Is what everyone I’ve shown these to says. I don’t know why. It seems to be a very common misconception, and one that I shared myself for a long time. Regardless I have now peeled and removed the flesh and seeds of all the loofah gourds, leaving me with these.
Not all of them will get used in the bathroom I think. Many might be find their way into the kitchen as pot scrubbers.
I’ve never really considered it before and I’m not entirely sure when it started, but since I’ve been looking for work this time around it’s struck me that there is an entire group of people, I guess we could call them “exit strategists” who appear to be employed to make a company appear as profitable as possible and get it sold on to a larger business. Then they move on to the next one.
They appear to have no actual interest or belief in the businesses themselves or what they actually do beyond what is necessary to spew vaguely credible bullshit at any PR opportunity; it’s all about the money.
I’m really not convinced this is a healthy situation, not least because it’s pushing more potentially socially-valuable services into the hands of fewer and wealthier companies who just view their customers as a cash-cow. It’s also encouraging people who start businesses to view them as just a means of ending up with a large cash pay-off and their employees as necessary inconveniences and a drain on finances which in turn leads to a complete lack of respect and loyalty on both sides.
I’m not sure it’s even now possible to build a company for the long term, investing wisely in staff that are not just “resources” that will contribute by bringing in new ideas or different ways of doing things because they won’t be able to compete on price and over the long term will probably lose out.
It all comes down to money, doesn’t it? How awful.
I was struck by something Jimmy Carr said recently: that the most important thing to know in life is what you really want. If the answer is pots of money then you’re wrong. Money is just tokens. Stuff you can perhaps use to obtain what you really want. Valuing the tokens themselves is ridiculous; foolish even. And if you’re moving from company to company just trying to make a bigger and bigger pile, have you actually thought about how they’re going to serve you in getting what you want? Or have you spent so much time getting more tokens that you haven’t even had time to think what you want them for?
I had a few things to get done today, but this afternoon decided to give creating a new
account another go. Same problem as ever: the email address I was using was already set up somewhere else.
So, as I’ve had no response whatsoever to my email to customer services I thought I’d best get on the phone again. After five minutes on hold (so fast!) I spoke to a “guide” who actually decide he really couldn’t help me and passed me on to a more technical person. Over the next three quarters of an hour we established that associating my BT account with my new BT id “didn’t work” (well blow me down) and he couldn’t help. So he’s raised an issue with their even more technical people so they can have a look at it. Apparently that may take three working days, but at least I got passed through to someone who could talk me through some of the bill (which I’m actually fairly certain is wrong) and allow me to pay so the in-laws in the granny annexe won’t get cut off. If I’ve overpaid then it will just have to count towards my final bill when I move the numbers away from them as I’m not even going to consider starting that until the outstanding problems are fixed, just in case. They couldn’t actually email me a copy of the bill however. They could email me all sorts of other stuff, but not a copy of the bill.
And I’ve also been given a way to contact them without fighting my way through the IVR and the hold system — I go to a web page and they call me back. Asking customers to hang around on hold about a problem with their systems is just insulting really. I must have spent at least three hours on the phone to them this week and I’d estimate that half of that was probably on hold.
My last two wooden brood boxes that I’d put aside to repair — for the last few years they’ve been home to a colony that swarmed into them when they were stacked up full of frames that I was intending to chop up for kindling.
I don’t think there’s anything I can do with them though. There’s so much damage that even if I broke them up I don’t think there’d be enough parts to reassemble into a single box.
In September I took cuttings from a number of tomato plants and left them in the greenhouse in jars of water. Those that produced roots were potted up and then moved indoors into a bay window when the weather became colder.
I’m concerned that they are getting a bit leggy now. We’ll see what Spring brings.
I have some old boxes that were either made the wrong size (depth) or have shrunk over the many years they’ve been out in the open. Some of them I’ve extended back to the intended size with pieces of timber 2mm to 3mm thick. Today however I had a different idea…
I’ve been using some old Abelo poly hives as bait hives so far, ones that were made incorrectly and have both a top and bottom bee space. I reckon I can probably “adjust” those however, to return them to the correct size. Bait hives don’t need to be perfect, so as long as they can be properly closed up and not invaded by anything that shouldn’t be there (bee there, haha!) a box that is a few millimetres too short will do the job.
Keeping track of which are which might be awkward, so I should perhaps look for some paint or something to fit to them labelling them as a bait hive.
After 50 minutes on hold, I eventually managed to speak to another “guide” at BT this morning who insisted that I absolutely would have to wait the full twenty-four hours before recreating my account, despite previously being told it would probably be ok in a couple of hours. I also asked how I could get in touch with someone helpful if it didn’t work and was told that other than using the usual mechanism the only other possibility was to use the “self-serve” system on the website. He was of course completely unable to actually direct my to any obvious “self-serve” system on the website and I couldn’t find it anywhere, but many peoples’ experience seems to be that the website just sends you round in circles unless you want to give BT money, so perhaps that should be no surprise. He was absolutely adamant that it was the only other option however. If I’m honest, it sounded as though he was totally unfamiliar with the actual website.
So having waited 24 hours after my BT login was deleted, once again I tried to create a new account. Surprise surprise, it didn’t work, claiming that my email address was still in use for another account. And I could still log in using that allegedly deleted account, though there were no services associated with it. And when I tried to add them and waited for the required interval, they still weren’t there.
I feel utterly shat on. BT are utterly inept when it comes to providing clueful customer service. If you don’t fit the one of their scripts then you’re absolutely screwed and they just don’t care.
I’ve documented the entire thing and emailed it off to the address on the CEOmail site together with a list of what I want them to do to help resolve the mess. I might call them tomorrow. I might not. At the moment I’m not sure I can face it. As far as I can tell I’d just be wasting a load of my time, talking to clowns who actually have no idea how to improve the situation.
(Can)nibbles, perhaps? This photo was widely circulated a few weeks back when Richy Sunak and Even-Richer wife did some sort of ill-considered interview about how he loves loading the dishwasher. He could sit back and watch it for hours, I’m sure.
To me, it just looks as though they’re trying to decide which bit of the interviewer to eat first.
My, I am having a ranty evening.
As well as the issues with the BT website highlighted in an earlier post today, I’ve just been reminded of another totally thoughtless piece of design that is common to many sites. That is: the “contact us” option.
I can clearly see that it’s useful to provide a number of pre-configured options to enable better descriptions of problems to be entered and so that issues can be routed to the right people, but it’s so common not to see an option for queries that don’t fit any of the specified list.
BT’s website is a good example and I know I’m not the only person who has run into it, but they’re far from the only culprit. I visited a website today and tried to buy something only to get the message “There was a problem processing your order”. That’s an utterly unhelpful message to start with, because it provides no useful information. What sort of problem? At what stage of the ordering process? Stock levels? Card payment? What?
So I found the “contact us” links on the site and whilst they provide forms for dealing with orders that have been taken or shipped, and forms to help work out exactly what part to order, there’s absolutely nothing that fits “the order process didn’t work and I’d like to know what’s going on so it can be corrected”. So, they lose a sale and I have to purchase from another supplier when they were my preferred choice. And it’s now probably likely that I’ll prefer to use another supplier from now on.
Their loss.
Delivered this afternoon, a few more lathe toys that I can play with.
A fixed steady, vertical slide, knurling tool, screw holder, a faceplate and a few other holding and clamping tools.
Also delivered, but not in the box, a 1964 copy of Sparey’s “The Amateur’s Lathe”.
