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Lawrie's Adventures On The Other Side Of Customer Service

It's always fun to read the experiences of overwraught, disgruntled and harangued retail professionals when dealing with moronic, monosyllabic, vegetable-IQ'd consumers and their lack of understanding, empathy, social graces and volum control. In my various former incarnations as a front-line offensive to the everyday consumer, my more-or-less verbatim transcripts have provided literally a whole bunch of people with a handful of hilarity. Today, however, my retail experiences come from the other side of the fence. Rarely have I been in a position as a buyer of goods and on the recieving end of such spectacularly poor service as I was this evening.

The first offender of my consumer sensibilities (and this may seem slightly tenuous, but stick with it), was my TomTom Go 100. In the coming years we will all have robot slaves; this is something I look forward to with great anticipation, and satellite navigation is the first foot in the door. Gone are the days when map-holding girlfriends and wives are required to know the difference between left and right - we now have a little electronic toy to guide us home. As I'm sure you're aware, however, sat nav systems are far from infallible.

I faithfully gave my TomTom my destination postcode and set off. It told me to make a right, but the turn in question was blocked off and being diverted. Fortunately, these systems can quickly and efficiently plan alternate routes, which it did. So I carried on for a bit, becoming accutely aware that I appeared to be overshooting the mark a little bit, when all of a sudden it told me to make a series of sharp turns which appeared to have me pointing in vaguely the right direction. Finally, he proudly announced "You have reached your desination". Unfortunately, this was in the middle of a residential street; I was supposed to be in a large retail park. I turned a couple of corners, then pulled over, re-inputting the destination postcode. It took me round a few more corners, taking me a full three miles from home - over a mile and a half further than my intended destination - onto a completely different street. He then announced, like he was Mapthor, God of the Road and Mini-Roadabouts, "You have reached your desination". "No I fucking haven't!" I screamed back, my window open and two small children standing directly next to the car. "Not even St. Christopher knows where I am, you fucking ZX Spectrum tape-drive fucktard!" Realising that my chances of making it to the store were becoming very slim, I caved in and set the destination for home. Dejected, trundling along at a snail's pace, I looked up to see... *gasp!* the retail park on the other side of the road! I furtively pulled a highly illegal u-turn and swung around in the road, careering into the car park directly in front of my store of choice: HobbyCraft.

If you haven't heard of it before, HobbyCraft is like a tiny little shop in some secluded street, run by two old ladies and sells paper and sewing buttons. The only difference is that HobbyCraft is a megastore and it shits all over the little old ladies two-bit 'buttons-and-crap' operation. This is where the second half of my adventures commence.

I rushed into the store, clambering around to make sure I had money and enough brainpower to propell myself through the store. Almost the instant I was inside, a deadpan pre-recorded monotone booms through the PA: "This store will be closing in ten minutes. Please make your way to the tills to pay for your purchases." Ten minutes? That's a lifetime to an experienced speed-shopper like me. I whisked along the rows to find the inky pads I was after. However, barely two minutes had passed - and I wasn't immune to the visual hate-daggers being thrown at me - when the same recorded voice announced, "This store is now closing. Please make your way to the exit.". Given my Oscarian mood, my witty repost was limited to "Please make your way to fucking off,". Yeah. Good one.


I grabbed an ink pad at random, carefully studying the back to make sure I wasn't buying gloss emulsion or glass paint, and read a note about needing an aerosol sealant for this particular ink. I accosted a shop 'assistant' - you'll notice I enclosed her job title within quotations to give a visual indication of inferred irony - and asked her if she knew how many ink stamps I might exepct to get out of a particular ink pad, to which she responded with a barely perceptible shrug. Pretending not to notice her indifference to the world, I asked the same question again. "Dunno," she managed to mumble. "Thanks. That's very helpful. Now, it said something about maybe needing an aerosol sealant?". Her brow creased and she asked, as if offended, "Where did you read that?". I pointed at the back of the ink pad, then at the sign in the aisle. "It said on there... I read it... look, does it matter? Do I need a sealant or what?". Another shrug. "Dunno, then. Don't fink so." Oh, you don't fink so? Well that's very reassuring, you Fuzzy Felt hippy.

I grabbed my inks and headed for the tills.

- posted by lawrie at 8:12 PM ~ comments

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Winning 'Awards' The Easy Way
I'm no stranger to the headlines. Once, after accidentally recieving a cheque for over a half a million pounds my story made it onto page 3 of The Sun (for all you foreign types, 'Page 3' means "a page in a 'newspaper' with boobs on it") and even got my picture on the front page of the local rag until some selfish bastard crashed his helicopter and died later that afternoon.

So imagine my twinkly joy at discovering that, after working on Elbow's new site, I have inadvertently made it into The Sun again. Note that I've conveniently highlighted the parts I worked on, since they're the most important and nobody should care about anything else.

And finally, after spending a good couple of years trying to destroy independent widget development, Myspace have finally seen the light (in particular, the lamp of foolhardyness illuminating the fact that they're consistently falling behind Facebook in terms of UK traffic) and stolen Facebook's development platform.

- posted by lawrie at 12:36 PM ~ comments

Saturday, April 05, 2008

How To Waste Money And Imbibe People
For those of you just joining us, welcome back to, officially, the most bestest design-having blog. Hooray for me and my mantel of shiny-yet-intangible awards! In addition, I have just set a record for the worst grammatically structured fragment of 2008.

While searching for a frustratingly elusive video of George Carlin performing his version of The Aristocrats (if you don't know the legendary gag, you should check out this trailer and then immediately order the DVD), I stumbled across Otto %26 George's retelling of this comedic classic. Nothing gets me much hotter than a fantastically vulgar puppet.

- posted by lawrie at 5:07 PM ~ comments

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Dear Centre Parcs

Dear Centre Parcs,

I recently had a very enjoyable stay at your Elvenden Forest 'parc', although unfortunately I didn't see any elves or, failing that, any wolves eating children. I did see a boy push his sister off her bike and laugh, though it was neither magical nor elvish. I did some swimming, I played some badminton (which, it turns out, I'm not bad at), I shot some pool, I totally kicked ass at go-karting even though everyone claims I cheated; a great time was had by all.

However, I have one issue that came up again and again that almost ruined every day for me. Like an effluent smell that follows you to bed even after you put your shoes in the washing machine, or the constant ringing hum of tinnitus that lets your brain know that your ears are dying from the inside. For the sake of my own health and wellbeing, I must insist on recompense for no less than the cost of a full treatment of laser-eye surgery for both of my eyes. And a really nice pair of sunglasses.

I realise this unpleasantness may well have been avoided if your facility had not completely burnt down a few years ago thanks to the boy wonder who decided to take a blowtorch to a bitumen-coated roof, and for that I am sorry that you have been placed in this unfortunate position. However, I feel I have no recourse but to demand reparation given the nature of the issue that blighted my every waking minute at Centre Parcs in Elvenden Forest, unless you can offer a solid, plausible reason for using COMIC SANS ON EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SIGN YOU HAVE.

It's not even a real typeface, you fontologically challenged pissmidgets. The only possible way you could have made things any worse was by throwing an apostrophe into every plural and hanging a sign in the changing room that said "Be careful with you're belonging's! Their are theives in the area!"

- posted by lawrie at 1:57 PM ~ comments

Sunday, January 20, 2008

I'm going on holiday for a week
Q: What's the best thing about putting a baby feet-first into a blender?
A: You can come on its face while it dies.

- posted by lawrie at 6:28 PM ~ comments

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Phoenix Dark Wants To Meet YOU
I frequently suffer through phases of insomnia, infecting my brain in same way I imagine hundreds and hundreds of venereal diseases feed happily on Jodie Marsh's pubis; and last night was no different - for my insomnia, or Jodie's vagina, I'd guess.

As I sat in bed watching Mystery Men at 2am this morning, I began to notice a pattern in the far-too-frequent advert breaks marring my enjoyment of this cinematic classic; all of the advert breaks were identical. I don't just mean that there was a commercial for some kind of Ford parambulator and another for one of those generic price comparison websites; oh no, there were eight (I counted. Twice) separate adverts for those mobile-text-flirt services.

You know the ones - some gormless bint with horrifically modified grapefruit-boobs crammed under a thoroughly inadequate bikini top, her skin dyed to the colour of an out-of-season satsuma and wearing more make-up than a member of The Black %26 White Minstrel Show pretends that she's at home alone on a Saturday night having the time of her life (optionally joined by a genetic clone of herself wearing a black wig) texting some sad twat sitting at home on his own in underpants and a vest while he knocks out a five-knuckle shandy to the fake picture of 'herself' that she just sent to him.

Well, I started noticing that while the advertised numbers changed and the girls looked (barely) different with each commercial, the company offering the service listed in teeny-tiny text at the bottom of the screen remained the same. That company is MyTXT, and the plethora of different-but-the-same services they offered piqued my interest enough to take a look at their website.

At first glance it appears that someone got their nephew to put the site together with Microsoft FrontPage (although a quick glance at the page's source code tells me it was done with Pysoft's Actual Drawing 6.0), but with a single click of my mouse, I was taken to the single-most revealing 'Safety Tips' page I have ever read. Let's eat some safety nuggets together!

'We all go on blind dates and an occasional anonymous trick.'

Okay, please please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm certain that the word 'trick', especially in this context, is how a prostitute refers to having sex with a paying client; she 'turns a trick'. And I'm not entirely comfortable with the suggestion that 'we all' do it. Maybe in Australia chum, but I'm British.

'Prior to meeting, be sure to get a photo of your date.... Save the picture in an accessible place on your computer. You can always erase it later if his psycho rating is extremely low.'

This is, disturbingly, the only mention of any kind of 'psycho rating', which leads me to believe that it is less a trustworthy points system offered by the company in the name of safety and more a mental gauge that you should use; unfortunately a gauge many of us lack - my three horrifying dates with Psycho Becki 8 years ago being a case in point.

'Map an Escape Route: In the rare case your date may follow you home or attempt to harm you, take a route different from your routine or meet at a location away from your place of residence.'

Yes, one way to absolutely guarantee your safety is to meet a stranger well away from home. That way, you can be certain that your date-rape will take place in complete privacy, well away from concerned friends and family.

The very fact that they have to offer advice about mapping escape routes in case of imminent danger makes me wonder exactly what's happened before. "Hmm... you know, a lot of our customers are being murdered. Maybe we should offer some advice usually only given to MI5 operatives when planning to meet KGB double-agents."

Is it just me, or does this entire 'txt-2-flrt' system seem utterly anachronistic given the many millions of ways we can use the internet to communicate cheap-as-free? You could either spend £3 sending one message and receiving one in return (Three pounds!), or you could download MSN Messenger for free, sign up to Myspace for free, cut out the middle man and spend all night abusing yourself.

- posted by lawrie at 2:59 PM ~ comments

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Daylate Animation Studios Presents...

Anberlin's video for A Day Late.

Watch! an awestruck horror as every member of the band desperately tries to bust a move and prove he is a pro-active and zany musician. Cringe! in belly-cramping mortification as the singer tries to play the emo-by-numbers card whilst, amazingly, auditioning for Pop Idol at the same time.

Horrible. Just horrible.

Update:

Thanks to Bassface for the heads up on the link, and to Google for the correct song name. It turns out that Anberlin are a pretty big deal in the States. Who knew? Not the UK!

- posted by lawrie at 2:50 PM ~ comments

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

An Open Letter to Parcelforce
Dear Mr. Parcelforce,

How can one company fail so completely and utterly at achieving the most core, basic services that it claims to offer? I don't have an answer, so maybe you can provide one after we take a look through the keyhole at our relationship thus far:

2004: Unwilling and unable
My girlfriend, the lovely, kind-hearted, forward-planning and sensible girl that she is, ordered a bunch of my birthday presents on Amazon a full two weeks in advance. She also marked them for next-day delivery so that she would have plenty of time to wrap and hide them.

Now, I'm not sure if you're using the Gregorian calendar or Professor Zonko's Wacky Calendar of Lies, but in no way do I equate 'next-day delivery' with 'I have to drive down to the depot two weeks later to pick it up, only to find it's been torn open and the desk clerk is commenting on the broken stuff inside'.

One angry written complaint later, and Parcelforce apparently have the balls to respond with:

"I note from our records that you have now taken delivery of this item, so we consider the matter closed."

What an interesting way to spell 'fuck you'.

2005: Can't deliver, won't pick up
After another instance of 'we delivered your package but no one was home', despite the fact that one of us is almost always around to pounce on any incoming deliveries, Parcelforce then pulled a unique trick: you offered to pick up a parge package we were delivering. Handy! Or not, as the case may be.

We arranged a date, we arranged a time, we waited eagerly by the door for the van to arrive, secure in the knowledge that the package would reach its destination just as we intended. BRANG! Two hours after the expected arrival of the Parcelforce van, we commandeered a vehicle and, with much struggling and heavy lifting, drove ten miles to the depot ourselves. Upon our arrival and subsequent fight to get the package out of the car in what can only be described as one of Britain's rare monsoons, two Parcelforce employees watched from an open bay, laughing. When I started to complain in person, we were pretty much told to get fucked. A pattern emerges!

2006: How to fake deliveries and confuse people
By now we've discovered that Parcelforce's favourite trick is to claim that you attempted delivery of a package, playing the odds that neither of us would be home. Well, the joke is on you fuckers, because I work at home, and with your handy order-tracking system I can prove conclusively that you are lying bastards.

Following the non-arrival of yet another parcel, I went through the now all-too familiar game of calling Parcelforce, keying through 19 different options to actually speak to someone, and complaining. On this occasion I was informed that my parcel had been taken to the post office just up the road; all I needed to do was take some ID and it was mine. Hooray! FAIL.

I arrive at the post office and... yes, I can see my parcel with my name on it sitting on the shelf. I walk up to the counter, offer my ID, and I'm told quietly but firmly that I can't have it because I don't have the Parcelforce delivery card. Oh, you mean that flimsy piece of card with semi-literate biro scribble on it that Parcelforce are supposed to deliver but didn't because they've never been to my house, ever? And you're telling me that card is more convincing proof that the parcel belongs to me than a UK driving licence with my full name, a photo of my face on it and 3 years worth of electricity bills in my bag with our address printed all over them? Okay! Hey - do you want to hear me scream? Because here I go!

2007: We don't care if you live or die
Oh, I had a bad feeling when I ordered my super-comfy new chair online. It seems that these e-retailers just can't help themselves from defaulting to using Parcelforce in a pinch.

I received three separate emails informing me of the expected delivery date - I was even assured that my delivery should be unaffected by the postal strike. BONUS. As far as Parcelforce deliveries go, that's like having a heart attack on Christmas Day. The very second I get a link to track my parcel I get to work. Order-tracking ahoy! SPROING! You attempted delivery yesterday at 7am, but no one was in? And then you attempted delivery again at 3pm and, once again, no one was around? How many lies has thou spake? Oh, let me count thine ways.

I call up Parcelforce, spend two minutes brute-forcing my way through the automated options, and when I finally get a human to talk to I spend 20 minutes listing allll the ways in which Parcelforce has ruined my life. When I mention this most recent turn of events and the apparent failed deliveries, she says, and I quote verbatim:

"Oh, that's funny; the parcel hasn't been signed out of the depot once."

No wonder you failed to deliver my package! YOU DIDN'T HAVE IT IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE. I then gave the hapless woman four pages of instructions on how to drive to the building where I live, how to park the van, and how to approach the front door and ring the bell.

The following day, my parcel arrives with no hassling, no quibbling and no magically invisible packages being undelivered. This is not exaclty what I'd call a 'happy ending', because it's neither happy nor an ending. As long as I order things online, I have a feeling I'm going to be stuck with a company that has failed to deliver or pick up my packages 100%25 of the time.

Parcelforce is owned by the same company that owns Royal Mail, is it not? Yet you are unable to communicate collection protocols with your customers or each other, and you have consistently failed to find an address that my postman delivers to every single day and that a 17-year old pizza delivery boy can find on his moped? Forshame, Parcelforce. Forshame.

- posted by lawrie at 5:14 PM ~ comments

Monday, October 01, 2007

Eat My Brain Matter
I am finally famous! Aftr years of toiling away, pouring useless and mostly irrelevant movie trivia into the internet movie database, one of my submissions has been accepted!

First, you may read the horrifically dull back-story. A film was released this year entitled Magicians, written by and starring those Footlight veterans of uncomfortable comedy Mitchell and Webb. The film itself wasn't actually all that brilliant. In fact it was almost as dull as this story, which was a shame.

The final third of the film was shot in my native Nottingham; specifically at the Theatre Royal, which is solely owned and operated by my girlfriend via remote control from her sky fortress (it's the first turning after Cloud City. If you see a sign saying "You Are Now Leaving Bespin", you've gone too far).

And that's pretty much it. That's my piece of trivia: the film leads you to believe they're on the island of Jersey when, in fact, they're in Nottingham. Quite why the IMDB chose this particular nugget of non-information when I've previously submitted gems like John Wayne singing prophetic statements of mortality from Gilbert %26 Sullivan, or the mind-boggling technicalities of IP ranges that Denzel Washington can't quite grasp, I shall never know.

But here it is; my moment of Zen. Magicians triviata!

- posted by lawrie at 10:48 AM ~ comments

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Eat My Goods

Hey, you know what's fun? Taking expert testimony and quoting it out of context:

"Consumers' attention span is pretty short," said Lakshman Krishnamurthi, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. "As long as you have a good product that people like, people are going to go and eat it."

What a great analysis, Dr. Lankyman. Maybe you should stick to teaching your Frosties Analysis class at Kellogg's Upstairs College of Cereal Nuggets before offering that kind of advice to General Motors. You fucking plum.

- posted by lawrie at 11:52 AM ~ comments