Lies, damn lies and shite telephony service providers

I'm getting just about sick of getting calls from people asking me where the nearest [PC World] store is.

I’ve called PC World, passed through the bowels of their support tree to speak to Rebecca.

Having painted a very clear picture of my abject annoyance, making deft use of casual but pithily-delivered expletives, I request the number for the head office.

With great haste she gave me the number for the head office, which then asks me to choose where I want to lodge a complain, which then gives me a bunch of options, which inevitably contains PC World, which means I’m back where I started, this time talking to Steven.

Second time round calls for special sanctions, so I demand to speak to his supervisor, or someone in a position of responsibility. Which, when dealing with call centres, can be an extremely ambiguous request. Enter the confused and clearly stressed Benjamin.

In fairness to him, he was quite helpful and explained that PC World only use the one sales number, which I’m aware of.

I explain that I’ve been here before and that I’m aware of the one number policy. I also explain that I’ve contacted British Telecom at least twice to get this issue resolved.

I also explain that I have an extensive list of numbers that British Telecom assure me are residential numbers, which almost certainly confirms that these are either existing or prospective PC World customers.

I go on to explain that if you use a shite telephony service provider, then you’re going to get call over-spill when the exchange gets busy. The moral being, avoid shite telephony service providers.

Interestingly and ironically, PC World use British Telecom as their telephony service provider, which sort of explains a lot, but this also annoys the feck out of me because if British Telecom know that I’m having problems -- which they damn well do -- and that I knew the calls were for PC World and not me, then why did they try to fob me off by telling me that there’s nothing that they can do?

Time for a daily challenge.

See how quickly I can ruin somebody’s day with only a telephone and a few choice words.

I’m sure I’m up to that challenge...

Just for the fun of it...

Most people would agree that to a greater or lesser degree, you are the product of your experiences.

Sure, there's the part of you that was 'hard wired' the moment you were conceived, but you're never going to be a great singer if you live with deaf people, are you?

Who would know?

The thing is, in my time on this planet, I've seen things most people wouldn't and in some cases couldn't and probably daren't believe.

I’m not this well travelled guy, nor am I well read. I know enough to get me by, and there are things that I still strive for.

But when all is said & done, if I was to have allowed myself to be wholly the product of the things that have taken place in my life, I might have gone insane years ago. And you fare reader, would not be reading my written excursions into the unknown and the unthinkable right now .. and before now.

To be totally honest, I don't have the faintest idea what I'm driving at and there's definitely no way that I'm ever going to share with you those events that have been the most formative in my life, be they good or bad.

For those of you that are relatively new, you might want to know a little more about me. So knock yourself out.

If there's a moral to any of this -- and I'll be damned if I know if there is -- what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger...

Things that really .. really piss me off: part XV

I've just had my memory jogged by a fellow 'blogger...

I remember getting stuck in traffic first thing some years ago when I worked in a near-by city.

Some guy had thrown himself off a bridge into on-coming traffic.

His demise was as predictable as the outcome -- chaos.

It's just me, me, me, isn't it?

He had problems, we know that. But to share them with everyone else is just selfish.

He had options.

He could have stayed at home, slashed his wrists, toaster is the the bath, head in the oven, too many pills, the usual .. oh no!

Swan dive off a bridge into heavy traffic at rush hour.

That's just selfish...

Mind the Gap! And help bring sanity to iTunes...

I'm launching a new site.

It's a petition against the meaningless gap that iTunes sees fit to plop in between each and every song you play.

Go to Mind the Gap and pledge your support by emailing me.

It's all a little tongue-in-cheek, but there is a serious side to this, or I wouldn't be doing it in the first place.

So here's where I need your help!

If you know anyone who is utterly sick & tired of the gap, then send them the link to my site and get them to pledge their support.

Let's put a little democracy into action by way of the world wide web.

Make it happen, guys!

Random excerpts & interludes, part IV

The making of an überfiend

As we step out of the shop and make our way across the road and back towards college, I grab him by his arm, turn him to once side and place my hand in his right coat pocket.

"What ye doin'?"

I remove my hand and hold up a packet of Polos in front of me so that he could see and then quickly place them in my own pocket.

"Wha .. you just took them from my..."

Not quite sure what to say, he simply stands there in the middle of the road, barely able to chew on the rest of his pork pie.

I walk on, taking a drink from the milk carton in my hand.

He blinks, then races to catch up with me and trots along side.

"You stole those Polos, didn't you?"

He whispers. Not as if being overheard would really make any difference.

"No."

I curtly reply.

"You did."

He waves his arms about his head as he silently shrieks.

"Why didn't ye put 'em in your own pocket, ye thievin' bastard?!"

I stop and turn to him with a look of mild disdain and incredulity growing on my face.

"Now what the hell would I want to go and do that for?"

I enquire rhetorically.

"Oh! So it's alright for me to get caught, then?"

He hisses with anger, he too enquiring rhetorically, with no small portion of sarcasm as he then nibbles on his pork pie.

"Exactly."

I reply as I place my arm around his shoulder as we both then begin the ascent up the steep drive into the college campus.

"You see, I wanted those Polos. But I didn't have enough money for them. You didn't have enough money for them, so it seemed easier to just .. taken them. Now, I didn't want to get caught, but I wouldn't be all that bothered if you did. Besides, I could have made out that you're absent-minded and all that, make the shop assistant laugh, you would have given the mints back and all would have been well & good. No harm done."

My friend laughs as he shakes his head in resigned dismay.

"Wayne, you're a bastard. Do you know that?"

There ye go again with all those negative waves!

"To a New Yorker like you, a hero is some kind o' weird sandwich!"

Oddball (Donald Sutherland) gives it to Crapgame (Don Rickles) straight in the film, Kelly's Heros...

You see, the trouble is...

Even though I've taken the step of having our household removed from various mailing list data warehouses so that we don't get unsolicited mail and telephone calls, some inevitably slip through, as you'd expect.

They're usually .. no, on second thoughts, they're all crap and the only reason I open them is to remove any evidence of my name and address, and any other pertinent details, remove the customary free pen / lapel badge / sachet of hand cream / lucky charm and then sling said letter in the bin.

While some might find it a sad reminder for them, I actually find it amusing that people are still sending my mother letters even though she's been dead this past two years.

The ironic / funny thing is, most of them are from so-called clairvoyants and seers trying sell my mother a happy future and peace of mind.

Well, my mothers' dead .. you didn't see that one coming, did you?

Can't be that good if you missed that one.

There's a moral to this story .. damned if I know what it is...

Things that really .. really piss me off: part XIV

Kids today

My dad is in his late sixties. When he was a kid, my grandparents were so poor, they couldn't even afford to buy meat once a week, so toys were out of the question.

If they found an old tire, a length of rope or some other piece of industrial waste from the local coal mines, they were lucky.

That said, they enjoyed their lives.

There were seasons for everything; cricket, kites, marbles, football, conkers, sledging, skipping .. the list goes on.

Fast forward several decades to my generation, and while I was more fortunate than my dad and his contemporaries, I still retained that make-do attitude.

We’d routinely make trollies / go-karts, which would consist of a two pair of wheels from an old pram, three planks of wood, some old washing line, a few nails, an old milk crate and a red-hot fire poker.

We made do.

Like my dad and his mates, we would disappear into the many surrounding local woods for hours on end, often making our way back home, caked in dirt and sludge in the approaching twilight hours of late evening, our parents desperate to get us bathed and to bed for school the next morning.

Our clothes were often shabby and torn, but we had our heads filled with inventive, creative ideas about how do make the best of what we had.

That was the life we had.

Fast forward just several years and see how things have changed.

Kids today and more interested in looking cool than having fun. And that isn’t my comment, although I thoroughly agree with it. That was an observation from a seaside clown who was interviewed in the newspaper last year sometime.

Kids today are more interested in being shod in the most expensive clothes and having the most expensive toys, yet still they wander around the streets bored out of their tiny little minds, vandilizing, pissing in shop / store doorways like a tramp / vagrant and generally being a pain in the arse.

And what might you get from them if you asked them why they don’t go away and do something else?

“We’re bored. We’ve got nothing to do.”

They live in a time with greater opportunities than either my dad or myself had .. times two!

They have loads to do, but they have such shockingly small attention spans and such a complete lack of gumption and aptitude that they couldn’t find their own arse with both hands.

And even if they did have an epiphany, a singular idea of what to do with their feckless, oafish and wasted lives, they probably wouldn’t do it because they couldn’t look cool enough doing it.

Get their clothes dirty? You’ve got to be kidding me, right?

If you challenge these kids and ask them why they doing something wrong or criminally stupid, they sort of stop and you see this glazed expression drift across their faces.

They’re trying to make sense of what you’ve just asked them, but because there’s no default foundation of what’s right & wrong to be found anywhere in their empty heads, they simply cannot answer you.

The kids come from parents who piss their money away on lottery scratch-cards, cheap booze & cigarettes from abroad and then sit around all day doing fuck-all while their kids run riot and then blame the teachers when they get into bother day in, day out.

Not all kids are like this, but there’s enough of them to be a constant pest and make enough front pages in the press. We call them Hoodies or Chavs, I just called them braindead, seems appropriate...

Work to live, or live to work?

I can smile a broad, smug smile, because a fellow 'blogger has recently encountered only a fraction of the utter bollocks I have to put up with on a daily basis.

Because of what I do, I facilitate things, I make things happen for my clients so they don't have to get their hands dirty.

On any given day, I might 'liaise' with five or six people, charged as they are with that one task in their working life that they are somehow, utterly incapable of performing with any sense, notion or impression of professionalism, alacrity or accuracy.

But that’s the difference between doing a job just to pay the bills and doing a job because you love what you do...

Relax, eat, enjoy!

Several ripe radishes, torn lettuce, cubed original Greek Feta cheese, chopped spring onions, slithers of green pepper, chunks of cucumber, black & green olives, dried tomatoes with button mushrooms, cherry tomato halves, black pepper & garlic salt, cubed choice chicken pieces with sliced garlic cloves fried in oil until brown, all covered in virgin Italian olive oil.

A cold bottle of lager and a few minutes peace...

You know the fella, the one with the face like a relief map of the Himalayas...

So when Robert Redford was young, he was a bit of an eyeball pleaser.

Yeah, I'm a guy, but I'm big enough to see a guy for what he is.

While we're on the subject, don't you think Eric Close looks like a your Mr. Redford, or is it just me?

Anyway...

Then some time ago he went and said he'd never have plastic surgery to maintain his boyish good looks.

Now, when his face started looking like an Arabs saddle bag.

Well...