Firefly

A work-related tale. It’s actually good. Read it.

A little bit of a preface here: The ’Serenity’ comic has been hot property. We’ve sold out of it four times, and this is only the first printing of the first issue, which has been out for two weeks now. We’ve been getting calls from Calgary to see if we still have any copies left. Yesterday, joy of joys, we managed to wrangle one in, with a sticker price of $19.99 because, of course, we had to go through the not-Diamonds secondary market, and we don’t want to sell it at a loss either. Incidentally, it was the Captain Malcolm cover, which was the first to go off our shelves initially.

Capt. Malcolm.

In comes a customer, and he was intending to buy the very expensive comic. Only he does not want to pay the $19.99. He wants to pay the US cover price. Prices stand firm, heated discussion takes place. I’m working the phone, so sadly I don’t get in on the details. The customer leaves, unhappy and comic-less.

Turns out that customer was Nathan Fillion.

Nathan Fillion.

Like I said, I was on the phone, so I missed out on little details like that (I didn’t recognize him, obviously. Hey, I’ve only ever watched one episode of Firefly!). Anyways, the story eventually finds its way to the internets, and whereas before we were dealing with one angry actor and his closest friends/family who he would relay the story to, now we get to deal with his fanclub.

There were a total of four messages on the voicemail. Two of them asked for an apology, and were calm and straightforward. One demonstrated the brilliance of internet persons who make good on their threats of action: "Hey Darrel, you suck." The final one was someone pretending to be from Dark Horse Comics (they publish the Serenity comic), threatening to not let us put any of their titles in our store. Advice to the anonymous woman who called: if you want to make us believe you, first a) leave a call-back number, because business is business, and b) know that we don’t deal with DH directly.

The kicker is that someone, possibly Rick R. Zimmerman, Assoc. AIA, needs to fix their fax machine, as it sent out around fifteen faxes, all the same thing. I’d hate to spoil the contents by posting it here. Ask me, because I asked Darrel for a copy (there were fifteen, after all) and I got one.

So now to end this on a high-ish note. Sadly, I suck at conclusions. I feel I ought to mention that the story’s been pepped up a little for comedic effect, and naturally biased, but it’s all true. Since this is the internets, no doubt the same stunning mind that brought us "Darrel, you suck" is going to find this and make a stink out of it. Sure, I could be reasonable and go into nice, calm explanations, but that wouldn’t make an interesting post, would it? And my LJ lacks in interesting posts.

The end... or is it?

I expect a few more messages on the voicemail tomorrow.