Blood On The Tracks
May. 3rd, 2007 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksSo, there I am, on the train home at 12.45pm, just going through New Cross Station, when the mobile rings.
"Hello, it's the BT Engineer here. I was just wondering. Could we make the appointment tomorrow instead?"
"Well, not really, no. I'm on the train on the way home. In fact I'm just about to go through a tunnel. If you got me an hour or so ago, I might have been able to do something about it."
"Oh, OK, No problem". (Train goes through tunnel)
No man on the end of the line when the train exits the tunnel.
When I get home, I phone him back. He says that he's arranged for another guy to come.
"Any idea when he'll arrive?"
"Well, it'll be before five".
Of course, no-one came.
So, I then had to renegotiate the hell that is the BT automated phone "service" system. It informed me that the appointment was between 1pm and 6pm (as opposed to the arranged time of 2pm to 4.30pm). But, it does offer me the opportunity to divert calls to my mobile, until the line is fixed (and the automated system at least now accepts that there is a fault on the line). So, I turn Beethoven's Sixth up loud, start cleaning the window surrounds, and wait until 7pm, when I phone again.
This time, the automated "service" tells me something like "unfortunately, our engineer was unable to keep the appointment". Great. Instead of waiting in a queue, you leave a number and BT calls you back, eventually.
So, I headed downstairs to the kitchen, turned Rigoletto up loud, and started sanding down the kitchen door in preparation for varnishing.
Eventually, BT calls back. The girl tells me that she can't explain why the appointment was missed, because the engineers only provide that information when they write up their notes the following morning.
Why this kind of thing sends me into despair, I don't know. I think that it's the never-ending sequence of automated calls, the feeling that I have ceased to be a human being and that I am just a process in the machine. Whatever, but I can tell you that the sound of a man breaking down in despair gets a lot more out of customer services representatives than does anger.
So, BT is meant to be turning up tomorrow afternoon, between 1pm and 6pm.
Of course, if they can't fix it, that means I'll have the whole bank holiday weekend without internet access, which means I'll probably have to come into the office on the Monday in preparation for Tuesday morning. Thanks BT, thanks a lot. Let's just hope.
++++++++
A profits warning from Games Workshop this morning, plus news that 35 loss-making stores will be closed. All of this dates back to 2000 or 2001 when the first of the Lord of the Rings films was released. GW had the distribution deal on LotR figurines and it sold millions of them.
Now, once again we enter the land of "disconnect". From the company's point of view, the sensible thing would be to tell investors that this was a one-off, relatively short-term phenomenon, and to pay some special dividends. But, from an executive's point of view, it's better to say that this is a great example of the GW franchise, expand the company, open new stores, pay higher salaries, and get the money out of the company that way. Share price goes up, Share options are divested. Everyone is happy, waiting for the next LotR phenomenon that should be along "any day now".
Eventually, of course, the one-off nature of the LotR phenomenon becomes apparent, and the company shrinks again. Share price falls; everyone is unhappy. "Why didn't you just pay a special dividend?" scream today's fund managers. "Why didn't your predecessors ask us to do that at the time?" is the reply.
++++++++++
Meeting Mr Bowles for lunch today, and then back to the office because I still can't get any work done at home. Bed last night at 8.30. Clearly there are still some remnants of far-east time in my body. Online poker? What's that?
"Hello, it's the BT Engineer here. I was just wondering. Could we make the appointment tomorrow instead?"
"Well, not really, no. I'm on the train on the way home. In fact I'm just about to go through a tunnel. If you got me an hour or so ago, I might have been able to do something about it."
"Oh, OK, No problem". (Train goes through tunnel)
No man on the end of the line when the train exits the tunnel.
When I get home, I phone him back. He says that he's arranged for another guy to come.
"Any idea when he'll arrive?"
"Well, it'll be before five".
Of course, no-one came.
So, I then had to renegotiate the hell that is the BT automated phone "service" system. It informed me that the appointment was between 1pm and 6pm (as opposed to the arranged time of 2pm to 4.30pm). But, it does offer me the opportunity to divert calls to my mobile, until the line is fixed (and the automated system at least now accepts that there is a fault on the line). So, I turn Beethoven's Sixth up loud, start cleaning the window surrounds, and wait until 7pm, when I phone again.
This time, the automated "service" tells me something like "unfortunately, our engineer was unable to keep the appointment". Great. Instead of waiting in a queue, you leave a number and BT calls you back, eventually.
So, I headed downstairs to the kitchen, turned Rigoletto up loud, and started sanding down the kitchen door in preparation for varnishing.
Eventually, BT calls back. The girl tells me that she can't explain why the appointment was missed, because the engineers only provide that information when they write up their notes the following morning.
Why this kind of thing sends me into despair, I don't know. I think that it's the never-ending sequence of automated calls, the feeling that I have ceased to be a human being and that I am just a process in the machine. Whatever, but I can tell you that the sound of a man breaking down in despair gets a lot more out of customer services representatives than does anger.
So, BT is meant to be turning up tomorrow afternoon, between 1pm and 6pm.
Of course, if they can't fix it, that means I'll have the whole bank holiday weekend without internet access, which means I'll probably have to come into the office on the Monday in preparation for Tuesday morning. Thanks BT, thanks a lot. Let's just hope.
++++++++
A profits warning from Games Workshop this morning, plus news that 35 loss-making stores will be closed. All of this dates back to 2000 or 2001 when the first of the Lord of the Rings films was released. GW had the distribution deal on LotR figurines and it sold millions of them.
Now, once again we enter the land of "disconnect". From the company's point of view, the sensible thing would be to tell investors that this was a one-off, relatively short-term phenomenon, and to pay some special dividends. But, from an executive's point of view, it's better to say that this is a great example of the GW franchise, expand the company, open new stores, pay higher salaries, and get the money out of the company that way. Share price goes up, Share options are divested. Everyone is happy, waiting for the next LotR phenomenon that should be along "any day now".
Eventually, of course, the one-off nature of the LotR phenomenon becomes apparent, and the company shrinks again. Share price falls; everyone is unhappy. "Why didn't you just pay a special dividend?" scream today's fund managers. "Why didn't your predecessors ask us to do that at the time?" is the reply.
++++++++++
Meeting Mr Bowles for lunch today, and then back to the office because I still can't get any work done at home. Bed last night at 8.30. Clearly there are still some remnants of far-east time in my body. Online poker? What's that?
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o/t Blocked sites at work
Date: 2007-05-03 09:58 am (UTC)Titmus
Re: o/t Blocked sites at work
Date: 2007-05-03 10:38 am (UTC)PJ
no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 06:17 pm (UTC)World of Warcraft plain and simply. Lots of people are turning to online computer games for their roleplaying fix with friends. The store ( http://www.take2theweb.com/pub/fb3/a.html ) used to have many regulars for D&D, those numbers started dropping off a year back and it has never recovered.
The problem with Games Workshop is their target audience, over the last 15 years it's been aimed at the 13 to 17 market. Those kids are getting pushed into online games (and rightfully so, since it's much more fun!) and are leaving the stores behind.
Games Workshop need to diversify, which they started with the Warhammer 40,000 online franchise, but painting figures just wont satisfy the same number of kids as it used to.
Can't get no putrefaction
Date: 2007-05-03 10:01 pm (UTC)In the first place, I agree entirely with the idea of diversification. This is a basic rule of business. Nobody can quite explain what it means, and the term has unfortunate connotations of marketing twits running around waving their hands in the air like Kermit the Frog and spouting crap about Brands and Leverage, but in the case of Games Workshop the answer has always been obvious. Physically so, in fact. The men at the top have just been too squeamish for lo, these twenty five years.
Look. You have a franchise selling teeny tiny tin trolls to thirteen year olds. A certain type of troubled middle-class kid is addicted to this sort of thing. You broaden the franchise by adding paints -- presumably "authentic, licensed, TrolloPaint (tm)," and the suckers go for it.
At the working-class end of the spectrum, the same type of troubled kid is addicted to something entirely different. Yup, you guessed it, solvents.
Easy-peasy. Just sell a bag o trolls with a do-it-yourself kit for making your own TrolloPaint. The kit would consist of a bunch of cheap Chinese acrylics -- the colours don't matter; they could all be shades of monkey-shit brown for all intents and purposes -- together with a huge bag of solvent. Hell, you could even franchise it to the kids. "Be the first kid on your block to mix TrolloPaint Monkey Shit Brown #13: Looks great on Thorvald the Bald Bridge Humper! Mix it, sell it, snort it... For more details, see our Website at the bargain rate of 10p per minute.*"
And the twin beauty of this is that (a) solvents are legal and (b) kids from the 1950s on have been doing this with Airfix kits forever. Indeed, it was the only reason most of us bought the fiddly little buggers.
* Service provided by BT Wholesale Incompetence.
PS Birks, have you not considered switching from BT to almost anybody else? Just a thought. Even cable is better than BT, and I've worked with both.
Re: Can't get no putrefaction
Date: 2007-05-04 06:19 am (UTC)If I get another service via a landline, I still have to use BT cables, so (in this case), the problem would have been worse, not better, because I would still be looking to get a BT Engineer, but I wouldn't have a BT contract.
Perhaps the cable situation has improved, but I look at the cabinet box, and it still looks overloaded (it gets broken into at least once a week).
A poser. But a back-up system would be useful.
PJ