the proverbial turnip truck – you think if we knew the major programming languages we’d have stuck round when we could have thereby tripled our pay as a result? Talke a hike, chump.
On the score of damnable lapses, though, as with Rod’s anecdote – and bear in mind, it is but that for now – we can easily discern serious attitude problems, crassness and sheer unprofessionalism. Every customer before you deserves your fullest undivided attention – I counseled new hires to cut me and themselves off mid-syllable the split-second a fresh customer was within greeting distance of the info desk or the register. If you’re engaged, you page for backup. If you are a blank slate on Category X and a colleague is marginally more learned therein, you page them. You page for a manager if you lack the authority to handle thornier issues. You offer to gift wrap for fitting purchases. You offer frail customers with mountainous purchases escort to their cars. No matter how bad your day is, or last night was, you wind up and pitch an assumed smile down the customer’s strike zone until – hey presto! – it becomes self-starting. You apply social lubricant and warm solidarity
in abundance, and go the extra mile, however low your pay. And you never allow your standards of demeanor to flag, however vile the customer or hot his head.
Don’t get me started – there’s plenty of blame to go around. But for the state to monopolize the retail trade in the sort of goods without which many of us would not be with you today, drink not the least, is an unforgivable insult atop that risk of injury which in retail is never more than one sour crab-apple of a shoulder-chipped r-sole, clerk or customer alike, away.

Rod, I feel your pain. Virginia has a state run monopoly for liquor (thankfully, wine and beer are exempt from this) and if you want to know something about a bottle of, say, Pernod, (“do you ever carry any lables other than Ricard?”) you will get this thousand mile stare and “I don’t know nuthin’ about that stuff. I just know it turns yellow when you add water.” Gee, thanks.

But did she like the champagne? Ultimately, that’s all that matters

Amazing that lil’ ol’ backwards, teetotaling Southern Baptist Alabama has a better situation in this regard than PA. There are the state owned stores, but there are also independent wine, beer and liquor shops all around (and wine and beer can be purchased at the grocery store). We even passed a law last year allowing high gravity beers to be sold.
I’m not going to say that every indie store has an expert staff or incredible selection, but there are at least a couple of wine shops here where a knowledgeable person can direct you to some lesser known gems and help you understand the differences in varieties and such.

You dont want to deal with Champagne-related issues? Then don’t work in a wine store.
Is that “Workers should not be alienated from their jobs” that I see? Not a rule likely to be followed at this economic moment, but a slogan that might resonate past this moment. Only a few more steps to “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

My spouse lived in PA twenty years ago and said those stores wre the pits. Doesn’t sound like they’ve improved.
I’m not a big Champagne fan, but working in a wine store and not knowing about Veuve Clicquot is nuts. Every year before New Years Eve they advertise a huge amount on the radio and our local liquor store sells out of it.

Rod, have Templeton relocate to California. The weather is better, any type of liquor is for sale at any time, and we need more smart English-speaking people.

I just had a flashback to my college days. You forget, the whole purpose behind State Store system is to prevent illegal drinking. Not to be of service to the vast majority of legal customers who really need service… If you think of them as KGB agents it really helps.
Captcha appalled criticized

thankfully the republican governor of Va is exploring the privatization of the Va ABC stores. Of course there are many in the Old Dominion who are horrified by this idea. and yet several years ago during another economic downturn the state government decided to cut back the hours of service even though the stores make a profit. sheer idiocy

Hey Rod,
I don’t do wine or really drink anything, but this place is near my home, probably an hour or just a bit more from you: http://www.calvaresiwinery.com/
The guy who runs it is a very nice man – I think you’d like him.
Maybe you should check it out.
- B

Adding some mid-Atlantic tales, it’s passing strange that my state, Virginia, has both a Soviet-style system for liquor and higher prices than Washington, D.C. or Maryland.
The state employees in Virginia are, well, to be kind, foreigners who know nothing about American spirits (ask about which top-shelf bourbon they’d recommend if you want to see pure ignorance in action). They’re nice, polite, and totally unsuited for their jobs.
In fairness to public employees, in Montgomery County, Maryland, it’s the County that runs the liquor stores. And two things stand out: the prices are much lower than in Virginia’s stores, and the County employees who staff the stores actually seem to know their spirits. In my experience they are well-informed, polite, and efficient.
They also speak English, which you can’t guarantee here in the Commonwealth of Virginia’s ABC stores.

Not sure where you ended up in the suburbs but how about giving this store a try: http://www.yelp.com/biz/ardmore-wine-and-spirits-shop-ardmore I would be interested in your experience and if successful why this store is different then the one you visited today.

Cheer up, Rod. A few years from now you may well encounter the same person, but not in anything so tawdry and commercial as a state run liquor store. I’m sure that she and those like her will do their best to make the state run health bureau as useful and beneficial an experience as possible…

I’m sure that she and those like her will do their best to make the state run health bureau as useful and beneficial an experience as possible…
Worse, the same private enterprise that runs BP and is ruining the Gulf of Mexico or who ran the coal mine in West Virginia will be the private enterprise that runs the hospital and doctor’s office and pharmaceutical company. Profits before safety, public interest be damned.

I’m sure that she and those like her will do their best to make the state run health bureau as useful and beneficial an experience as possible…
Peter:
Worse, the same private enterprise that runs BP and is ruining the Gulf of Mexico or who ran the coal mine in West Virginia will be the private enterprise that runs the hospital and doctor’s office and pharmaceutical company.
But there will be another doctor he could go to, and a different hospital to try. When the state runs health care, he’ll have the same choices that he has now in liquor stores, i.e. essentially none.
Profits before safety, public interest be damned.
Of course, when the state runs things, it’s politics before safety, and public interest be damned. Ask people who have been in the Bureau of Indian Affairs hospital system about that, ok?
Why are liberals so anti choice about everything (except for one thing)?
(Captcha: “unseemly action”) failed (“Demotes executive”) worked

Why are liberals so anti choice about everything (except for one thing)?
Why do conservatives believe the government is incompetent except when it comes to controlling women’s bodies and reproductive decisions?
See, we could go at this all day.

Why are liberals so anti choice about everything (except for one thing)?
Why do conservatives believe the government is incompetent except when it comes to controlling women’s bodies and reproductive decisions?
Oh, come on, this is simply silly. As a good liberal, you know there’s another function of gooberment that conservatives believe is competent.
See, we could go at this all day.
But the fact remains that Rod’s experience with a state bureaucrat is rather emblematic of what happens when customers are merely beans to be counted, rather than individuals to be courted. Many people have had the same experience with motor vehicle departments, or with the current public health systems. What makes you believe that somehow, someway, when your doctor is another paid state employee things will be different?
Is it faith of some sort?

Is it faith of some sort?
I just have to look at the current health care system and see that the market approach has been a complete failure for most people because it has no incentive to provide health care for most people. Health insurers exist to limit coverage, pharmaceutical companies exist to make profits not make medication available at a reasononable rate, and hospitals exist to make profits and not make people better. The fact that we have some of the worst medical outcomes among industrialized nations shows that your concern for profits over health care is cruel, at best.

Is it faith of some sort?
I just have to look at the current health care system and see that the market approach has been a complete failure for most people because it has no incentive to provide health care for most people.
Oh. Then why do most people have health coverage at the current time if this is true?
Health insurers exist to limit coverage,
And gooberment health systems don’t limit coverage, or treatment? Really?l For example, there’s no limitation on procedures in the British NHS at all? No gatekeeping?
pharmaceutical companies exist to make profits not make medication available at a reasononable rate,
They also exist to create new products through research. Quite a lot of the medical research on the planet currently occurs in the US, some of it at for-profit companies, some of it at nonprofit institutions. It would seem that a mixed system produces far more innovation than a top-down, gooberment controlled one.
and hospitals exist to make profits and not make people better.
Really? Every single hospital in the US exists to make profits? Are you sure? And are you absolutely positive that no hospital in the US ever makes any effort to many any patient better? You wouldn’t be exaggerating, would you?
The fact that we have some of the worst medical outcomes among industrialized nations shows that your concern for profits over health care is cruel, at best.
My, you and your strawman dance just divinely together. Pardon me if I don’t wish to join in…
and the fact remains that Rod’s encounter with a Pennsylvania state bureaucrat is emblematic of the way people are treated when they are beans to be counted, rather than customers to be courted. it’s the way people are treated by gooberment health systems. Why do you want this?
Is it faith based?

My cousin (My father’s sister’s son) worked for the PLCB for 35 years. His job with the PCLB was controling prostitution and gambling in and around establishments with “our spirits”. Met his current wife in the bureaucracy. They both receive 6 figure retirement incomes. They live in a small town in NE PA which has an exclusive private country club, have a second home on the beach in Delaware, a third in FL, and he is also involved as treasurer in a private hunting club with many thousands of acres of timberlands. He’s converted to OCA.
You may run into him sometime, a very charismatic fellow, which is a sporadic family trait.
We have roots in Sun Oil, Philly area also. Just as colorful and charismatic there. Never driven a car, hard drinking, maintained one family tradition of liberal non-believing. Also a country clubber, and influential in groups I won’t mention.
It doesn’t matter if your a government man or a corporation man. These arguments are fruitless. We need to realize the limits inherent in capitalism and statism. They both have a job to do, and we can help them stay within the limits. Neither is the answer to our current unraveling.
We need a consortium approach. To make it all the more controversial, religion ought to be thrown into the mix. Love as a principle, order as a basis, progress as a goal? Where have I heard that before?

But there will be another doctor he could go to, and a different hospital to try.
No, there won’t. Health care will be offered by a division of WellPoint or Anthem, or maybe MegaHospital. Inc. I represent doctors, and that is the future other than a public health plan.

Let’s hope that, when we finally have the government leading prayers in public schools, that they do so with the same zeal that they have running liquor stores in PA.
And that is what the Bibo Sez.
Bless you!

Why is this system allowed to survive there? I know civil service unions have deep pockets, but guess what? The beverage industry is no slouch at buying lawmakers off either. Start up a “grass root” citizens group for reform, get them to funnel you $20 million or so and tear down that wall….

I don’t get what you needed the cashier to explain to you. His register was closed, and obviously all you needed to do was wait in line at one of the open registers and then ask for the champagne. You knew what you wanted, you knew it was there behind the counter, what was the guy supposed to tell you?

Why is this system allowed to survive there?
Kenneth, the simple answer is that it brings revenue to the state coffers. Couple that with licensing (retail beer licenses start at $10,000), the 10% liquor tax at bars, and being a monopoly, and you get the picture. What red-blooded American politician would want to give that up? Also, the first in line to protest any privitization movement is the LCB employees union. Don’t mess with the symbiotes. Gotta love it!

You must learn to shop like a Soviet…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKQcZYTZVmI

More fun with my bookstore customers, as a woman I have just escorted to the Fiction section asks me, of a trendy paperback novel at whose back cover I have just glanced while her back was turned -
“Have you heard anything about this one?”
“Why, yes – yes I have…it’s a debut novel of astonishing originality and power – in her verbal inventiveness, intricate pacing and razor wit the author reveals herself accomplished far beyond her years michiko kakutani new york times…”

One more, as a customer I have escorted to the Games section holds up the copies of Chess for Beginners, Chess in 30 Minutes and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess I have just pulled off the shelf -
“What’s the difference between them?”
“(pointing to each above, respectively, with an authority as calmly confident as it is improvised) Well…this one is for those new to the game…whereas that one is for those hoping to learn the game in well under an hour…this one here, on the other hand, is for those for whom even an attempt at checkers results in a trip to the emergency room…”*
*Hillsdale College, c. 1981, as a male dorm-mate asks me, an economics major, during a TV news broadcast -
“What’s the Index of Leading Economic Indicators?”
“(with assumed professorial urbanity) That’s an index of those economic indicators which are in fact the leading ones…”

Well, as a former PA resident, here’s my 2 cents worth:
(Cent 1) “You dont want to deal with Champagne-related issues? Then don’t work in a wine store. Don’t want to deal with power-drill related issues? Don’t work at Home Depot.” While I think everyone should take pride in one’s job and become as knowledgeable as possible, I think the current economic situation renders this statement rather glib. “Hmmmm… I’ve been out of work for months and can’t make my rent… but I’ll pass on applying for that job because it just isn’t my calling.”
(Cent 2) The state store situation is far from perfect, but now that I live in Indiana where liquor sales are privatized, I see a whole lot more of the type of liquor store that endangers a neighborhood by becoming a hangout for thugs and prostitutes, than the type where I can ask for a breakdown of Moscato by region. Yes, I exercise my option to patronize the latter, but does that make much difference to the little old lady whose neighborhood didn’t have a Bullseye Liquor when she moved into it? Privatization is great when you can afford the good stuff, not so much when you have to live in the neighborhood with the Bullseye because you also work there for minimum wage since your last well-paid job was shipped to China (see Cent 1).

John Rich,
Are MD liquor stores actually state owned? None of them say “State of Maryland Liquor” so I have assumed they were privately owned but state licensed. I should note that, except for one dingey store in a not-so-great part of town, the MD stores I’ve been in here were well-stocked and had courteous employees.
There is definitely a trend though toward foreign ownership of just about all such businesses– not just liquor stores, but gas stations and convenience stores of all sorts. Im Michigan it’s Middle-easterners; in Florida the Indians (India) predominated. Hereabouts it seems to be East Asians.

And Anti-Dhimi, no one, not even the most flaming liberal is proposing, state ownership of hospitals or state employment of doctors. The ACA certainly does no such thing. Please leave the red herrings swimming free.

And Anti-Dhimi, no one, not even the most flaming liberal is proposing, state ownership of hospitals or state employment of doctors. The ACA certainly does no such thing. Please leave the red herrings swimming free.
Why do that, when he can simply lie? It’s what conservatives do.

Not that this would mean anything with respect to the soviet ethanol bureau in PA, but next time, you might want to try Champagne Duval Leroy. Much less coin for everything Veuve has, plus vanilla, toast, almond, yeast. Mmmmmmmm. In fact, you can sometimes get vintage CDL for the same price as NV Veuve. I’m sure you had a priceless time with the Veuve, but IJS. Do they have that exotic stuff in Ukraine, er uh, PA?

Just as an aside, I haven’t imbibed since having weight related liver issues some years ago, but I still love this place:
http://www.happy-harrys.com/
and this place:
shopmerwins.com/wine.html

if you can get it….shopping for Veuve Clicquot, Rod? Templeton got any job openings?