Devices and Vices

“Buying a computer and getting it to work properly is no more

complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts,

in a darkened room, using only your teeth”.
Dave Barry

It seems that I have more gadgets than I can poke a stick at these days, and I have to have all these things purely to survive the day. As I get older though, I am starting to wonder whether many of these devices actually do what they are supposed to do, and even when they do, do you really need them?
Take my cell phone for example… an amazing piece of equipment, to be honest. It is capable of so many things, it is incredible. There are just so many features that it’s unfathomable that so much can be accommodated into such a conveniently sized bundle.
It’s basically a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) phone. What do they mean by PDA anyway? It sounds kind of ‘virtually horny’ if you ask me, maybe some sort of virtual reality sexual partner that panders to your every whim. A Personal Digital Assistant?
If someone had said they had one of those a few years back, it would have had to be some kind of vibrating sexual stimulation device, wouldn’t it? I guess things haven’t changed that much, given that these things still make sure you are screwed, but in a different context. And in any event, at least half the time, a mobile phone is best kept in your pants anyway.
But, you have an all singing all dancing PDA phone, so whoops! There goes the palm pilot. It’s a camera too, so whoops! There goes the digital camera. It can surf the internet, download email, display pictures, so whoops! There goes the laptop. It can run a plethora of games, so whoops! There goes the Gameboy!


It can play music files, so whoops! There goes the iPod! And so it goes on.
However, for some reason, I still have a laptop, a digital camera, an iPod, a Gameboy. Now why is that I wonder? Simple – my cell phone is, always was, and probably always will be, a cell phone, and does a half ass job of all the rest. So I end up having spent 500 US$ on a neat device that functions at levels verging on mediocrity. Am I mad? (Like DUH!)
Does the PDA phone have internet capability? Sure, the phone has that, if you want operating speeds at less than a quarter of even dial up connections. I guess it could be used in an emergency, but it would have to be some emergency, wouldn’t it?
A dialup connection on a personal computer is bad enough. Once you have input your password, then quite often you go have a bath, get changed, go to the pub, shoot some pool, and by closing time maybe, MAYBE, you are logged on to your home page.
Who can afford to connect to your dial up ISP via mobile phone, and have surfing provided at less than 10kBps, and all that whilst consuming mobile phone call charges? You’d better be really interested in whatever share price or sporting result the ‘emergency’ calls for. Maybe it would be quicker to call someone and ask? Maybe it would cheaper too? (Just a thought). What type of emergency could warrant the need to surf the net on a mobile phone?
If your wife is about to give birth, your mobile phone is probably next to you. In fact, it has probably been taped to the side of your head… by her. The internet isn’t the place to tell you whether she’s in labour and what stage of dilation she’s at, as you rush to her side, now is it?
What do you do if your house is on fire?



I am sure you have your own thoughts on this, but if that happens to me my first response wouldn’t be to do a Google search from my cell phone
“How do I not get incinerated?”
Even if I did, the response at 10kbps might be just a tad late.
“Honey, the upstairs is ablaze, we’ve got to get the kids out of the house!”
“Just a minute love, I am almost connected – I am going to Ask Jeeves how best to leave the house”.
I think that if you did ‘Google’ in these circumstances, it might be more of a ‘googly’. You’d be better off with the iPod and The Tramps
♫ “Burn baby burn, disco inferno…” ♫
Talking about the iPod, well, the cell phone as a music player just doesn’t cut it, does it?
Any sane person who has ever had a CD changer in the car knows that a ‘small selection’ of music from the 6 possible CD’s will be satisfactory for about five trips. The number of songs you can store on a mobile phone is never going to be satisfactory, now is it? Of course, the cell phone could be upgraded in memory via an external very large capacity memory card of some sort, which, with that large capacity, costs as much as an iPod and more than the phone itself… that’s not a bad solution, is it.
Then there’s the camera on the phone. I mean, what is the point, aside from recording details in a motor vehicle accident (and we should have a disposable camera in the car for that anyway).
Phone cameras typically take pictures that are way below 2 mega pixels – well below that pixel size for most of them… no one prints images of this size any more and no one buys a digital camera with this pixel size any more either.


So OK, it’s there when you have forgotten your digital camera, or don’t have batteries for your digital camera, but assuming you do capture that image of a lifetime on your phone, the quality is unprintable. What flash? What adjustable aperture lens? What auto focus? What automatic exposure control?
Brilliant!
We’d just gotten used to the fact that a modern styled camera with the features of an old box Brownie camera was hopeless, and now some idiot puts all that less than great technology back into a phone… good plan.
It’s bad enough with most ordinary digital compact cameras. You know what I mean. The kids are doing something you MUST capture, so you run and get your camera. By the time it’s turned on, the CCD processor is receptive, the lens is out and the flash is charged, your nine year old is in another city and studying at university.
That’s already frustrating enough, isn’t it? Who is it that invents these stupid features that cost an arm and a leg? I recall that company’s used to have customer focus groups… what happened to those? Where’s the focus? (It sure as hell isn’t on a phone camera).
These devices are so dependent on that expensive element silicon…
How apt, as most of them are just that, expensive, and at an elementary level, a silly con!
(Jeez I get conned a lot – consumer gizmo marketing directors must have wet dreams about people like me).
By the time you have taken the effort to read the manual for an all singing and dancing PDA phone, downloaded the software, worked out all of its synchronisation protocols, then downloaded and installed the software updates …


… (you have to do that because every piece of new equipment isn’t field tested and the software always has more bugs in it than a Queensland sugar cane field and keeps causing the equipment to crash), and finally, finally when you have gotten used to the bloody thing…
The manufacturer has brought out two more models which are not compatible with yours, (though everyone you know has the new one, but that’s partially ok because their new software doesn’t work either).
Worse still, all the accessories you have don’t fit the new models so you have to go buy all of them again and sell yours, with the phone, at a 95% discount compared to your purchase price. All this and the model you bought has only been on the market for a matter of days…
It was marketed ages ago of course, but the manufacturer was so sure this model would be a winner that they didn’t make enough of them to meet demand, so they could keep the price of the new model sky high because of its rarity value.
I am sure you have seen the popular TV show, “Antiques Roadshow”, the BBC program where people show up somewhere in a town or village in the UK countryside and show an array of objects, artwork, furniture etc to antique experts, in order that they may get valued and the owners may get to know a lot more about the history or background of their displayed item.
This show is about to change dramatically.
“Hello Sir, and what have you brought for us to look at today?”
“Well, this little treasure is very dear to me”
“May I ask where and when did you come across it?”
“This morning – it was in my pocket”.
“Really, how interesting? Well, let’s see it then…”


“Ah, the motornokiksson 5000 mobile phone– yes this is a most unusual piece. It was marketed in the late 1990’s via cable and TV advertising, in press advertisements on three continents and had a retail price of circa 58000 pounds. The manufacturers made only 11 pieces, in two different colours, metallic silver and matt black. And that was despite having an order from every mobile phone network carrier in the world… the model was unfortunately superseded, three months before it was designed. I know that the consortium of manufacturers has each gotten one of these phones in their museums, leaving only five of these models in the world…
You are indeed a fortunate man to have such a phone in your pocket, Sir.”
(enthusiastically…) “I am. I am. Is it an antique, and how much is it actually worth”
“Well, at today’s prices, and taking into account the rarity of the phone, I would imagine, if you were to take this to auction, you would be looking somewhere in the range of…
Certainly 1 to 2, maybe 2 and a half”
“Million pounds?”
“No – pounds my good man
But you could hit an ant with it, and it may cause the ant to cry out… and there you have it – an ant eek.”
In the Philippines I was stupid enough to purchase one of the first PDA phones with an inbuilt keyboard. During the first few hours of ownership (before I took it out of the box and charged it) I was very happy with it. Then, abject lunacy kicked in, and I decided that having invested in this mega featured phone, then actually using it may be the smart choice.
However, as soon as this ‘phone’ was ready for use, it wasn’t ready for use.


Every mortal thing that could go wrong with it, went wrong with it, and the manufacturer’s claims were soon totally unbelievable. In fact, the phone was about as likely to function as advertised, as Disney are to make a CS Lewis Narnia inspired version of the Clinton/Monica impeachment,
‘The liar, the bitch and the mouthprobe’.
People saw this cell phone, however and were curious. Not just because I kept throwing it at the wall, but because it looked very different to current models at that time. It had an inbuilt keyboard and whilst other models were becoming smaller by the minute, this one was slightly smaller than the average microwave oven.
By the time it was displayed by me in public, however, I was already extremely, absolutely, positively, pissed off with it…
“Wow – what type of phone is that?”
“It’s the new Clinton Phone”.
“The Clinton phone?.. I have never heard of it”.
“Conceptually you have heard of it. You can get AIDS from sex, but Clinton got sex from aides, didn’t he? Well this phone is like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, while to you this looks like a cell phone, to me it’s a phone I should SELL”
In less than six months I had four replacement units, none of which worked and I eventually requested my money back. The manufacturer’s regional customer service director refused, and refused, and refused, so I decided that I would perhaps take product complaints in new directions – new directions that, in retrospect, were immensely satisfying.



I took the phone out onto my lawn and secured it in an upright position with two golf tees. Then I set up my camcorder to be focussed upon it, plus the surrounding area, and I ceremoniously hit the phone with a pretty little draw using a 5 iron with a full golf swing. I hit the phone’s LCD screen, right in the sweet spot of the club. I downloaded the video of this, and then sent it to the regional customer service manager of the phone manufacturer, asking politely if this video MPEG would make amusing viewing on the internet. I told him the tagline might be
“This is how to iron out problems with the xyz model phone – a 5 iron works best, we find”.
I got my money back within three days. Sometimes it pays to be a product and service terrorist or activist – it’s the only behaviour some companies respond to.
When you eventually do get a cell phone that basically does what you want though, there are still issues and challenges to deal with.
First of all there are the problems of dropout. It seems this happens all too often, and it is nothing more than a conspiracy between carriers. Of course they want the signal to drop out.
Of course they want you to be forced to dial again and incur that more expensive first minute… again, and again, and again. Bastards!
Secondly, that communications device on your belt or wherever isn’t a mobile phone anymore – it’s hard currency for any thieving swine who fancies a pop at making off with it… and why is it, so far as I can tell anyway, that is beyond the capability of any cell phone company to manufacture a case that is functional, whereby it fits the phone, allows it to be carried easily, isn’t easy to rip off a belt, allows all the functionality of the phone to still be accessed, and protects the phone as well.


Is it really that difficult to design a good case? Would people pay good money for such a case? No shit Sherlock.
Sure they would, but if phones stop getting damaged for seemingly no reason (for example from air movement when a butterfly passes within 5 yards), then cell phone sales will reduce, won’t they? If they stop getting stolen, again new phone sales at the higher end will reduce.
I once had a decent palm platform Treo cell phone start to go totally haywire for no logical explanation as far as I could tell, so I took it into a service centre.
A technician took my phone into a workshop area and didn’t emerge until around twenty minutes later. He told me a statement and asked a question I found quite amusing…
“Sorry sir, it seems your phone had a virus. May I ask who the carrier is?”
I was waiting for him to give me a prescription for antibiotics, or better yet, antielectronics.
I have in the past been amused when hearing of people being dumb enough to try and get sick days off work because they have caught a computer virus. Asking the aforementioned question made me laugh almost that much.
Even phones get bloody viruses these days, thanks to Bluetooth in the main. I must admit though it is a lot of fun being in a crowded café and then covertly checking for Bluetooth devices.
As long as your device isn’t set up in a way that shows who you are (like your ID is your phone model, for example), then you can send messages to other Bluetooth devices in a blind fashion.
I find it amusing to announce yourself as a girl who you can see in the café.



I look for one who is texting with such vigour that she’s either trying out for the Olympics, or attempting to research how many characters need to be depressed before succumbing to carpal tunnel syndrome. I especially like to select a girl or woman who has the ‘god’s gift’ air about her – you know the type… she is gorgeous, men want her, AND they are prepared to pay, from her perspective. All I do is then send ultra sexy messages to an unsuspecting guy… seemingly from her. The ensuing chaos can be most amusing to witness after you have made sure your device is either Bluetooth disabled, or nicknamed the model of her phone.
Cruel? Maybe. Worthwhile? At times hilarious. Does she ask for it? Probably, though she equally probably tells her friends
“it’s so annoying getting all this attention from guys”.
Yeah right. Perhaps a pretty much see though blouse, and a skirt that is so small that the material therein wouldn’t be enough to make two drinks coasters, is averting attention then?
We do seem to be increasingly obsessed with gadgets, don’t we? One accidental flip though the cable or satellite channels and at some point we’ll come across the shopping channel.
All I can say is ‘what a crock of shit these nutters are spouting’.
Announcers voice…

“Brand new from Pray Tell –
this fantastic device has been in the making for many years, and after extensive market research we now bring you the all in one, super improved, never seen before, combined tea leaf straining, nose hair removing, drain unblocking, button sewing, abdominal shaping, car cleaning, kitchen slicing, retractable four piece animal grooming stepladder.”


Then some bimbo or moron will enter the scene in a recorded piece that effectively states how wonderful this new gadget or gizmo really is, and how ‘it has absolutely positively changed my life forever’ type endorsement. “Love my Multi purpose Stepladder”.
Did you ever notice how half of these ‘reference people’ look like they are either abusing substances, or have facial expressions that suggests a past life of substantial, yet repetitive trauma and or medical experiments? Where do these infomercial producers find such ‘untypical’ looking members of the human race? Then the ad spiel continues…
“It’s so convenient – gone are the days when you needed several tools to take care of your needs, that all were purpose designed, and worked fine. NOW you can have one gadget that can do all these tasks as well, not very well perhaps, but it can do them after months of training how to use it, and the whole package can slide conveniently under your bed, out of harms way”.
Out of harm’s way, indeed.
The best way to get these contraptions out of harms way is to take it to the nearest rubbish dump.
I guess they forgot to tell you that if this contraption is to be slid under your bed, then your bed is going to be three feet higher than now, and so you will naturally rest easier feeling like you re-enacting scenes from The Exorcist every night (The power of Christ compels you).’
People are actually buying a lot of this stuff, and getting conned by these subliminal marketing messages. Most of them are TV advertorials or Infomercials as they are often called, hosted by singularly THE most annoying people on the planet. BUT WAIT! Stay tuned, and these people will get even more annoying. BECAUSE they speak in language patterns and with intonation that no normal human uses… ever!


LET’s SEE if the very next ten callers have been categorised as having lost the will to live. AND THERE’S MORE.
Not only does this host have the personality of a Christmas bauble (looks bright and shiny but the insides are empty – plus, the best thing to do for him is hang him from a tree for Christ’s sake), but he or she is going to tell you all those benefits you have heard 53 times already, ABSOLUTELY FREE!
SO STAY TUNED!
The people who watch these infomercials are either out of work, or have temporarily stopped working, which is kind of apt given the products on offer, don’t you think, which probably don’t work either.
“Look at the blades on these Kenny. Here we have a regular really tough shoe, and the new improved LuxKindaCrapi Samurai all purpose kitchen knife that will slice the shoes like butter. And look, not only did it make short work of the shoe, but it still cuts a ripe tomato in perfect slices, again and again and again”
What kind of people are watching this and actually calling these nutters to buy this ill conceived junk? When was the last time these shoppers actually had the need to cut a perfectly good pair of shoes in half? Haven’t these shoppers realised how stupid this concept is? If you want open toed shoes, just buy a pair of bloody sandals you idiots! It’ll be cheaper than buying a knife set, that’s for sure. Who wants a knife that can cut through rope, tin cans, blocks of wood, and still slice freshly cooked bread into perfect slices. Buy a bloody saw for Christ’s sake.
And this is supposed to be a marvel? Marvellous?
Marvel less in my view, except for the presenter who could well be an adaptation, or at the very least inspired by, a character from a Marvel comic… certainly not from this planet, and with at least one alter ego, that’s for sure.


From my perspective I typically don’t know who this knife demonstrating chef is, (which is kind of surprising given that he’s billed as though every person in the developed world has heard of him or her, and could only be Jamie Oliver’s best mate), but I will make sure I will never eat in any restaurant that he or she has worked in… seriously.
The idea of dining in any restaurant where kitchen utensils are being used to perform subcontract cutting services for local building contractors and sheet metal workers is totally out, if you ask me. I don’t want residue of concrete in my side salad, or leather bits in my soup thanks to the all purpose nature of their kitchen knives and the non restaurant services they are engaged in.
And if these knives are SO,SO, so good, then why aren’t they in any of the world’s best restaurants? If they were, they’d be advertised as such, yet they never are, are they? The nearest these knives have been to a restaurant with a Michelin Star Award is when the demonstrator cut a tyre in the infomercial. And even that probably wasn’t a Michelin. Ah well, assholes are calling their hotline, so maybe it will be a good year for the presenters.
Then there’s the ALL NEW MIRACLE, weight loss gadgets.
Are these people serious? And are shoppers really that dumb?
How in god’s name can you sit on your fat lard impregnated butt and just melt away the kilos by getting electronically zapped by some muscle stimulator.
“THE REVOLUTIONARY ALL IMPROVED LARDZAP”.
I mean, come on! Give me a break! You see people busting their ass in gyms all over the place, and this electric marvel will zap you into shape? In the comfort of your own armchair? Whilst watching your favourite TV shows?


“Get iron man abs with the LARDZAP. Get super iron man abs by sitting in your favourite chair watching ads for the LARDZAP.”
Yeah, right!
Years ago, did you ever have the misfortune to go to a psychiatric unit and see patients there getting zapped – and with a lot more current than these portable contraptions too. Did they come out with weight loss around the zapped areas?
How come cows don’t have thin backsides? Surely they would do after all those times of walking into electric fences?
I reckon the people who buy these micro zap machines are perverts, and God only knows where they are zapping themselves. If this is true, and especially if a guy is using it for that purpose, then I can only imagine total dissatisfaction if the product lives up to its claims. The male pervert may well get a few cheap thrills but what happens when his penile girth shrinks? OOPS!
Of course we can’t ignore the fantastic, revolutionary, multi purpose CAR PAINT RESTORATION KIT.
You must have heard of this. The series of applications for cars that can repair marks in your cars’ paintwork from those well know stains we all unfortunately wake up to find have mysteriously appeared during the night.
You know the ones I mean. It really gets my goat when I go to take the car out of the garage and then it hits me.
‘Oh, bloody hell!’
“ Honey! Some complete bastard has emptied a bottle of acid all over my car bonnet… again.”
This type of crap happens to me all the time… doesn’t it to you?
Yeah right…



“Hey honey, you know that idiot who keeps pouring acid on my car? Well apparently it wasn’t poured. The kid had been drinking battery acid and he’d been peeing on the bonnet”.
“What? Really? How do you know?”
“Oh the police just called. Apparently they caught the kid and he admitted everything. He’s drunk 17 litres of battery acid so far this week, and luckily the police are now charging him”.
Is this a likely conversational story? Not really, but as likely as getting acid poured on your car I guess. Unless you have an affair with Glenn Close and then decide ‘all bets are off’ with her, I suppose.
What is with these stupid demonstrations? As if I am going to need to remove acid stains from my car paintwork. As if I am going to need to restore my paintwork after someone, again, took a flame thrower to it.
Yes, I sometimes take my car on holiday with the family. But I didn’t select Saigon as a holiday auto touring destination during the bloody Vietnam war!
What’s next? Gain protection from some bacteriological plague that doesn’t munch human flesh any more, but eats cars?
It makes you wonder what planet these infomercial people were beamed down from.
Personally, one of my favourite Infomercial products are the kitchen chopper type machines.
These machines are just fabulous, aren’t they? It always strikes me as a bit odd that these ‘can’t live without them’ inventions are marketed in the way they are.
“CALL NOW for a once in a lifetime price of only $49.95 – in three easy to afford payments”.



What is that about? They are marketing it as a product that their target audience can only afford by making it available for purchase by instalment, yet the demonstrator just spent 10 minutes explaining how the machine is easy to clean in your dishwasher. ??? Hello??? Do you think anyone who has to pay in small instalments can afford a bloody dishwasher? Our survey says… “ERR ERR”. Then there’s all the exercise equipment.
There are skiing machines for people who think Ski is yoghurt. There are cycling machines for people who are legally prohibited from buying ordinary bikes and who have no roads where they live anyway. There are running machines for people who can’t run, presumably because they weigh an unbelievable amount and they live on a natural earthquake fault line. There are stair climbers for people who live in apartments without stairs, etc, etc.
What a total bunch of crap!
The majority of shoppers who buy these pieces of equipment have their basic economics and maths wrong. They believe:
A + B = C
and
C ≥ A
Where
A is the weight you want to lose
B is the money the exercise machine you are buying, and
C is the weight you actually will lose, and that it is equal to or greater than A.

This is a misguided calculation in buying this equipment. The real calculation should be:



(A – B) + (C – D) = (E + F)ⁿ
where
A is the available space in your house to store the machine
B is the space the exercise contraption takes up
C is your credit card balance before purchase
D is the cost of the exercise contraption
E is a complete waste of space
F is a complete waste of money
ⁿ is the number of pieces of equipment you buy

I want some one to answer the questions,

“if these machines are so good, are so easy to use, glide so smoothly, and are so convenient, how come most people think after buying them that they are not a piece of exercise equipment at all? Why is it that the purchasers see a piece of exercise equipment on TV, yet get an anti static piece of equipment at home?”

This must be true, otherwise how else do these machines collect so much dust?

Also, why is it that the people who might actually need this kind of equipment are never shown as the people using and demonstrating it (unless in the company of Mr Universe or Miss Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft)?

The ‘model’ is already usually totally muscularly ripped with body fat percentages in single figures at worst. What’s that about? Having people model and demonstrate fitness machines who are super fit? Do you think this guy or girl got fit because of these machines? Fat chance of that… but these models always tell you the truth, don’t they?..



“I used to be a lot chubbier than I am now, but then I got my super exerciser. It turns out that going to the gym four times per week, undertaking a supervised weights programme, eating purpose designed high protein nutritional meals and running 5 kilometres per day didn’t help my fatty weight problem. But just two uses of my super exerciser, and I lost 137 lbs.
It’s a miracle. I can now watch TV and be a total lard arse, exercise only three times per week with my super exerciser, and best of all my alter ego gets to smoke cigars and be the Governor of California… it’s great!”
Sure thing it’s a miracle… and perhaps the model is specifically chosen? But if so, that’s ridiculous.
Does the British School of Motoring advertise with Michael Schumacher as the person getting driving lessons? Hmm, that wouldn’t work, would it?
WHAT?
AND THIS DOES WORK? Hello? HELL-LO-OOOOH? Is there anybody home? Wake up viewers!
Why not show a more lifelike rendition? Show some completely fat blobby jelly person on the machine, who weighs slight less in kilos than the viewer numbers for these infomercials, that after only 5 minutes already has a heartbeat rate of 2500 beats per minute, and where the studio floor has a gutter inbuilt because the demonstrator has sweat pouring off them in a virtual monsoon… collect the sweat, put it through a distillation process and BINGO!
No more water shortage and the hose pipe ban gets lifted in three counties.
This would be cool.


Forget solar energy. Just put the same incredibly fat guy on one of these machines attached to a heat exchanger… that will produce enough stored energy to heat half a county or state for a week.
That would be more realistic than having some past supermodel onscreen, wouldn’t it?..
“Before using the super deluxe, all purpose cardiac arrest energiser, I started to have fat deposits where I didn’t want them… I had to do something”
Sure you did. How can a person who has thrown up 97 % of everything they ever ate have ever been fat? At the embryonic stage maybe, I suppose.

Need To Know Basis

“Gentlemen, for your information, I have a question to ask you”.
Samuel Goldwyn


I don’t know if you feel similarly, but it seems to me that I am becoming more and more frustrated by the number of questions I am being asked, often repeatedly, in order to allow an organisation, or a person, to have an easier or more cost effective existence, yet seemingly at my personal expense.
For a period I had the most wonderful learning experience working with a leading sales training organisation in Australia, called at that time, Mercuri International. Their director of quality was an extremely enthusiastic and brilliantly skilled man, Rob Davie, someone who to this day I hold in high esteem and who has tremendously enriched my life, and particularly my children’s lives, by virtue of the learning I experienced. During what was a most extensive induction program, I recall vividly two statements that he made
“Why is it, when we know what we know, that we do what we do?.. we do what we learn”, and
“The information you give is as good as the information you have, and the information you have is only ever as good as the questions you have asked”.
These statements are incredibly profound and they seem to pop into my head on an all too regular basis, whenever I find myself being virtually interrogated for no good reason whatsoever.
What is it about the modern world that causes us to be subjected to treatment where our time and money is liberated from us, and usually in ways that are underhand, surreptitious, and often with no choices at all?


We regularly avail ourselves of products and services in all manner of ways, yet despite the ‘Customer First’ programs that companies have in place, in their vision (more like plight) to bring the customer into the centre of the organisation, as they call it, I feel I am treated worse today than ever.
I mean, come on corporate executives! I get to experience what your organisation is like from the cutting edge – and I am paying for it - and you have the audacity to suggest you want to bring ME into the centre of YOUR organisation??? Teams of wild horses couldn’t pull me in that direction, especially as you have no regard for me whatsoever, other than what comes out of my wallet. Look at how we are treated these days by most corporations.
When was the last time you rang a large organisation’s customer service function, and actually got to initially speak to a human being?
We get a machine instead, don’t we? And then we get to wait on the phone for a month while some crazed loon’s idea of a service menu is reeled off, in some attempt to be able to direct your call to ‘the most appropriate agent’. I am always tempted to just press 7 anyway, because 007 was always my favourite agent.
‘Thank you for calling the hiring human beings avoidance strategy and cost reduction ploy hotline. Your call is important to us, that’s why we fired all the staff that used to take it.
‘For English, press 1’.
‘If you were an only child, press 2’
‘If you are menstrual or menopausal, press 3’
“If you have recently been abducted by aliens, press 4’
‘If you are suffering from a short attention span, press 5’
‘If you are suffering from a short attention span, press 5’
‘Short attention press 5’ Etc., etc., etc.


For the less than enlightened, this automated answering system is called an IVR, or Interactive Voice Response system.
Most to the time I just want to be able to speak to a person, not after hearing the menu, but directly. If I wanted a menu I’d go to a bloody restaurant, wouldn’t I? I certainly don’t want to wait to hear a range of options before I get to know whether the ‘operator’ or ‘customer service agent’ is attached to which button, whether it’s 8, 9 or 0. Isn’t it funny how the option to get a human, albeit a generalist, is always last? Like DUH!
You call and hear the reference to XYZ customer service hotline in the opening message, and then you have to wait until the end to get a customer service agent? What if you select an option between 1 and 7? Do you not get a customer service agent then? So why not just skip buttons 1 through 7 altogether? Why not just let me talk to a person?
Why can’t a service provider with vision actually staff customer service hotlines with people who either have, (or can immediately access), information regarding all the company’s products and services? Is it really that hard?
Maybe, and this is just a wild stab in the dark, maybe customers would actually choose this service or product provider, because the are treated more personally and experience contact with the service provider that is not only worthwhile… but with an actual person. AHA! A clue Sherlock… market share gains? Revenue growth perhaps? Client Satisfaction Improvements? Like DUH!
I was brought up, rightly or wrongly, to make the judgment that people who talk to, or have any form of engaging communication with inanimate objects, are largely out of their tree, and are probably in line awaiting having their temples shaved prior to being plugged directly into the National Grid.
I want to know if customer service hotline people emanate from the same place as the Sex Pistol sales people.


Is their some bizarre experiment going on somewhere to genetically produce some master race or other, and the throwbacks are immediately placed in customer service or retail sales roles? Is ‘Baldrick’ an alive and well retail employee and have Richard Curtis and Ben Elton hatched a cunning plan for real?
So often you end up talking to a service person and you are more knowledgeable about the product or service than they are… I mean, they work for that bloody company don’t they? And aren’t they being paid to provide at least some level of value to you?
Yes you have reached an actual human being (in the loosest sense), yet half the time you would have to wonder if this ‘person’ would amass even double figures on any reputable IQ test.
If you are less than familiar with Intelligence Quotient testing, in 1910 Henry H Goddard proposed three categories for feeble minded people, based on their IQ tested score… Moron (score of 51- 70), imbecile (score of 26 – 50) and idiot (score of 0-25)…
What do you call a less than skilled customer service agent with an IQ of 18?
Twins, perhaps? Relatives, maybe? A Team?
Of course there are some fabulous customer service people employed around the world, but I seem to hear that people are getting a mere smidgeon of that prowess on an all too regular basis.
These automated response systems are often geared towards directing your call to an individual who can access, and to some extent retain information, about one of the service providers’ areas of offering, (yet hasn’t the cognition to handle much more than one). This means that, should you have more than one query, in more than one area, the likelihood is that the initial person you speak to, (one of options 1 through 7 probably), can’t deal with the second query.

PLUS, to guarantee maximum fun during your exploits, they probably can’t transfer you either. Guess what, you have to call the IVR again and press a different button. By this point the service provider is certainly beginning to press my buttons…
“good afternoon, how may I help you”
“I hope you can, I have been dialling non stop for the last hour”
“I am sorry to hear that sir, I wonder why?”
“Well, it may be because I am a customer of yours, I spoke to one of your agents earlier, and after that experience the Samaritans have been unfortunately engaged.”
It’s enough to make you want to scream at times.
Try and order a pizza and retain your sanity… I challenge you to do this.
It’s enough to drive you totally off your trolley. In the Philippines the Pizza home delivery hotline is staffed by people who I can only imagine have been educated from birth by rote methods and have the cognition of a single celled life form on a particularly wearisome day. Either that or they are forced to adopt business processes that only the most skilfully adept, socially detached and malicious sadist could have developed.
I think there should be laws about allowing stupid people to interact in customer service situations, whether designing the system or staffing the hotlines. If your parents are proven to demonstrate congenital idiocy, and haven’t got a breeding license, from an approved IQ testing facility, then you shouldn’t be able to even get interviewed, let alone get hired, in a client facing situation.
These ‘pizzagents’ (ok, you can pronounce the letter z as an s if you like), are obviously programmed to go through a clearly defined script that takes about a week and effectively renders their delivery performance guarantee somewhat redundant.

By the time you finally order the pizza, it’s the following day and the kids have just got back from school and are telling you they are having a sleepover somewhere else anyway.
And you can’t try and interject by giving them the information quicker than you could ever be asked it, with the obligatory pauses for your verbal confirmation at the end of each line of customer information on their computer screen.
What happens if you interject? Well their process is screwed up and they start again from the beginning. I’d prefer to state my phone number and name and immediately tell the automaton on the other end of the phone that I haven’t moved house since my last order and that my house is where I would like it delivered.
Of course, that isn’t possible because it doesn’t fit their system and processes (which indirectly I am paying for).
It’s best to let the robot go through the motions and avoid the ‘does not compute’ or ‘exterminate’ error message.
They ask you your phone number and then
“is this Mr XYZ? Do you live at the following address…? (line by line rendition, including postcode). Do you still have the white gate?”
This is so unbelievably mind numbingly ridiculous. They ask you your street name, then the village name, and proceed to get your confirmation that it is in the same city?
“and is that still Muntinlupa City?”
Ah well, you asked for it I suppose…
“No – and here’s the weird part – I am sure you have seen this on the news. Due to a freak shift in the continental plates last night, our entire village is now apparently in another province. In fact I am surprised the phones still work. Presumably your pizza delivery people are used to air travel?”

Stunned silence follows, virtually non compos mentis, in real terms. After you have actually told them that your village hasn’t been relocated en masse, and outlined what kind of pizza you would like, in comes the upselling spiel…
“Today we have mojos, curly fries and many other promotions, would you be interested?”
What sort of question is that? How can I be interested if I don’t know what the many other promotions are?
I just feel compelled to confuse them, and once you do anything that causes their script to fall apart, they are to all intents and purposes rendered vegetable or mineral.
“I’d like one of your promotions please”
“Certainly sir, which would you like”
“How about Chief Executive Officer?”
The silence is deafening until they eventually twig, (and this takes an alarming amount of time)… “So that’s one party sized, thin crust…”
I live in a reasonably nice neighbourhood in the Philippines, and at the entrances are security gates and guards. Once it gets past midnight, and until 6 a.m., only the main village entrance is staffed and open. Apparently, around a year ago, some people decided it would be a good idea if they liberated some vehicles from their owners, and two Mitsubishi Pajeros and a BMW 5 series were stolen.
The would-be thieves couldn’t get out of the main gate though, so they dumped the Pajeros and rammed another unmanned gate with the BMW to escape. Smart thieves huh? I mean, you wouldn’t use a Pajero to smash the gate and then drive the BMW out, now would you? Maybe they were confused? Maybe they were trying to deliver a pizza.


Readers have probably caught on to the fact that I love the game of golf, and each Saturday morning I play at crack of sparrows fart which means I need to leave the village at around 4.45a.m..
Since this incident of car napping, every time I leave the village to play golf, I am asked a variety of questions. I always have to state my name and address, and this information is manually handwritten into a log book, along with the registration number of my car. At no point has anyone asked me to prove who I am or that I live at the address I tell them. I thought this was mildly ludicrous, a typical example of a process being enacted to satisfy a management need, yet with predictably no thought whatsoever as to its effectiveness in execution.
I figured that this was a bit strange and the first time I drove out of the village I gave them genuine details. After a few weeks, and especially since I am Caucasian, a fairly large Caucasian, and have a 4 wheel drive car that’s slightly less embellished than the Queen during Trooping of the Colour, I thought they would get used to the fact that I left at this time every week… maybe the questions wouldn’t be necessary any more? How many 6 foot 3 inch Caucasians are there leaving the village at this time, every Saturday morning? Not too many.
After several weeks, the regular provision of this data began to grate on me. I decided to see how far I could get with substituting my name for others, albeit at the same address…
“Early, Brighton” “Christmas, Mary”
“Meoff, Jack” “Stroker, Willie”
“Cleavage, Seymour” “Humpyu, Ivana”
“Bin Stealin, Ivor” “Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus”
“Arroyo, Mike” (Filipino husband of Philippines president)
“Bush, George W” “Di Caprio, Leonardo”

The above are totally genuine, and it sometimes takes all I can muster not to burst into hysterics. And the full list is actually way more extensive than this, as the above are but a mere sample.
I wonder, if and when I choose to sell my off road pimpmobile, (as a good friend of mine affectionately calls it), I will be able to increase the resale price through the documented list of its prior owners? I guess we’ll see. Check out EBAY for further details.
The techniques we use to ask questions provide us with so much of what we know, yet it seems to me that few people are often capable of asking good ones.
From a young age children are often taught that asking good questions is a less than great thing. Parents are responsible for messing up how kids think in a big way – not deliberately, in the main, but nonetheless the impact can be substantial and lasting.
How often do we hear parents instruct children…
“For goodness sake will you please stop asking questions?”
When a parent issues an instruction such as this, what do you think most children will effectively do?
Stop asking questions by any chance? And if the instruction is issued often enough, then perhaps the child thinks that asking questions is not a good thing… PERIOD.
From a teaching perspective I was always taught that cognitively, if you hear things several times, then the brain begins to assimilate the validity of the statement based on each repetition…
Once – interpreted as an event
Twice – interpreted as a coincidence
Thrice – interpreted as a pattern, and
Four times – indisputable fact.

The kids will conclude that asking questions isn’t good for them, especially when no explanation as to why the child should stop asking questions has been provided. Parents really do say the dumbest things to their children that in my view only serve to inhibit their learning. How many times do parents answer children’s questions regarding why this or that isn’t possible or allowed, with the retort
“Because I said so”.
What possible value does this offer a child? What can they learn from this? It is a pointless response that effectively communicates “I can’t be bothered to tell you why, so let’s assume I am Nike – JUST DO IT”.
“But why?”
“I am your (mum or dad) and I don’t need to explain myself to you.”
So the child now has a perfect understanding of the situation? I think not. They are aware, however, that questions get them into trouble and that their parent(s) is/are a poor source of information and learning.
Brilliant!
Children often have a tendency to misplace their things, all manner of things, and often get dreadfully upset when they cannot be located. They will often come to parents in tears, explaining that xyz is lost, and then the parents reply with a question that ranks as one of the dumbest questions of all time…
“Well, where did you leave it?”
I appreciate that the parent is trying to formulate a past referenced strategy for establishing where the child has been with the lost item, but this question just doesn’t get to first base, does it?


I would imagine that if the kid had the answer to that question, the missing item may not actually be lost? However, this conclusion is a mere wild guess on my part.
Parents seem hell bent on either asking or telling their children the most ludicrous things. It strikes me that it is no accident that, when adults go into therapy at any time, a lot of the issues and challenges hark back to childhood experiences. It’s hardly surprising, is it?
I recall when my parents were angry with me for what ever reason, (and I seemed to be expertly skilled in providing ongoing and evolving reasons for them to be angry, over time).
A classic example is when parents want children to stop doing something or other. Inevitably the statement begins
“DO NOT……”
So here we have DO, which is a language pattern for affirmative action, followed immediately by NOT which renders the DO ineffective, on a neurological level.
So the command “DO NOT jump into the pool” effectively becomes “Jump into the pool”.
Brilliant! Then parents say
“How many times do I have to tell you not to do XYZ?”
Parents are unaware that the language pattern they are using is basically instructing the child to continue with their behaviour, unless something else is provided to evidence the real message. Parents are rarely good at providing evidence, and my parents regularly made statements that were so totally confusing, you really didn’t know what to do except be afraid, BE VERY afraid.
“Just carry on like this my boy and I will separate you from your breath”.


This is a difficult concept for a primary school kid to get their head around. The tonality from the parent is enough to make you cease all activities for the rest of your life, just to make sure you don’t get chastised in a life ending way, but the consequence in this statement is a tad bewildering. I recall wondering if somehow my lungs were going to be removed. I was about 9 at the time.
Many other messages I received were just as bewildering…
“And you can take that look off your face as well my lad”.
What does this mean? What look? Is there something on my face? Had I better go and wash? This is very confusing.
“You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face when I have finished with you”
I recall actually going to mirrors as an infant school attendee, just to see if I could actually laugh using only one side of my face. I wondered if this was a trait I had that most other kids didn’t.
There were times when you would ask the most innocent question and a parent’s response was delivered purely on the basis of their mood or temperament at that moment in time. I can only imagine that the mood was often that of insanity, or the brain cells controlling decent communication had been leased out for that day.
“Can I have some cereals before I go to bed?”
“Cereals. Bloody cereals? I’ll give you cereals. It’s already 8.30.”
Of course that response meant you wouldn’t get cereals and there wasn’t even the remotest chance of that occurring. The trouble is though, to an infant school aged child, the parent just told them they would. In fact, because it was already 8.30, perhaps this means the delivery of cereals is late?


Maybe you should have asked earlier? Why didn’t you ask earlier, silly lad?
So the child waits expectantly.
“What? Are you deaf?”
The child then wonders is something else was said that they missed.
“Why? What did you say?” (a perfectly reasonable response).
“Don’t you try and get funny with me my lad or you’ll feel the back of my hand”
What the heck is going on now?
I didn’t tell a joke, did I?
Maybe I did and didn’t realise it. If I did then I have to feel the back of their hand. What does that mean?
The tone of the voice means I am an inch away from getting the crap beaten out of me, maybe even my lungs removed as my breath is separated somehow, I know that much, but what is actually being said? What does all this nonsense mean?
Half the time you didn’t know what to think or do so a look of total bewilderment was probably in play. The trouble with this though, is that many parents do not understand the subtleties of facial expression too well, and a young child definitely hasn’t mastered facial expression at all. So inevitably whatever ‘look’ is on your face, it will be misinterpreted compared to your intent…
“Do you want me to wipe that smile off your face my boy?”.
How can a child possibly process a question like this? Firstly, what smile, and secondly, how do you wipe off a smile? Get a towel? Kleenex?
“Just carry on behaving like this and see if you don’t get a backhander”


Now what on earth does a young child make of that? What is a backhander? I used to play table tennis in adult leagues when I was a kid. A backhander is maybe a backhand drive? Is my dad going to teach me a new stroke?
Maybe my dad is corrupt and trying to bribe me? His body language suggests otherwise though… he won’t bribe me through buying me something, the incentive appears to be different. The bribe is not getting the living daylights knocked out of you.
An infant doesn’t realise that this means your parent is running out of tolerance and is about to rearrange your features with an extremely blunt instrument, or one which, during application to your backside, will provide for many onomatopoeias should the scene ever be described.
Sometimes a parent will totally lose the plot and decide that a firm beating is in order. I remember my father chasing me around the garden on many occasions (we had quite a large garden).
He’s running after me, armed suitably with some weapon of ass destruction, which is scary enough as it is and must provide for amusement for any neighbour that may be taking in the scene.
I am doing my level best Carl Lewis impression with extreme gusto, am legging it, and Warwickshire athletic sports scouts are beginning to get phone calls of recommendation from observers of the avoidance strategies I am using in this imminent one sided melee. What does my father say next?
“You’d better not let me catch you my lad”.
All I can think is, ‘well, if that’s true, and you know this already, why are you chasing me? If it’s better for you not to catch me, then I would have thought running after me isn’t entirely appropriate?’


“Come here, I just want to talk to you”.
How should I interpret that I wonder?
‘Yeah right, and so does the cane you are holding… and I have little fluency, or desire for fluency, in talking in the language of screams and pain.’
One of my dad’s favourite expressions whilst I was in the company of others was
“Children should be seen and not heard.”
I always struggled with this. I knew it meant that if I said anything, then it was time for my lungs to be relocated again, or some other sick act of retribution. I always felt my parents dragged me all over the place, which was fair enough.
But then when I was out with only my dad, and he was meeting someone else deliberately, or accidentally, then the ‘seen and not heard’ comment was always ever present.
After a while I started to think to myself ‘if I am to be seen and not heard’, what the hell’s the point in me even being here?
Just bring a photograph of me. Why not just let me be seen and heard, somewhere else?
When my mum and dad were discussing this or that, and the direction of the conversation started to go into an area I shouldn’t hear, then another classic statement always ensued from my dad “Little pigs have big ears”.
This comment wasn’t made because the content of whatever they were discussing might have compromised me in any way… this was always said because if I repeated what they were saying, it might compromise one, or both of them. The funny thing was that, as an only child, and whose father worked night shift regularly, I tended to read quite a lot.


This was an activity guaranteed not to wake him, and so lung redistribution could again be avoided. However, in reading a lot, they were unaware just how much of what they were saying I actually understood, which was most of it, to be honest. So to keep up the pretence and allow me to hear privy information, I always played along with consummate ease, and as I got older enjoyed winding him up.
I didn’t like the fact that I was being oppressed in conversation all the time.
I distinctly remember having pretty much the following dialogue…

“So why do little pigs have such big ears then?”
‘They’re born like that I suppose”
“Why wasn’t Noddy’s best friend a pig then?”
“What best friend?”
“Big ears”
”Because he was a rabbit”
“So why don’t you say little rabbits have big ears then?”
“Because that’s not the saying”
“What saying?”
“It doesn’t matter”
“It does if you are a little pig or a rabbit”
“But you are not a little pig or rabbit”
“Do I have big ears dad?”

OOPS!!!
The things parents say to their kids and the questions they ask are excellent preparation for a lifetime in sales or service stupidity, don’t you think? Children at a young age do not understand phraseology, idioms, expressions and the like.


During infant school, I was never exposed to Ladybird books that dealt with that subject matter, and nor did those by Enid Blyton, or the other kids authors either, as I recall.
I didn’t read
‘5 go to the library to make sense of Adrian’s parent’s phrases’.
Nope, that wasn’t on our reading list. Nor did those picture books with all the word associations in them have a graphic for ‘being separated from one’s breath’ or any of the other stupid statements.
The kids’ stories I read or was exposed to didn’t have any of the other myriad confusing statements either…
‘Once upon a time there were three bears, Mummy bear, Daddy Bear, and Baby bear, (who’d just had the smile wiped off his face, presumably by the back of someone’s hand).’
I don’t recall reading that. Nor do I recall reading…
‘Fee Fie Fo FUM,
I smell the blood of an Englishman
There’s some strange person in my place
He’ll smile on the other side of his face’
I didn’t get that one either. Maybe my parents just read different kids books to me?
With all this nonsense being indoctrinated into us, it’s a wonder we can make sense of anything at all. And our skills don’t seem to improve into adulthood, in the main, either.
During any sales or customer service training seminar, attendees have been taught the difference between open and closed questions since time immemorial.


Basically an open question solicits information, because they do not provide for YES/NO answers. Open questions typically contain the words who/what/when/where/ how/which/why?

“I keep six honest serving men;
they taught me all I knew
their names are What and Why and When
and How and Where and Who”
Rudyard Kipling

Perhaps Rudyard Kipling didn’t like stories with witches? He appears not to like ‘which’s’, in any event.
Closed questions, conversely, are geared to confirm a statement that has already been planted, and deliberately evoke a YES or NO answer.
What amuses me is how these so called chat show hosts ‘interview’ their guests. Take a look at this and see how many questions begin with Do you / are you / could you / will you / can you? Etc, etc. Effectively the guest isn’t being interviewed at all. The interviewer has decided what the audience would most like the guest to say, and then embarks on the most obvious directionalised process of closed questions you can imagine.
When the guest is one from whom you would actually be interested in what they have to say, it’s really frustrating to hear that person utter the interviewer’s opinions or thoughts through responses to led questions.
Whenever I am being asked really bad questions I deliberately try and cause the ‘questioner’ to realise the error of their ways. This is particularly true of market researchers who are, at the end of the day, paid to glean information from the public.


“Can you tell me what your experience was like at the XYZ hotel?”
“I suppose so; it is within the realms of possibility, yes.”
There is always a period of silence whenever I answer this way, yet in fact I have responded to the question appropriately. You may feel I am dealing with semantics, but less face it, we all in our time have gotten up to some antics, haven’t we?
The researcher’s question was actually phrased in such a way so as to gauge whether or not it was possible for me to tell them about the experience at a hotel. That probably wasn’t what they meant, but it was exactly what was said.
The words we use and the way we use them have tremendous impact. For example, you might see advertisements in a local newspaper
Wanted – a table for a lady with curved legs.
Alternatively
Wanted – a table with curved legs for a lady.
Same words, yet a different meaning entirely.
Usually, when I choose to answer the service person with an appropriate answer for their inappropriate question, the interviewer gets totally flustered by the first response, and then follows up the question with another doomed question
“So will you tell me what the experience…”
“perhaps”
Whoops! (Confused looks at best to follow).
Wouldn’t it be so much easier if the interviewer asked the question…
“How was your overall experience at XYZ hotel sir?”

You may interpret this scenario differently, but I find it annoying when someone is already eating into your available time, you have agreed to be helpful, and then they subject you to nonsense that wastes time because the person who assembled the questions is totally clueless about communication.
I generally don’t feel obliged to have to critique the quality of a question, analyse its intent, and then respond accordingly as if the question preparer or interviewer had gotten it right to begin with.
If they can’t be bothered, then why should I? I’ll waste their time, in fact, and just make fun of them.
And then at the end of this service interview, or face to face questionnaire, how often do they ask you something totally ridiculous like
“In your own words, what three changes would you make in order to improve the service delivery?”
In my own words indeed! I remember Billy Connolly talking about a similar scenario when I saw him live in Hong Kong, and often borrow his slant in this regard…
I may be reasonably intelligent, but do you really think I have my own language, my own set of words? Really? You do? Well ok then…
“Flinken staw, nast votry eingor, zunsitle sak fugnat ale midgur sep wung”
“I beg your pardon?”
“well, you did say in my own words, didn’t you?”
I really don’t get the point of service quality research if you can’t be bothered to get the questions right. Then there are the market researchers who stop you inside the mall, and that’s quite often these days, and their smarmy approach just gets my goat.


When I feel that these people are so arrogant that they really think I ought to want to give up my time to speak to them, then I satisfy their misguided beliefs… fully.
I know these people are charged with the task of collecting a certain volume of questionnaires, so I just happily help slow their progress. I feel inspired to have a bit of fun with them.
Of course the conversation is different every time, but the following is an ‘as best as I can remember’ recollection that I had fun with, when the largest Marks & Spencer’s was opened in a shopping complex close to Leicester, called Fosse Park.
This blonde enamelled lady, around mid 20’s, extremely nice figure, and decidedly overly animated, in a totally predictable ‘wow – can you see all of me if I move like this’ type of way, approached with some verve, as if to be firmly convinced there was no way I wouldn’t want to talk to her (yes – I admit it, sex sells).
However, without exception, this misplaced arrogance tends to drive me nuts… she was kind of like a blonde Tyra Banks, with a clipboard, but without the talk show, yet equally annoying and even more naively presented.
I just had to wind this girl up like a carriage clock.
I put on an upper class slimy vicar accent, the kind you hear on the radio when some priest is talking to, presumably, children. A voice similar to Mr Burns from the Simpsons, a drawn out type of voice that’s virtually moribund… the kind of voice that someone would use on their deathbed, as perhaps their final breaths are escaping them (the one’s they are being separated from, presumably?).
“Good morning sir – may I take a few minutes of your time to ask you some questions”


“Ooh… goodness gracious me. I would love that. I haven’t had this much fun since reading AA Milne’s combined works. A real conversation at last, with meaningful outcomes? Do go ahead young miss”.
Befuddled looks.
“Tell me, how often do you come to this shopping mall?”
“Well, it all depends on so many factors really.”
“Would it be once a week, twice per week, three times per week, or more than that?”
“Ooh… it wouldn’t be more than that. Mrs Wilkins only comes in three times per week you see and Fido just wouldn’t get fed and walked”
“So would it be once per week, twice or three times per week?
“Three times per week for sure, and she always takes him for a good long walk”
“No sir, I meant do you come to the mall once, twice or three times?”
“Oh, I see. How silly of me. I come here almost every day”.
“I thought you said you come here when your lady comes to the house”.
“Not really my dear… Fido only has an appetite on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, so the other days I am completely free.”
“Hmm. Ok then. I am going to ask you to rank a series of things in the mall, as very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, not satisfied, irrelevant or don’t know – is that ok? That’s very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, not satisfied, irrelevant, or don’t know… ok?”
“OK then young miss.”


“Question 1, how satisfied are you with the provision of toilet facilities in the mall” “(remember you can select very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, not satisfied, irrelevant, or don’t know)”
“Ooh, that’s a hard one. I suppose I would have to say, with appropriate give and take, weighing all the implications and possibilities, without prejudice, that they are irrelevant”.
“Are you sure you mean irrelevant sir? Toilets aren’t important to you?”
“Not since when in the army I got shot and my sergeant major said, ‘you know your urethra? Well it’s underneath ya’ and since then I have a colostomy bag miss. But it doesn’t leak. ”
“Oh dear. Ah, tell me how satisfied are you with our food court?”
“Hmm … another tough one. Are you talking in the past or as of now, more recently as it were?”
“Well, this is a new complex, so more recently”
“well in that case then it’s irrelevant on account of having my stomach stapled. I used to weigh 312lbs… you wouldn’t believe it would you?’
By this time the interviewer would have ordinarily finished the questionnaire and would be on her way home. Naturally she gets fed up, mortally pissed off actually, and it’s all I can do not to crack up seeing the total desperation and angst fleet across this ‘God’s Gift’ person’s face. Finally she skips all the remaining tick box questions, or ticks them herself later perhaps, and asks the last question
“May I ask you sir what are the top three features that make this mall appealing to you?”
“Ah – I thought you might ask me something like that. There are so many things actually, but I suppose you only want what I think are the best three. I probably have five, but I’ll do my best to stick to three…


That’s not to say these are in order you understand, if that’s ok. I could come up with ten, but I’ll keep it down to three for your benefit. Now let’s see…
It’s kind of hard, because once you have seen one shopping centre; you’ve seen a-mall. But anyway…
I think the best thing about this shopping centre is the ability to steal things, so I would have to say
lack of security cameras throughout
lack of security guards to catch shoplifters, and
the ease with which people here can steal your time, by wasting it.
I hope that enlightened you my dear, good day to you”

To The Manner Born

“The hardest job for kids today is having good manners without seeing any”.
Fred Astaire

Is it just me, or are we totally losing the plot with how we agree, or allow ourselves, to be treated these days? What’s happening to us? Why are we constantly being abused or mistreated, and seemingly at every turn.
When we encounter poor behaviour towards us generally, it is bad enough, yet how about if we are paying for something and don’t get the expected service we should? I believe I am a reasonably affable fellow, yet notice that I am becoming increasingly intolerant and wound up by the treatment I am receiving from others, often perfect strangers, for apparently no reason whatsoever… and often I am effectively paying for this mistreatment.
It wasn’t that long ago when manners were ‘indoctrinated’ into you at a young age. It seemed that children in my generation had special places on their body where manners were physically implanted by an able and willing parent. Manners seem to be conceptual, but I learned fairly quickly that they entered and left my body through the back and top of my head. This must be true, because every time I forgot them, my parents would smack the back of my head in an effort to put them back where they had escaped from.
Manners in today’s day and age are being allowed to slip and because children can’t be physically reminded of their wrong doings by parents any more, manners have escaped from children, and thus physically can’t be replaced though the bodily part from where they broke free.


In my forties now, and with hereditary pattern baldness lurking at the top and rear of my head, it would seem that in my family at least, manners made a break for it from there. Perhaps all that constant replacement therapy administered from my parents put the manners back and simultaneously gave me hereditary hair loss to emerge in my later years. In hindsight, I would have preferred not to lose my hair because my manners were trying to escape. Little buggers. Why couldn’t they have made a break for it from my backside or from the back of my legs, like they did with other kids?
It seems that whenever we venture out into the world these days, we are experiencing the aftermath of manners having successfully made a break for it. There’s so much going on in our worlds these days, we can’t be expected to know everything, yet the extension of a little courtesy and good manners takes little time and costs nothing. Yet these seemingly minor behavioural patterns, values perhaps, maybe even ‘ways of working’ seem all but lost on the majority, which I feel is rather sad and society as a whole is losing out.
A simple task like shopping can be full of trials and tribulations. Were we to receive just a little consideration as consumers, and be plied with good manners, how different an experience might it become?
First of all, we have to find a place to park the car. Why is it that this simple process is made so difficult for us? If we are going shopping, we usually visit a mall or complex of some time. How aptly these are named. By the time you actually find a bloody parking space you feel like you have been mauled and the process of simply being able to park your car is decidedly complex for sure! Of course, we usually could have been able to park earlier than we eventually manage to, were it not for some completely selfish bastards who believe the best way of protecting their cars from impact from other people’s car doors is to occupy two spaces.


You know the type, don’t you?
The kind of person who can’t possible manoeuvre his car between two lines and has to use the middle line from two spaces to line up with the centre of his bonnet. And even then half the time the car is parked angularly. Thanks for the consideration pal.
I want to know where you can buy those little adjustable spring firing guns that chiropractors use. The ones where they fire a rubber ended knuckle-like device into your back in order to manipulate your vertebrae. That would be great to put dents in these people’s cars and with extreme accuracy. See if they continue to take up two spaces when dents have been put in their car doors in a pattern that says “I know I have two parking spaces, but I can’t help being a selfish prick”.
Anyway, you end up driving round and around the car park looking for spaces, and trying to find someone who is actually leaving their space.
You can’t do that near to the mall entrance though, because in every aisle there are cars with hazard lights flashing, awaiting some shopper in that parking aisle to leave. If you drive anywhere near these people you can see their windscreen instantly start to fog over from their heavy breathing.
If you dare to stop anywhere near them, or really slow down even, then their windows go down in a microsecond in order to allow for a barrage of verbal abuse. “I was here first mate”, except they tend to use somewhat more colourful expressions to get their point across.
What is wrong with these people?
You’d think it was bloody Dunkirk ‘this is my aisle and I will protect it at all costs’.



Then when you finally manage to park your car, which is in a convenient place around 700 metres away from the nearest mall entrance, you need to find a Pay and Display vending machine so you can put some pox ridden sticker inside your car, alerting any would be thief to the fact that your car will be unattended for at least the period of time on the ticket. Plus, conveniently, to get back to your car with heavy shopping, you’re probably going to have to take a bus at best or maybe even take a train.
Brilliant!
Upon parking, your car is effectively a bright neon sign saying “come and smash my windows and thoroughly pillage my car, anytime during the next 90 minutes or how ever long has been prepaid for… I won’t be back until then; honestly… that’s why I prepaid for 90 minutes”.
Who invents a parking system that actually tells thieves what their window of opportunity is? What are you supposed to do to combat this and convince would be thieves that your car isn’t unattended? Put internal lights within the car on a timer switch? Put lace curtains inside your car and hire Macaulay Culkin to dance around inside whilst strategically wielding cardboard passenger cut outs?
Then, of course, there’s the fact that the nearest Pay and Display vending machine is slightly closer than the south of France, but unfortunately that machine, after you have finally reached it, and had your shoes re-heeled twice en route, is out of order. The next nearest machine is probably in the south of France.
By the time you get back to your car resplendent with a prepaid parking ticket, two cases of wine, three bottles of champagne 1000 duty free cigarettes, and a French accent, it could be on bricks and every mortal piece of engineering could have been removed, inserted into another car, and THAT car could have already qualified for, and successfully passed, a statutory MOT test.


Why can’t mall owners accurately work out how many parking places they will actually need?
And why can’t they work out that most people don’t want to walk hundreds of metres just to get into the mall. If they did, they wouldn’t have driven there in the first place, would they?
Surely they have some idea how successful they plan to be and what the traffic / parking requirements might be at peak times?
The malls are full of people undertaking market research as to how often you make love, how many lovers you have, how often you buy replacement batteries for your love toys, are your pets actively involved, etc. etc. Surely someone can work out the most popular times that people go shopping and how many people arrive via their own, or alternative methods of transport? How hard is this to research?
Knowing whether shoppers make love regularly or not, and whether animals are involved, may well tell mall owners if it’s worthwhile rerunning Deliverance at the cinema, but at the end of the day no one will watch the movie if they can’t get into the mall. And arriving at the mall three hours before the movie would start anyway, to cater for the walk from your car, isn’t that appealing, is it? It’s enough to make you squeal like a pig
(♫ Banjo : deee de ling ting ling ting ling ting ding♫ ).
Why are consumers, who effectively pay the salaries of these mall owners, treated so badly? It’s just plain bad manners if you ask me.
Industrial engineering is deployed extensively inside the shopping mall itself, because that is revenue producing. But providing for people who actually have processes to battle first, in order to be getting inside and be able to give these bastards money? Forget it. Anyone would think that shopping is designed to be an outright chore – you wouldn’t want to make it a pleasurable experience, would you?


Especially if you effectively think…
‘Shoppers are the dumbest people alive anyway, so let’s spend all our time and effort creating ways for these jerks to part with their money when they are stupid enough to finally find their way in”…
“by the time they get inside they’ll be so stressed out they’ll load up their credit cards with retail therapy – lovely jubbly… they’ll be gagging for it”.
When you finally do get to the entrance door to the mall, then perhaps you might think that the stress level will lessen and you can begin to relax a little. Yeah right.
What happened to that previously subscribed to custom, involving doors? You know what I mean, the one where if you go through a door, and someone is directly behind you, then it is polite to hold the door for them until such times that they can keep it open for themselves, or hold it until they are through the door completely should they be female, elderly or have both hands loaded down with shopping.
Where did this practice go? Its simply decent manners, isn’t it? Why do people not do this anymore?
These days you are more likely to find the door swinging back into your face, and that’s such great fun to have to deal with, isn’t it. Even age old road safety advertisements stressed that if a moving body is going in one direction, and hits another moving body in the opposite direction, then effectively you end up hitting a stationery object at least with the sum of the two speeds. This isn’t a new concept.
Mall doors are no different. You are walking briskly and are hit by a fully sprung, heavy, and potentially maiming door. Another reason to go to the chiropractors for help, I guess.



Anyway, you pick yourself off the floor, brush yourself down, and check you haven’t lost any teeth or broken any ribs. And do the people who let the door close apologise?
When you utter your dissatisfaction towards them, don’t they always appear in a state of complete shock? They look flummoxed at best, and more often than not wear a totally gormless expression. They often genuinely cannot comprehend what you are complaining about, because that element of their manners successfully made a break for it, long ago most probably (and they perhaps don’t have pattern baldness from manners replacement either).
I think you owe it to them to help them understand what has happened, and thereafter to help their manners re-enter their system. It would be rude not to, when you think about it, and you would simply be behaving responsibly for the good of society as a whole. I conclude that it would be prudent to smack them around the back of the head and reprogram their manners – it worked for me. For better effect, assume they only respond to rote learning technology… so smack them over and over again.
Once you enter the mall, different challenges become evident, as soon as other people are further encountered.
I remember well in school that we were always taught to walk on one side of a corridor. That way, people can pass easily and you don’t end up getting bumped into every 5 metres. This isn’t difficult to do, and you end up avoiding hitting, hurting or disturbing other people; this avoidance is plainly good manners.
Again manners in this context have gone AWOL it seems. Walking through shopping malls or arcades these days takes me back to the Monty Python sketch “Upper Class Twits of the Year”, whereby a group of morons undertook a hilarious race, ‘the one hundred metre dash for people with no sense of direction’.


Unfortunately, this reflection is less amusing these days, because you ill-fatedly find yourself involved in this race for real, the contestants are oblivious to the race itself and any associated rules, and John Cleese & Co aren’t around to make merry.
Why do people find it so damned difficult to walk purposefully in a straight line? Isn’t it just plain good manners to prevent oneself from knocking into other people or completely blocking their way? It doesn’t matter what country you live in, it’s a truism that traffic is supposed to be limited to one side of the road. Why can’t people just bear that in mind when walking through malls? Or anywhere else for that matter? It isn’t hard is it?
Not only do we have people with no apparent sense of direction inhabiting malls, but we also have the self afflicted variety too. They are the Typically Walking Adjacent To Sight people, or as I fondly now term them,
‘T.W.A.T.S’.
You have all seen these people. They are affected by a malaise whereby their chins seem to have been affixed at birth to their left or right shoulder, and so they walk purposefully in one direction, whilst their head, and thus line of vision, is 90 degrees off from this… usually in the direction of shop windows.
Have you ever watched pro basketball from the US, the NBA games?
If you have, you will have noticed a new ‘high 5’ type gesture that players uses to congratulate each other. It involves jumping towards each other, with your back arched, so that your barrelled chests strike each other, whilst both celebrators are in mid air. This behaviour, to me at least, used to look completely ridiculous and perhaps a wee bit too perverse from some perspectives.



However, this act of gratitude and congratulation, however odd it may seem, now can be effectively used in UK shopping malls to great effect.
Simply congratulate the TWATS walking towards you in this NBA method… because incredibly, this gesture serves many purposes all at once.
Firstly it restores lucidity to the TWATS, as almost immediately they are awakened from cognitive slumber.
Secondly it seems to restore the TWATS’ head to its natural position, without surgery.
And thirdly, maybe the manners are being reinstalled, if you congratulate them hard enough, of course.
Typically the TWATS can walk properly after this gesture, at least for a while, and manners have been repatriated.
I haven’t tried the NBA tactic yet, but I have had people walk towards me whilst looking elsewhere, on an all too regular basis. The first time someone does that whilst I am out shopping, I typically let it go by the by and utter a suitable comment. But if I repeatedly experience this, I soon tire of people’s lack of consideration. Usually I just stand still, and brace myself for impact. They bang into you, are totally dazed, and then have the temerity to tell ME to watch where I am going. I typically don’t argue further, as I am a pretty big guy and they usually utter their dissatisfaction from a seated position in any event.
My partner is Singaporean, much slighter than me, though through a lot of gym activity is very solidly built. She has no more patience for these TWATS than I do. She doesn’t have the ability to just let people bounce off her, so she chooses to accelerate into them instead. She has mastered the manoeuvre that police use in high speed chases to just clip the person, yet totally spin them around.


I often wonder if much of this rudeness, and lack of manners, is owing to people nowadays just ignoring the fact that anyone else even exits. It appears so, at least to me.
When we actually enter stores in the malls, we are faced with challenges anew. Most stores have an array of items for sale, and the various items are largely categorised to make shopper’s lives easier, in theory.
Different generic categories of items are usually found together, departmentalised, hence the term ‘department store’. As a result, if you want to buy audio visual equipment for example, you can just look for the AV department. This is pretty simple, huh? Logical? If only it was.
When you reach the AV department, a virtual swarm of employees can be found. Their behaviour can be predicted with incredible accuracy, in the main.
Firstly you are pounced upon by the first species in our shopping experience, the ‘Coiled Spring’ salesperson.
This person will bear down on you, mid stride, as soon as you enter the department he is attached to, with the speed and enthusiasm of a cheetah that’s just finished detoxing and has realised you may be ‘out for lunch’
“good a.m. sir – how can I help you today?”
This always seems like the most pointless question because it’s so generic, and I actually was walking towards the equipment I am interested in, (I can see them, after all), before he stopped me to ask me what I already know explicitly.
If I needed help, wouldn’t I ask for it? And you ask me this to make sure the sale is placed through your commission account? How nice. How considerate.




Don’t you think this is kind of rude? Where did the manners go? Where’s the foreplay? I prefer to get kissed before I get screwed… give me a chance to draw breath for Christ’s sake.
“Why thank you for your offer of assistance. Actually, I don’t need much help to be honest. Can you get me the winning lottery numbers for the next drawing and for amusement in the interim, a female voluptuous, gorgeous, 20 something beauty pageant winner who just happens to be a nymphomaniac, totally sexually adventurous and superlatively skilled, being one of a batch of quadruplets, all of whom are like minded, like skilled, like attractiveness, yet prepared to pay me handsomely for stud fees, and who always do absolutely everything as a foursome.”
Whilst the ‘Coiled Spring’ salesperson is reeling from your verbal salvo, (and possibly trying to fathom if he can get hold of winning numbers and hot blooded quads, to guarantee his commission), you inevitably meet the second species of salesperson in the department, who is attached to the specific product lines you are interested in.
This individual has singularly managed to lose his American version of that famed board game where Professor Plum did it, in the library, with the candlestick.
This is the ‘Clue less’ species of salesperson.
You can ask any question regarding the piece of equipment you are interested in, and the response is singularly predictable – ‘let me get the brochure’. Whether you are actively experiencing the equipment doesn’t matter either.
I find I just have to ask them ridiculous questions to see them totally bewildered…
“So how do you actually spell Matsushita Electric Company?” “Err… I’ll just check that”



“Can you get these new LCD lamp projection TV’s with different coloured screens to match your decoration when it’s switched off?
“Err… I’ll just check that”
“Does the remote control come in an array of colours and floral patterns?”
“Err… I’ll just check that”
“I have a fish tank… is this TV guaranteed waterproof?”
“Err… I’ll just check that”
“Your display TV is actually mounted onto the wall… is the wall included in the sales price?”
“Err… I’ll just check that”
Doesn’t this ‘Clue less’ attitude just drive you nuts? Why not reduce the sales price by saving on the sales person’s salary? Skip the guy and place pallet loads of brochures in the store instead.
Same result methinks.
I find that this approach is totally aggravating and pretty rude in most cases, because the person who has been hired to provide assistance to me has the cognition of a microbe and the charisma of a potted plant… and the implication is that I will appreciate help from someone like this, that they are capable of adding value. What does that make me then?
Why is it not possible to have store personnel know the details about the products they are selling? Isn’t it their job to ask consumers pertinent questions, as part of a structured needs evolution process, and then make appropriate recommendations, with references to upsides and downsides of various items or pieces of equipment, that effectively provides for a weighted and informed consumer choice to be made?


‘Sales person Clue less’’ and his clones are everywhere and whenever I encounter them, again I feel as if I am being treated like a subspecies that has a shade between my ears other than grey.
Effectively I am being abused, being treated rudely, and again this is a case of pure bad manners.
Not all sales people have this innate need to run for a brochure though. The third species of salesperson is equally present in stores worldwide.
This is the species of sales person that I call the ‘A.R.S.E’.
The ‘A.R.S.E’ sales person has this incredible ability to create an unbelievably sophisticated labyrinth of nonsense that to the ill informed consumer might just become credible.
Why ‘A.R.S.E.’ I hear you ask?
Well, these sales people are so full of shit, hence Anally Retentive Spiel Expected. We have all encountered these sales people, they shoot from the hip and have imaginations the depth and breadth of which might suit them well if they chose to embrace fictional writing.
They do, however, have this belief system that consumers are basically the most cognitively challenged section of the human race, and can be convinced of virtually anything as consumers have either been lobotomised during infancy or their parents legally signed away all potential for critical thinking and analysis at birth.
“AH, the xyz TV sir. I saw you eyeing that baby, and what a wise choice that is sir. It kind of draws you to it, doesn’t it sir?”
“Hmm… are these TV’s totally cable ready?”
“Why Sir, this TV is the flagship TV of the millennium. This TV is more receptive than the Swiss at a peace convention Sir…


… It is HD, has its screen images produced by LCD, it’s so clear that if you watch a little porn Sir, you might catch an STD. Compatible with VCD DVD and the guy who delivers it has got an HGV. It can handle wide screen, full screen, half screen, split screen, and all you need is the ice cream.”
“But does it come in a larger screen than 21 inches?”
OOPS!
Whenever I encounter the ‘A.R.S.E’ salesperson, I tend to mimic being in the presence of the most malodorous concoction known to man, once the spiel has been delivered in its full splendour. I start sniffing uncontrollably
“what is that smell? It’s familiar, but I just can’t place it”
“I am sure I don’t know sir, even this TV isn’t aroma ready”
“Hmm.. is it pork?” Sniff, Sniff. “It’s not chicken is it?” Sniff, Sniff. “It’s not sheep.. AH – I have it, I know what it is!”
“Sir?”
“It’s bullshit, plain and simple”.
I find there’s nothing more bad mannered than having a consummate idiot assuming I am also an idiot… at the very least, please give me the credit for being a complete idiot… at times I have mastery in this regard that has been subtly crafted and honed over my lifetime.
The fourth type of salesperson is probably someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact pretty much any place in the store is the wrong place, and any time would seem to be the wrong time. From my perspective it strikes me that department stores may well be reasonably big, but they aren’t that big are they? How is it that assistants behave singularly rudely in the way they respond to the simple question “can you tell me where I can find XYZ in this store, please?”


Invariably the look you then have cast your way is total and complete befuddlement at best and expressive opaqueness at worst. The kind of person who, if they called you on the telephone, you would be convinced you could hear the sea on the other end upon answering. Here enter the fourth species of sales person, the ‘Sex Pistol’.
Why ‘Sex Pistol’ you may ask? Well, their attitude is sufficiently rude through disinterest to incite “Anarchy in the UK” as far as I am concerned, and their demeanour can only be translated as “Pretty Vacant”.
I mean, they work in the bloody shop, don’t they? How big can one department store be?
How can you not know where other departments are? There are even small clues as to where departments are, provided by bloody signs. It isn’t reasonable to expect consumers to know where these signs or directories are, and all I know is that you can never find one when I need one… they seem to be hidden.
It’s as if the store planners sent people out with limited instructions to come back with GPS references to determine where these directories should be, purely at random… a great approach for Easter Egg Hunts, though less appropriate when mapping suitable locations for store directories. Ordinarily, the only way you come across them is by pure chance when you don’t need them, because you are browsing fairly aimlessly.
In fact, in many department stores, their interest in making consumers lives easier is so misguided that I am surprised they don’t hand out mapped directories, to help you find the store directories.
Try approaching a typical ‘Sex Pistol’ sales person and ask the question
“excuse me, can you tell me where XYZ in the store is please”.


This question is invariably answered with total predictability…
“sorry I am new here” ( at this point I find it best to try and dismiss the manager title on the lapel badge), or
“It’s not my department”.
I enjoy taking the Mickey out of people who behave this way, and on occasion have taken the opportunity to go visit the ‘Sex Pistol’ again…
“good morning. Sorry to trouble you, but I thought I should tell you that a 6 foot 5 inch middle eastern guy attached to a portable dialysis machine and wearing an ‘Al Qaeda Rocks’ T shirt just abandoned a crate that is stencilled with the words ‘weapon of mass destruction’ in the toy section”
“Oh, ok then, but it’s not my department” or
“good afternoon, I don’t know if it’s ok, but there is a couple on a bed in the furniture section, totally naked, with the Karma Sutra open beside them, and writhing with incredible dexterity and speed. They are making booming guttural sounds that appear to be frightening young children in that department. Worse still, the man’s backside is awfully spotty. Is this some sort of yoga exhibition that goes on most Wednesday afternoons?”
“I don’t know… I am new here”.
Why can’t these people say what’s really on their mind? Why not admit that they hate this job and at work have lost the will to function beyond basic life support levels? Better still; maybe hire people that genuinely like helping people?
When you experience this abject disinterest, it is purely bad manners again.
I live in Asia these days, and have done for some time. The retail experience here isn’t any better, that’s for sure.



When I first moved to the Philippines, I recognised fairly quickly that the road quality was less than great. In fact, I pondered long and hard for the first few days why people would actually dig up a highway and plant potatoes in it… it certainly seemed as if someone had.
Anyway, it seemed to be obvious that an ordinary saloon car wasn’t cut out for these roads and that an off road four wheel drive number might be more appropriate. In one car showroom I was looking at a behemoth of a vehicle and a salesperson approached fairly quickly.
I wasn’t sure if this was a ‘coiled spring’, a ‘clue less’, an ‘A.R.S.E’ or a ‘Sex Pistol’ at first.
I started to ask questions and for some inexplicable reason this salesperson appeared to have spent way too much time watching Yes Minister. Every question I asked was answered with a question of his own, and that question of his own was singularly oriented to the fact that the model now had a promotional giveaway… a DVD player and TV screens inbuilt within the car.
Predictably I got tired of his evasiveness and being directionalised so amateurishly so I had to do something – at the very least I needed to know if he was one of my usual four categories of annoying salesperson, or had I found a fifth?..
“This DVD entertainment system really looks fantastic. Are you sure this is included…At no extra charge?”
“None Sir”
“Wow – the kids will totally love this – what a fabulous deal”
“Yes Sir”
“Tell me, can you get cable on this in-car system?’
“Err – I’ll just go and check sir”



AHA, the ‘Clue less’ salesperson, after all… that would have to be a hell of a lot of cable, after all… and who would wind it back up again when you get home? It was probably best to go and check.
I recall very well seeing one of the most amusing handcrafted signs whilst in Hong Kong in the early 90’s. At that time, there was, and still is, I believe, a reasonably well known clothing brand name called Hang Ten. I entered one of many Japanese department stores at that time and noticed that clothes were on sale, so I thought I would take a look. When I got off the escalator, I was greeted by a huge stencilled sign, with no logos, that read
“Hang Ten Kids – Less 30%”.
I pretty much wet myself as I had visions of crazed mid sale shoppers kidnapping kids and lynching them at checkouts to avail of an additional 30% discount.
“How are you doing?”
“Oh, I only have managed nine so far… see you in a minute – keep my place in the queue”.
Cut to images of private school principals launching themselves off tall buildings in lieu of school closures through lack of attendance. I mean, how can you not notice the implications? Hilarious.
But talking about queues - where did manners go to when the concept of queuing is concerned? It seems to me that when it comes to queuing, manners haven’t just escaped, they have firmly migrated on an inter-planetary scale. It’s bad enough in the UK, but here in Asia, and the Philippines for sure, the very understanding of the queuing concept is lost.
The only queue you will find that’s respected here happens to belong to Effren Reyes or Francisco Bustamante – two of the best pool players in the world.


And even pool here is called billiards, which it isn’t of course, as billiards is a totally different game, so CUE the dictionary, I guess… if they get the names of one of the nation’s favourite pastimes wrong, what chance have they got getting a word like queue right?
Compared to the average Asian, a six foot three 200lb Caucasian can hardly be seen as inconspicuous. Yet here I regularly am, queuing for this and that, and people just walk right in front of me as if I just wasn’t there.
This isn’t just an Asian phenomenon either – it happens commonly in the UK too.
This is shockingly bad manners and it effectively is a statement that someone else’s time is more valuable than yours, in its essence.
I get extremely angry by someone jumping the queue on me and retort the same way every time…
“excuse me, do you speak English?”
Bewildered looks. “Yes”
“Ah, good… then it’s reasonable to assume you studied the alphabet at school I guess?”
More bewilderment. “yes”
“Excellent. So you are aware that the last letter of the alphabet isn’t ‘P’ and the ‘P’ is followed by ‘Q’. It’s spelt q-u-e-u-e for your information and the back of it is in that direction. I was here before you – so goodbye, and get lost”.
I have never yet had this little retort not work and I find its best delivered at a loud volume.
Adults are losing the plot when it comes to manners. This isn’t good in itself, but the future generations are already being very poorly educated in elements of manners and etiquette.



The way parents are seemingly abdicating responsibility for their children’s manners these days causes me to regularly become perplexed. Far more frequently, modern families are eating out in restaurants of all kinds.
Why can’t parents teach kids that there isn’t any difference, on any level, between a home dining room and a restaurant? Why can’t parents teach their kids that there is a difference between a restaurant and a playground?
Moreover, why should different rules apply to how one behaves at home or in a restaurant? Aren’t they both places where, in the company of others, food is consumed? Shouldn’t etiquette apply whether you are dining at home or outside? Manners aren’t to be applied dependent upon location, are they? Yet it appears that there is no discipline whatsoever being installed with regards to dining habits.
I watch how kids behave in situations like this and cringe. Half the time it seems that modern children cannot sit facing the table, their food, and those with whom they are dining. This should seem like a relatively normal approach to eating, but in real terms, is it really normal nowadays?
I see kids sitting at bizarre angles relative to the table with their food on it. The reason for this I can only estimate as where, in their house, the TV is located relative to their dining table.
This is learned behaviour, rehearsed on a daily basis, and thus kids grow up practicing that their torso has to be at an angle to the dinner table, they make all reasonable attempts to eat with only one piece of cutlery (how American), and put food in only one side of your mouth without moving their head and gaze… all this to allow for uninterrupted viewing at home. Kids don’t rationalise that they actually aren’t at home and there isn’t a TV in the same place as usual, except in restaurants where there is a TV… then they change the angle they sit at accordingly.


I also notice that for many kids, you know what they have ordered just by looking at them.
If you can’t tell by looking at their shirts to review spillages, then a glance towards them whilst they are chewing tells all. I don’t recall being a kid and depositing a good proportion of a meal down my shirt. Maybe because I was facing my food and sitting properly when I ate and, just maybe, because consequences would have been brought to bear by my father that I would have preferred to avoid. Had I chewed in a restaurant with my mouth open, I think my dad would have half killed me.
In addition, when kids have finished eating, then it seems to me that parents believe their kids’ digestion system is either weak, or malfunctioning. My parents always made sure I waited ‘for my food to go down’ before any form of activity was allowed. If I left my seat in a restaurant, other than to go to the loo, my dad would provide a response which most likely would cause me to move… probably in the direction of his hand after I had been hit with it.
Many modern parents oppositely believe that peristalsis doesn’t work automatically for their kids, and so it needs help to get going and send the consumed food to the stomach.
This must be true; otherwise why else would you allow your kids to finish eating and then run amok all over the place?
For the life of me I cannot comprehend this. At home kids get bored so easily, yet in a restaurant with nothing to amuse them whatsoever, they run riot. Is this atmospheric? Perhaps it’s a gustatory response of some kind?
Etiquette seems to be lacking when kids today are being educated, and there are so many instances.
Take conversation for example. My parents were extremely clear about how I should behave ‘when the grown ups are talking’.


My dad was very explicit… interrupt me when I am talking to an adult, and the ensuing events will result in premature death.
I was absolutely clear about this. If my dad was talking to some adult or other, our house could have been ablaze behind him and I wouldn’t have dared to even have commented.
Kids nowadays just feel they can interject during adult conversation at any time, and without even as much as an ‘excuse me’ at all. Additionally, modern kids assume that adults will yield to their interruption in an instant – as if we will be glad that a boring conversation is being made more interesting by their inevitable subject change.
My father’s favourite comment in this area was
“Children do not speak until they are spoken to”.
I found this hard to deal with and understand, as apart from school, it seemed I had almost no right to speak to anyone. On the other hand he spoke to everyone, which confused matters further. He’d be in the most innocuous of places and situations, and he would break his neck to start a conversation with most anyone.
I’d be at his side wondering why only adults were allowed to have conversations. As an infant school attendee I figured I’d be able to speak to adults when I reached 18 or so.
This is a bit extreme to say the least, but children should know when to keep quiet and when they can participate in conversation. You never know, it might just save your house from burning down.