That Pioneering Spirit

Shit's Getting Real in the Best Buy Parking lot.

Don't know if you can see it, but that's me in the lower left hand corner of the photo. I'm sporting my Tony Soprano Adidas track suit, seated at a fold up table in a strategic position where I can address Best Buy shoppers before entering their palace of overpriced, Chinese-made home gadgetry.

Why would I take a few precious hours out of my Saturday morning to set up camp at the big box store, you might be wondering.

Well, this is from 2008 and let's just say that as a 36 year old copywriter I was full of piss and vinegar. I'm 44 now. My prostate has tripled in size. And my bladder no longer has the capacity for piss. Or vinegar.

But boy was I miffed. I had just shelled out $2200 for a brand new Pioneer 50" HD Flatscreen TV. And initially I thought I had hit the electronics jackpot. The picture was beautiful. The sound from their patented SoundBar9000™ was flawless. And the massive TV fit like a precision cut puzzle piece in the family room entertainment unit.

Life, in front of my multi-million pixel portal of football, nature documentaries and late night Skin-a-Max movies was good.

Until three months later, when it wasn't.

The Confibulated Hydroponic Transducer Module had blown out. And the repair was not covered by the good folks at Pioneer. Nor would they do anything to mitigate the cost -- $811.37.

This did not sit well with me. And so, in keeping with a Siegel tradition that dates way back to the grub-farming shtetls of western Poland and eastern Russia, when hit, I hit back.

If Pioneer was going to take $811 from my pocket, I reasoned, I would take at least that much from theirs. By convincing flatscreen TV hunters to steer away from the Pioneer brand.

Here's the sign mounted on my folding table.

Of course, I didn't stop there. Because I wasn't going to let a good grudge go to waste. I also had bumper stickers printed out and gave those away to shoppers who must have been thinking, "this man is certifiable. And he's wearing a wedding ring. That poor woman."

There was this one...

and this one...

and this one....

and finally this one...

I'm happy to say my taking-it-to-the-street guerilla warfare had its desired effect and NOT one single Pioneer TV was sold that day. Mostly, as I learned later from the Assistant Manager who booted me from the parking lot, because Best Buy had stopped stocking Pioneer TV's on their shelves. 

But I'm not going to let a technicality like that detract from my hard-fought victory.