Killspeak

I’m keen on books. I buy a lot of them, ask for them as gifts, and when I can find the time, even read them. I also live in Canada, which means I’m quite familiar with Indigo. Most every bound stack of ink and dead trees on my shelves was purchased at one of Indigo’s mall stores, sprawl superstores, or website.

Indigo wants its customers to know it’s all about Canada. Indigo stores often cover a whole wall or stairwell with the names of Canadian authors and musicians, printed white on red. The cynic in me knows these creators are being used to put a friendly face on a private company. This patriotism isn’t hokey, but it is marketing. It may be tolerable because of the obscurity of Canadian cultural personages; Canadians that do know them are probably eager enough to have these authors recognized, so forgive Indigo for covering itself with their names. Nonetheless, Indigo is using Canadian culture-makers to sponge good will from its customers.

Increasingly, Indigo is the primary provider of Canadian cultural products. Indigo enjoys an almost total lack of competition: it’s “the closest thing to an unregulated monopoly in Canada’s private sector.” Indigo owns Chapters, Coles, Book Company, SmithBooks, and The World’s Biggest Bookstore; only a few, city-centre–type independent booksellers remain. The company also dabbles in censorship through supply: Indigo doesn’t sell Mein Kampf and kept an issue of Harper’s off its shelves because of some cartoons.

This is not a very likable company—but I’m keen on books, so, yeah, I shop at Indigo without much hesitation. I pay to be a part of their iRewards programme (and, in doing so, let them track everything that I buy). I even maintain a list of books I’d like to someday buy using their online wishlist.

This wishlist is where I keep track of interesting books and DVDs. Even if I have no strong desire to own a book, perhaps only to keep an eye out for it at the library, I’ll add it to the wishlist because it’s handy. The wishlist is the first place I’ll direct people who ask me what I’d like for my birthday, Christmas, et cetera. Even when killing time in one of Indigo’s stores, I’ll often look up my wishlist using their self-service terminals to remind myself what I’m interested in.

The wishlist is where I store my book- and DVD-related intentions, which change a couple of times a week. So it’s frustrating when I’m kept from using the wishlist by some of Indigo’s short-sighted design decisions. Far too often, I’m not allowed to add an item. Sometimes, I find that my list has been re-organized. It’s almost like having your pen run out of ink, or have someone shuffle your notes while you weren’t looking.

These may not seem like big problems. I can maintain a list with del.icio.us, right? Sure (that’s where all the books I can’t add end up) but it doesn’t have live prices, pretty cover art, easy to buy links for less technically inclined gift-givers, or the ability to be checked in the store. I would much rather Indigo improve their wishlist service, and I’m pretty sure that Indigo would like that too. After all, other than their ubiquity, it’s the only thing that really keeps me a customer, and it’s at the centre of that business.

So I’ve made a short list of simple design changes that I believe would alleviate my frustration, as well as make the wishlist better for me and consequently for Indigo.

• Let me add any book in the database. I don’t care if it is “temporarily unavailable to order.” If I can find it in your database, I should be able to wish for it. In the cases where it is unavailable, offer to notify me when it does become available. If the book is out of print, why not provide a quick list of other editions that may be available? In either case, no harm is done by letting me add the item to my list. I may never be able to buy the book from Indigo, but I will continue to use the wishlist, and that’s sure to snare me in a purchase sooner or later.

• Allow me to sort my list. Me. Indigo should not re-order the list (as it has in the past, for no good reason). Doing so is confusing and off-putting. I can’t trust Indigo to keep my list my way. Oddly, items aren’t even sorted: not by title, author, price, availability, or date added. They should be, and the criterion for sorting should be in the user’s control. It’d be useful to see, say, which DVDs on my list are the cheapest, or which I’ve added most recently.

• Let me set how much I want something. Right now, there’s no way for me to separate the books I really want from the ones I may pick up sometime. A simple three-level setting would be enough to remind myself and show others which items would make a better purchase.

• Give my wishlist a friendly URL. I want other people to use the list, but I’m not eager to share it through Indigo’s email service or to cut-and-paste its unwieldy URL. Why not something easy to remember? I could jot down http://indigo.ca/my@email.address/wishlist/ on a Post-it, or read it over the phone without much trouble. It’d make it that much easier for others to buy me something I want.

• Tidy up the little things. Indigo should put some “Add to cart” and “Check for availability at local store” buttons next to each item, instead of check-boxes and a “Add all selected items to cart” button all the way at the bottom of the page. Further, they should replace the “Most Wished For Items” column with one showing relevant recommendations (items similar to those already on my list, perhaps). While they’re at it, Indigo should fix the page’s <title>.

C’mon, Indigo: let me give you my money.

Peter Lynn would like to write a book called The Greatest Puking Stories Ever Told, and I would like to buy it. Not only for the fact that he’s a good writer, or that he would like to publish it as a handsome leather-bound, but because I enjoy hearing barf stories—and, honestly, who doesn’t? Drunk or sober, young and old, nothing is as sure to involve and amuse as a good vomit story. That time you puked on your pillow and were too tired to clean it up. That time you put a Swiss Chalet meal back in the container it came in an hour after eating it. That time you followed a trail of what seemed to have once been fried rice and whiskey down some stairs to find three underage drinkers comically passing around a soggy paper bag, laughing and saying “If you’re gonna spew, spew in this.” That time you vomited for a large audience.

Some friends and I were returning home from a party at a friend’s place (where the toilet had “R. Mutt” scrawled on the side of the bowl). She lived way up by York University, a long subway ride away from home. We were travelling on a Sunday: the trains were few and far between and the cars were pretty full.

I was spinning. We had all had quite a bit to drink; I had all of the night’s good times souring inside me. Before stepping into the train, I was trying to reassure myself that I did not need to vomit. When at that point, of trying to soothe your stomach with words first imagined and then silently mouthed to yourself, vomiting is inevitable.

My friends weren’t any help. They’re the kind of people who, when made aware of your need to barf, will taunt you, jab you in the stomach, impede your frantic scramble for the washroom. You’ll be throwing up in the bathroom, long past the point of swearing you’ll never drink again, and reach one of those moments of respite where your body is deciding whether or not to retch some more. My friends? They’ll be right outside the bathroom waiting for that very moment to begin to make loud retching sounds, provoking another spell of vomiting. They’ll keep on doing it too, until you’re exhausted, at the brink of consciousness, just as hoarse from the bile as from cursing their names.

When I answered a curious “Are you alright?” with a bleary-eyed nod and a stifled burp, they knew exactly what state I was in. From Finch to Lawrence station, I tried to keep my eyes on the advertisements and the tunnels rushing past the window, away from my friends’ sly grins and fake half-retches. It was awful.

At Lawrence, a group of cheerful young girls came onto the train and sat across from me and my friends. They were sunny, happy, chatting loudly, and perfumed. Their pungent, vanilla-like reek made my stomach churn. I swung against the doors and closed my eyes. I had a wet mouth. It was going to happen.

The doors opened, I rushed out into Eglinton station and met the nearest garbage bin with a big fist of puke. I held onto the garbage and emptied myself. At first it came with strong pumps, but soon became painful and drawn-out, like squeezing all you can from a tube of toothpaste. It was loud. It was gross. It was in full view of everyone in the subway car.

The car driver had left the doors open, perhaps because of a shift-change, perhaps out of kindness (not wanting me to miss the train and have to wait for another). When I had finished, I turned around to see the occupants of the car watching me. They were silent, embarrassed, disgusted. The chirpy early-teen girls were wide-eyed and still. I boarded the train less aware of my acid breath than of the way I was being judged. This was not what the other passengers had wanted to see on Sunday morning. Except my friends. They seemed okay with it.

Lynn, your book idea is great. Think of it: sections dedicated to hasty cover-ups and last-minute dashes, cautionary tales of survival, and leather covers that’ll be easy to wipe. It’ll be a bestseller.