Twenty Ten (The Prequel): The Cheesemaker

Originally intended as a follow-up to part one of my milk-based food product styled personal review of 2010, this slice of salivatious dental protection quickly went off into a metaphorical guide to the cheesemaking process, as you will soon see if you make it past the following paragraph.

By the end of the first week of March 2010, I felt like I was several thousand feet above sea level. High up a mountain, again, perhaps mostly due to the ever-decreasing capacity of my right lung, but plummeting to new emotional depths thanks to the leaden weights of my ever-increasing self-doubt and sense of despair, perhaps partly as a reaction to stopping taking my antidepressant medication (although I stopped because I was feeling worse, not better).

One of the problems I found with officially going a bit mental is that I started to lose all confidence and trust in myself and the rest of the world. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve always been a bit of an independent-minded so-and-so and generally not afraid to say out loud whatever comes into my head. This invariably leads to me getting punched in the face. Or into some other non-violent conflict.

The Big Cheese

A few years ago, I worked for someone who was responsible for making the lives of a few of her staff abjectly miserable, quite contrary to our organisation’s stated raison d’être ‘for better mental health.’ It appeared that she would move from one person to another and to another and then, it seemed to me, it was my turn. She claimed that I was:

a ‘maverick,’

a ‘loose cannon’

in need of ‘reigning in.’

After five years of consistent high quality work (as testified to in my appraisals), during which time she had approved one of my promotions, personally asked me to take on the second promotion and talked to me and treated me as if I was her (unpaid) deputy, I decided I wasn’t going to take it. While I will admit that I like to try unorthodox ways of working, that’s simply because the orthodox ways of working simply don’t fucking work.

During a torrid six months as her primary target, I had to undergo hospital tests on my heart for still unexplained and not since repeated episodes of vomiting and blackouts. When I told my GP what was going on at work she immediately signed me off with stress and didn’t want me to go back when I did. By the time my boss had finished with me I was unemployed and unemployable with a disciplinary record stating that I had bullied her (the disciplinary hearing was held by her manager who had previously made it clear that he would take her side and then after I started employment tribunal proceedings he wrote me a bad reference to prevent me from getting another job). Never underestimate the power of a bully.

I learned from painful experience quite a lot about how bullies and psychopaths operate. I learned that, while part of me wants to stand up to them and expose them for what they are, the sane part of me wants to avoid them altogether.

So when I did manage to find a new job with a decent manager and then later moved on from that with a good reference into my current post four years ago, I was delighted to be in a position where I was ‘the boss’, although, of course, I still had to report to a management committee made up of volunteers, led by a truly wonderful Chair.

When I say I was glad to be in charge, I don’t say that because of any desire to have power over others. Quite the contrary, in fact (unless I’m deluding myself). I’ve always believed in sharing power and responsibility as much as possible, but you can’t do that if you have an egomaniac boss or a rigidly hierarchical organisational structure. Yes, there are differences between staff and service users (staff get paid being the main one), but I try to minimise these as far as I can.

Cheese Grating

It was also gratifying to work in a London borough that not only funded my new organisation’s work, but whose commissioners seemed genuinely supportive. Within two weeks of me starting my new job, however, it was grating to be informed that the local authority would be able to fund us for only 40% of what we had budgeted for on their advice of just three months earlier. My first significant and highly unpleasant task, therefore, was to have to ask staff to reduce their hours from full-time to two days a week or to make them redundant in order that the organisation could survive.

Despite this inauspicious and extremely uncomfortable start, over the next two years, we began to flourish and I was able to bring in external funding to supplement the local authority’s money so that we could provide a still much-reduced service to what we had originally planned. Even so, it seemed popular with members (the people who use our service), staff were highly skilled and dedicated to their work and feedback from carers and professionals who referred people to us was, without exception, I think, almost worryingly positive.

Cheese Ripening

By working together on daily household and business tasks, we had established a sense of community, friendships and social engagement from a safe and supportive workplace. A lifeline for people whose experience was often one of many years of loss of sense of self and worth and an absence of meaningful relationships and occupation. A ‘second home’, where they were welcomed back with warmth and kindness into the human family (for more on this approach, I highly recommend reading Richard Bentall’s ‘Doctoring The Mind‘) and encouraged to believe that they had real reasons to hope for – and expect – better lives.

We had people going out into the community to volunteer and set up our own catering service to employ some of our members in very part-time casual work, based on their existing skills and interests. For all but one, this was the first paid work they had done in years. We weren’t able to find anyone permanent full-time employment during a time of global recession, but still I felt proud of what we’d achieved in difficult circumstances and with fairly limited resources.

Cheese-Induced Nightmare

So when I attended our annual review in 2009 with our main funder and described what we did and the impact it had on people’s lives I was gobsmacked to be told:

We don’t care what you do or how you do it. We just want people off benefits and into work.

I felt physically sick and faint.

While I understand (and, in principle, support) government targets to help people with disabilities to return to work, I’ve always been sceptical about the management-theory driven obsession with outcomes and, worse, the introduction of outcome-based contracting – where service providers get paid only if they meet agreed targets. What happens, is that the largest national providers are able to tender for local contracts with the lowest unit cost, inevitably, in my opinion, sacrificing quality (process) in the name of quantity (outcomes). Except that they fail to deliver.

Processed Cheese

To me, what we do and how we do it – the process – is of fundamental importance. There are plenty of organisations who work in completely different ways and who consistently fail to get people with diagnoses of schizophrenia (who form 60% of our membership) off benefits and into work and who receive considerably larger sums of money for doing so, making their CEO’s rich (and famous) in the process. Pushing people who lack confidence and don’t feel ready to work into inappropriate and unsupported employment simply doesn’t work for most and carries the very real risk of being detrimental to their mental health.

In order to massage their figures, these organisations ‘cherry-pick’ or ‘cream’ the most able and likely to find employment while ‘parking’ those with the most complex needs and severe disabilities, the very people small, local organisations like mine tend to work with. This is not to say that these people are not able. My experience tells me that indeed they are, but that they require much longer to build up sufficient confidence and trust and need much more support to do so. Time and support costs money, but so does a lifetime of unemployment and welfare dependence, not to mention the personal and social costs of inactive and isolated lives.

Cheesed Off

Well, that was a rather long-winded way of saying that in 2009 I began to feel that I was being fucked about at work. What I believed to be the right way of working and what I was being told to do by my paymasters conflicted and didn’t make any sense to me. A year later, while I had time on my hands due to my own physical and mental illness I ‘discovered’ that evaluations of the way I was being told to work clearly stated that this approach doesn’t work, either. I felt angry for not trusting my own judgment (based on experience and advice from mentors) and felt like I’d been bullied into submission, yet again.

Join me, if you dare, for another cheese and whine morning next time.

Coming Out Of The Closet

Following reports of Manchester City’s players, coaching staff, their financial backers and executives being united in their quest to end thirty-five years of hurt by pulling off a remarkable Quadruple this season, I thought it’s about time I manned up, came clean and continued my New Year’s resolution to be a little more honest and open on the internets regarding my personal eccentricities and interests.

The image of Emmanuel Adebayour in the replica Inter Milan Blackburn Rovers 1992-94 away jersey he got from Santa (Cruz), exchanging snoods and hair products with Carlos Tevez under the Yaya Toure Christmas tree and especially the sight of Roberto Mancini’s wardrobe bursting open with silky azure and cream neck scarves (one for every day of every season, even summer) sent a shiver of excitement up and down my spine and then back up a again and then made me start sweating profusely.

The hard-earned tipping point for me, was seeing City play with such exhilarating attacking flair, wildly entertaining abandon and having the courage and confidence to carve up and bone The Arsenal like a stale, leftover turkey in order to make it into coq au vin last night, while teaching Arsene Wenger the purest of culinary footballing lessons at the French Master’s own Academy was a sight to behold (or would have been if I could have kept my eyes open). It turned on a light in my darkened satanic red soul, a sky blue moonbeam, and awakened in me a joyous epiphany of adoration I now wish to share with my friends and the rest of the world. With a breath of relief:

I am a Manchester City fan, through and through and always have been. I was born in Manchester Stockport, I lived and worked in Manchester Stockport for a few years and I even drove through Moss Side, once, quickly, but still managed to glimpse the famous old Maine Road ground, the one true home of football.

I admit that I was just riding the Manchester United glory train, even if I got on board after the last English top division title stop and had to wait an entire lifetime for it to start moving again. But when it did finally get going, it was glorious. But now, as City have finally proved that they can run a train service every bit as evocative as United’s, it’s time for me to get off and rejoin my bitter brethren in anticipation and expectation of reaching the end of the line first.

To those who cynically say it’s about the money – maybe it is, for the players and the rest of the Project staff. But for the real, true football fans of Manchester Stockport, it’s all about the glory.

The late and newly stiff Garry Cock was unavailable for comment.

Twenty Ten (Part One): Hard Cheese

I began 2010 by wishing everyone (except fascists) a Happy New Year and a promise to blog my reflections on the naughty decade in due course.

Well, that will have to wait for another time, but here – thanks to my identi.ca memory aid – are my reflections on 2010.

After recovering from hiccups, speaking in tongues, a hangover the size of every Xmas and New Year and forced communication with O2′s customer service drones, I went back to work and set about the urgent task of building a snowwoman in the front garden.

This was my equal opportunities response the the much celebrated #SnowCock (replete with massive snowballs) of Glossop erected by Tim Dobson and friends.

Heaven snows he’s miserable now

Snowwoman somehow ended up transgendering into #SnowMorrissey until he inevitably lost his head, prompting a lyrical tribute from the similarly all-white and undead Andy C.

Just as life imitates art, ‘real’ life inevitably imitates life online. Perceptively and spookily – leaving aside the evidence of my maniacal online rantings – Andy C was concerned for my mental health.

If I’m honest, my most recent mental breakdown occurred somewhat earlier. Without wishing to go into too much detail and bore anyone with my personal troubles, I had been speaking with a psychotherapist since September 2009. After a few sessions, she expressed her concern that I might be ‘bipolar II‘ and asked me to see my GP in order to get a referral to a psychiatrist for an assessment. I felt pretty shocked to hear this as I’d never considered that I might have had any hypomanic episodes (let alone needed to see a shrink) even though that might have explained some of my problems.

In tears, I told my GP what my psychotherapist had said, and thus I began my own pharmaceutical research into the effectiveness of anti-depressant medications to give me some respite (my GP’s word) from my heightened and unstable emotional state. My GP also referred me for a psychiatric assessment.

Mightily relieved finally to have spoken to someone about my difficulties and for allowing myself to ask for help, I felt as high as Jesus on the mountain for forty days and nights. Looking back now, it’s perhaps significant that my identi.ca output during this time was the highest it’s ever been (according to Michele‘s Denticator – unfortunately it only shows the last 12 months, so you will have to take my word on that). Interestingly, my output last month, since I’ve been feeling better and like my ‘normal’ self was just as high if not higher:

I also increased my long-form blogging output, with a serious intent to try to write more regularly and have some fun in doing so. Perhaps significantly, my first post during this high period was about mental health.  I wrote eight proper blog posts in those forty days and nights including:

• A rant on authority and the War of Terror
• A tribute to Manchester United and my Mum and Dad
• A reminiscence piece I originally wrote in 1989 about my time stuck in a blizzard on Longs Peak, Colorado
• An Ubuntu fanboi article
• Another reminiscence piece, this time about a childhood incident
• And a frankly bizarre post about a blue tit

It had taken me nine months to write my previous eight proper blog posts and almost five months to write the next eight. I wrote only one in the two months reviewed in this post while I was feeling so physically and mentally ill. Between May and December 2010 I wrote another fourteen.

I crashed down to earth only three days and six thousand unpublished words after my spur-of-the-moment decision to write a fifty-thousand word NaNoWriMo ‘novel’ in thirty days. Like all the other novels I’ve started, this one remains unfinished, although I did get past page four on this occasion. All of this was while I was working full-time. Mild insomnia helped.

Man flu

Just like in 1994, 1999 and 2004, I felt myself slowly burn out as Xmas approached and by the time #SnowMorrissey had melted I was feeling too depressed to work or do anything else other than go to the doctor’s surgery. My GP doubled my anti-depressant dose and I later self-diagnosed the new but familiar sharp stabbing pain in my lower right side under my ribs as pleurisy for which I prescribed myself Lemsip Max. The previous year I’d had a similar but worse pain with frightening shortness of breath, which only cleared up after a month or so using an inhaler.

Less perceptively and spookily – and admittedly without the benefit of a stethoscope, cheeseometer or any medical training – Andy C was less concerned about my physical health. Less is more.

Six days later, after a brief investigation with her stethoscope, my GP confirmed my pleuritic self-diagnosis, signed me off work and prescribed my some antibiotics for a chest infection, too. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a cheeseometer either. I started to feel a bit better, but a cold winter’s night a week or so on and the pain returned. Perhaps understandably, I was generally feeling more and more miserable, too.

At least everything was running smoothly at work during my two weeks absence.

‘It’s just a slice of cheese‘

I went back to work on 1 February feeling much better after United had made City wait another year at least for their first trophy since 1976 and after setting in motion Arsenal’s annual implosion.

Seventeen days and an x-ray later, however, I was in Accident and Emergency with a suspected collapsed right lung. After a blood test to make sure I wasn’t suffering from a heart problems I went home the same evening. The following day I developed a strong desire to punch Nicholas Winterton in the face. Repeatedly. And regularly. Say every ten minutes. Coincidence?

Pull yourself together

By now, I’d lost touch with Reality, defending homeopathy. I’d lost hope, despairing at James Robertson‘s inevitably futile struggles to print and use his own postage using only Free and open source software. I’d lost my humanity, calling Basil Brush impersonator Richard Cutts a demented glove puppet for agreeing with me about Nicholas Winterton.

Three weeks before my x-ray, I’d phoned the local mental health trust to find out what had happened to the referral letter my GP had sent them back in September 2009, four months earlier. They helpfully told me that I wasn’t a priority for treatment because I was working and, therefore, apparently OK. I asked them what did I have to do in order to become a priority? Try to kill myself? They offered me an appointment the same afternoon.

Naively, I assumed that this would be an appointment with a psychiatrist. After waiting for an hour behind the locked doors and shatter-proof glass partitions of the Community Mental Health Team building that kept the professional healers and helpers apart from me and rest of the presumably perceived as dangerous local community it serves, it turned out to be an appointment with a nurse who scribbled a few notes on a scrap of paper. He then produced a copy of a letter dated the same day that he claimed had been posted to me the day before inviting me to a meeting with a psychiatrist in two weeks.

Three days before my x-ray, I met the psychiatrist. I made an extra effort to wash my hair, shave and put on clean clothes to make myself look less like Jim Ignatowski.

Jim and me

He sat in front of me reading my notes as if for the first time. After a couple of uncomfortably silent minutes he said ‘You’re not Stephen Fry bipolar.’

I suppose I should have been relieved about that, but my immediate reaction was confusion – how could he possibly know? All he had asked me was ‘Would you like a coffee?’ He didn’t even ask if I wanted decaf, sugar or milk and yet he was magically able to undiagnose me without conducting any blood tests, x-rays, scans or other measurements of the balance of chemicals sloshing around in my brain, which is the current unproven theory of choice among the medically inclined.

We had a bit of a chat. I asked for psychotherapy on the NHS as I could no longer afford to pay privately. He recommended that I keep taking the medication even though I complained to him that I felt worse than ever after four months on them. I was finding sleep difficult, yet felt tired all the time, couldn’t concentrate properly, had a dry mouth and sometimes felt my mood change from OK, to tearful, to agitated, to angry and even to suicidal in the space of a few hours.

I told him I’d washed and dressed specially for him. He laughed and said that was good, because otherwise he’d have had to section me under the Mental Health Act (have me forcibly detained in the mental health unit of the hospital). He rounded off our meeting by suggesting that I should pull myself together and get a life (not his exact words, but my honest interpretation and not far off). As I bid him goodbye and was closing the door to leave he asked me if I had any plans to kill myself.

I decided to stop taking my medication. Within ten days I successfully predicted England’s abysmal failure in the South African World Cup.

Look out for more cheesy Twenty Ten goodness next week as I march on into March and explain the cheesy references….

Fergie Time

As of today, Sir Alex Ferguson has been the manager of Manchester United longer than the late, great Sir Matt Busby. Fergie has had the top job in English club football since November 1986.

Except it probably wasn’t the top job when he took it.

To put things into perspective, United hadn’t won the First Division title for 19 years at the time. Our only truly bitter rivals Liverpool had 16 Championship successes to their name (next to our 7) and had totally dominated the previous 11 seasons, winning the trophy 8 times. Only the brilliance of Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest (who I had the privilege of seeing rip United to shreds 4-0 at Old Trafford on their way to their first and certainly last League title in 1977-78), Aston Villa’s great team of 1980-81 (who won probably their last ever top division title after a then 71-year wait) and Everton in 1984-85 (not their last ever title, but almost certainly their second-to-last ever title).

The first season that I can remember watching United, 1974-75, we were in Division Two and playing the likes of York City, Orient (minus the Leyton, as they were then known), Oldham Athletic and Oxford United after the final and complete break up of the Busby Babes. Unless you count Sammy McIlroy, which I always did. I was heartbroken when Ron Atkinson publicly signed Bryan Robson on the Old Trafford pitch before the game against Wolves on 3 October 1981. Everyone knew that it would be Sammy, United through and through and still only 27, who would have to leave to make room in the first team. He scored his only United hattrick that same afternoon against Wolves and was sold on to Stoke City 4 months later.

In the years before Ferguson that I was a United fan, we won Division Two and had a new, young and exciting to watch (and listen to on the radio) team under the flawed management of Tommy Docherty. In our first season back in the top flight we managed a creditable third place in the League just 4 points behind Liverpool and 3 behind a great QPR side (Stan Bowles, Gerry Francis) managed by Dave Sexton. Some great old footage of match and players’ hair highlights:

http://www.youtube.com/v/MFpSBBLGy50

Although United inexplicably lost to Southampton in the FA Cup Final that same season, we beat Liverpool in the Final of 1977 to prevent them winning the real Treble, a truly remarkable achievement by a team that will live forever in my memory and which was immortalised (for a few years at least) on my Subbuteo table. The disgraced and disgraceful Doc was sacked, which at the time was impossible for me aged ten to understand. Replaced by his antithesis, the dour and disappointingly defensively-minded Sexton, the highlight of the next four years was our return to Wembley in 1979. We lost in the most devastating fashion to a last minute Alan Sunderland goal for Arsenal after having just clawed two goals back to level ourselves (including a brilliant equaliser from McIlroy).

Ron Atkinson brought back the flair and entertainment of Docherty’s years and won two more FA Cup Finals, the best moment being Norman Whiteside’s winner to prevent Everton from winning their own trophy Treble. Big Ron’s United were always far too reliant on Captain Marvel Robson and his injury after we won the first ten games in the League the following season signalled the beginning of the end of his five years in charge.

Enter Ferguson.

Starting at the bottom after a 2-0 defeat at Oxford United

Although I didn’t fully comprehend it at the time, looking back now, it’s easy to see how amazing his achievements were with Aberdeen, not only in breaking the Old Firm monotony, but even winning in Europe, too. A real foretaste of what was to come.

But it took several more seasons of hurt and under-achievement. I’m thankful that, apart from Xmas and New Year, I spent the entire 1989-90 season in the US. I did make it back to see us win another FA Cup and it was this cup run and victory that is supposed to have saved Fergie’s job. If I’m honest, I probably wanted him to go some time before then, so rubbish we were.

Whatever the reasons, thank God he stayed! The rest is relatively recent history and well documented.

All I want to say is thanks to the Boss for filling the last twenty years with new found and real hope, unbounded and tearful joy, some of the most thrilling and unbelievable moments and matches. And trophy after trophy after trophy.

He knocked Liverpool off their perch as he promised he would. He took the spirit of Busby and re-modelled it for the modern game. He imbued himself in the traditions and the culture of the club and made damned sure every single player at every level did the same or they were out. Christ, he even shut my Dad up harking on about how we’d never be as good as Best, Law and Charlton. He made us United again.

Just thinking about Barcelona in 1999, where my then new housemate and landlord was experiencing first hand the atmosphere for himself (I’d moved to London for a new job just ten days earlier) and phoning me on his mobile to let me hear the singing, is choking me up.

1-0 down in injury time, having been totally outplayed without our suspended talismen Keane and Scholes, I was literally on my knees praying to a God I didn’t believe in. It wasn’t be the first – and I hope it won’t be the last – time I was running around, jumping up and down, screaming ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!!!!’

It would have been fitting if we could have beaten Chelsea today, but I hope the postponement has meant a day at home for Sir Alex with his family to relax before Xmas and the always most important next match against Sunderland.

Thanks, Boss!

http://www.youtube.com/v/V0GWQkovu5c

Good Godman! Why Is This So Difficult?

Yet again, I have waited in all day, quiet as a mouse so that I can hear the buzzer to my flat’s intercom go ‘Buzzzzz! Buzzzzz!’ alerting me to the fact that one of your drivers has successfully delivered the items I ordered from Amazon yesterday safe in the knowledge that as a valued Amazon Prime customer I am guaranteed ‘free’ next day delivery. I say ‘free’ because I do of course pay for this particular privilege. No doubt some of that premium goes to your company’s shareholders and other tax avoiders. I pay for guaranteed next day delivery so that I can guarantee being at home and available to receive the goods and not at work, so that I don’t have to go through this excruciating battle every time.

I note that your CityLink Service Alert [PDF] makes no mention of Wednesbury or Cricklewood the two depots where my goods supposedly have been so far.

I see no snow or other natural disasters occurring outside my window. I wonder what can the matter be? No card in my post box pretending that I was out when I was in. No message from Stuart Godman himself offering to refund my Amazon Prime subscription for providing a less than first class and as far removed from customer centric service as I can imagine it’s possible to get.

Here is a suggestion for Stuart. If you want to improve your customers’ experience, why don’t you try delivering next day for once? I mean, how hard can it really be? Even the Royal Mail can still manage that!

The only possible explanation I can think of is that Amazon have been defrauded by a charlatan company pretending to be the great and fantastic real CityLink.

No doubt your company will go to extra lengths and do whatever it takes to attempt to deliver my goods tomorrow – WHEN I’LL BE OUT AT WORK. And then we can go through this whole palaver all over again after I have had to beg and plead with someone, as if they are doing me a special favour, to re-deliver on Thursday when I will again be at home. Maybe. Maybe I should get out more and spend my money in the High Street. But I’ve been seriously ill these last few months and that hasn’t really been an option. Plus, if you think I’m angry now, you should see me in an actual shop!

Anyway, enough ranting. Please deliver my goods today. If that’s too much to expect, please don’t deliver them tomorrow as it will be a complete waste of your time and money as I won’t be in to receive them. If you really can’t deliver tonight, please deliver them on Thursday. I would really rather not have to go through this all again with you tomorrow night because you are just doing your job, following procedures and ignoring your customer’s wishes. Stuart wouldn’t want that either, I’m sure.

One of, I imagine, many of your truly pissed off customers,

David Marsden

Currys In The High Street*

A three-part tale of woe in 140 characters or less by my drug-crazed-zombie-caked-in-flour-friend Mr Andy C at the hands of British High Street electrical retailer Comet reminded me of my own previous with a similarly customer-challenged, although as it turns out, unrelated store.

A little background before I begin a rather more detailed account of my own attempt to do business with Currys:

On 18 August 2005, Comet underwent a £20 million re branding campaign to differentiate itself from other players in the market, mainly Currys, as both company logos were in white print against a red background and the company names were ‘similar’. It was often the case that customers would buy an item from Currys and attempt to return it to Comet, either believing the two companies were part of the same brand or simply mistaking the two.

I will shortly be logging into Wikipedia to amend this entry in order to give a fuller, fairer and more accurate explanation, thus:

On 18 August 2005, Comet underwent a £20 million re branding campaign to differentiate itself from other players in the market, mainly Currys, as both company logos were in white print against a red background and the company names were ‘similar’. It was often the case that customers would buy an item from Currys and attempt to return it to Comet, either believing the two companies were part of the same brand or simply mistaking the two. Of course, the main reason being that both are completely and equally crap.

I realise that a casual reader, or even that lowest form of human life a libel lawyer, might think, ‘Hold on, how is it fair to say that these two leading exponents of the world-famous and none-better British High Street Retail Experience are completely and equally crap based on the anecdotal evidence of just two barely sane sounding people?’

Dear casual reader and/or lowest forms of human life: ‘Please go shopping at Comet or Currys and see for yourself. This is not a double-blind scientific research study, nor is it meant to be in any way objective. I have written and published this article in order to release some of the frustration and inner tensions that have been welling up inside me for over two years and, I hope, for comedic effect. I am trying to fix the robotic seal which normally comforts me, but I am more of a thinker than a doer, unfortunately, and the nurses just don’t seem to care.’

—-

5 October 2008

Nish – Store Manager
Currys.digital
22-23 Ealing Broadway Centre
Town Square
Ealing, W5 5JY

Dear Nish,

Formal complaint about customer service received on 23 September 2008

As requested by you I am putting in writing my complaint about the customer service I received in your store on 23 September 2008.

As you know, I came into the store at around 4:00 pm to buy a twin cordless telephone handset that had a conference or three way call facility built in. I’d researched online the previous evening and knew that Currys.digital usually stocks at least two or three, if not more, phones that matched my criteria.

Normally, I’m quite happy to browse for what I want myself and not to trouble your customer sales staff. On this occasion, however, I was in a hurry to get home and after finding the shelf with all the telephone handsets I immediately asked the first sales advisor who came into view for help locating suitable products which matched my criteria. I told Alex exactly what I wanted and that I’d like him to help me find it.

Alex’s response was to tell me that conference calls depended on my telephone service provider (e.g., BT) and that I would need to call them first in order to set up this functionality on my phone. As I’d already researched these products I found Alex’s response to be quite annoyingly unhelpful. I told Alex that I knew for a fact that his store sold the product I was looking for and suggested that a more helpful response from him would be to tell me that he didn’t know, but that he would go and find someone – a colleague or his manager – who did know. Alex refused to go and get any help and accused me of being rude to him. Right away I found a phone that matched my criteria and pointed it out to him and repeated my request that he find a colleague or his manager. Alex again refused and this time walked away. By this time I was very angry and upset to be treated in this way.

I went to the till to buy the phone and to complain about the service I’d just received from Alex. Justyna was quite helpful and pleasant, but she defended Alex and asked me not to complain about him because “he’s a nice guy”, or words to that effect. I’m sure he’s a great guy, but that is not the point. The point is, he did not do his job properly. He did not help me in choosing the product I wanted or in helping me buy the right product for me. In fact, he gave me wrong advice and refused to help even when I asked him for help. If I hadn’t needed to buy the phone that evening I would have gone elsewhere and you would have lost the sale. That’s got to be bad for business. I had to serve myself and if I hadn’t researched myself prior to coming to your store I would have gone away disappointed because your sales staff do not know their own products and do not even know how to say “I don’t know, but I’ll find someone who does” – they would rather treat their customers as fools.

All in all, a very unsatisfactory experience, the only bright spot being that I got the phone that I wanted. I’m not sure what you can do to resolve my complaint – I asked for a 10% discount on the phone, but you refused. I’d prefer not to shop in your store ever again, if possible. Sadly, it’s my experience that Alex is symptomatic of almost every high street store where there is a similar lack of knowledgeable service and I’d be surprised if he genuinely acknowledges that he could have done better or if he even cares.

Yours sincerely,

David Marsden

Cc: customerservices@dsgiplc.com

—-

Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 3:05 PM

Re: Formal complaint about customer service received on 23 September 2008 – 1248920

Dear Mr Marsden,

Thank you for your email dated 9th October 2008.  I apologise for the delay in my response.

I was concerned to learn of your experience with our Ealing store.  A copy of your correspondence has been sent to the Store Manager.  This matter will be investigated internally and steps will be taken to ensure that this type of incident does not happen again.

Please accept my apologies for this matter and my assurances that this does not reflect our usual high level of product satisfaction and service we aim to offer all our customers.  I trust that you will not be deterred from shopping with us in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Charlotte

Currys Support

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Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 12:55 PM

Re: Formal complaint about customer service received on 23 September 2008 – 1248920

Dear Charlotte,

Thanks for your response. I had already sent the same letter to the Store manager at Ealing Broadway by post, but I have had no reply from him, not even an acknowledgment of receipt. This is especially disappointing as it was he who advised me that I would have to complain in writing if I wanted him to do anything about it. Oh, the irony….!

As I stated in my original complaint letter, I will try to avoid shopping in Currys stores in future whenever possible.

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I am pleased to report that I have never been back since.

*Inspiration for the title of this post goes to my little robotic friend @x11r5

CNL's Not Linux!!!1

Canonical demon Mark Shuttlecock today launched the latest of his life-threatening initiatives CNL, a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the Ubuntu project composed wholly of the best bits of free and non-free software so that it just bloody well works.

Several leading members of the Free Software community spontaneously combusted on hearing the news while the Free Software Foundation has issued a fatwā calling for Mr Shuttlecock to be forcibly detained against his will until he ‘opens up’ and agrees to comply with Freedom. CNL is believed by some to be a deliberately provocative recursive word-play.

It has been reported that an as yet unnamed spokesperson for Canonical has already been summarily hunted down, tied up and thrown into the nearest river to drown by a group of neckbeard-wearing Free Software enthusiasts.

Fear And Loathing In Ma’s Basement

Neckbeards are believed to have developed from a fork in homo sapiens’ evolution when their brains became too large and heavy to be supported by their necks alone. The characteristic neckbeard is an adaptive genetic mutation (neckbeardism), therefore, giving extra strength and ballast to support these super-brains, but at the expense of an almost complete loss of ability to see anything from anyone else’s point of view.

This makes neckbeards inherently vulnerable to attack from the side or from behind and as a result they generally avoid open places due to their lack of social skills and feelings of persecution. The original cave-dwellers, they tend to prefer the safety of underground bunkers or, in reality, the security of their mother’s windowless basement.

Another curious manifestation of neckbeardism is that the feet of those afflicted continue to grow in adulthood. Left unchecked they are rendered completely immobile and unable to go outside. This is why you often see a neckbeard with his foot in his mouth or picking the skin off his feet and eating it in order to compensate for the otherwise unmanageable foot growth.

They are believed to communicate with each other via secret tunnels and coded grunting and although there is evidence that they have developed highly sophisticated electronic networks these are generally too esoteric for the normal population to understand or use.