The art of sales

Oh, seems like a residence not so far from where I live is on the market (well, it's fairly much exactly where I live). I like the room descriptions, which play up all of the property's desirable features, such as:

BEDROOM ONE 4.04m(13'3'') x 3.10m(10'2'')
One single glazed window with pleasant outlook over Lancaster towards Lancaster castle. One double panelled radiator with thermostat. Power and light.

After all, up here in t' north, it is unusal for rooms to have single glazed windows (brrrr), power sockets and a light. Shame that the pleasant outlook towards Lancaster castle/prison could soon be blocked by a fancy hotel. This would once have made me very angry.

Call centre tips

I have lately been temping in a call centre. This might seem a strange career move, since I can barely follow my own conversation sometimes, so goodness knows how a total stranger at the other end of a crackly phone line is meant to.

I do, however, have plenty of experience of contacting phone centres to talk to my bank, pay bills, discuss application forms etc. etc. and have found the people who answer the phone to be almost always irritable and unhelpful. Now I know why. Based on experience, here are my tips for a successful call centre experience:

1. Don't assume that you can save time by quoting your customer reference number. This assumes that the person at the call centre has access to a computer to look you up on the database. Sure, I'll pretend to look you up at the database, but when I ask for your full address, phone number and insurance policy details 'for confirmation' it is because I am busy writing it all down on an A4 pad - for a time the only technology that I had at my disposal.
2. When I answer the phone "Good afternoon, Spider speaking, how can I help you?", don't reply sceptically "I wonder if you can....". You will only be the 40th or so person to say that today, and it sets the discussion off to a bad start.
3. It's fine to ask to speak to a Team Leader. I won't be insulted - to be honest they're probably much better placed to deal with your query. They're quite few and far between, though, so I will have to put you on hold for about 10 minutes whilst I go and find one, join the queue to talk to them and finally explain the issue to them, during which time you've hung up.
4. You're welcome to threaten to complain to your MP, the Financial Ombudsman and the European Court of Rights. In fact, that's the kind of thing that I would do in the same situation. I love people power!! But this is usually just a roundabout way of asking to speak to a Team Leader. As you wish, please hold...
5. If you live in a place such as Machynlleth or Ffestiniog, please tell me how to spell it. If you live in Birmingham or Plymouth, I'm sure you mean well, but it comes across as a bit patronising.
6. If you're you're the friendly sort, please keep talking. Note how I deliberately attempt to spin out the conversation, change the subject, maybe even phone you back to save your bill - anything to delay Mr. or Ms. Angry who is waiting on the line to speak to me next...

Anywayz, my placement has now come to an end, so I'm sure I will soon lose my newfound call centre empathy, and return to being rude and impatient.

Hearing from my MP

Hear from your MP is, on the surface, an excellent website that allows ordinary internet uses to talk to their local member of parliament via a special e-mail group. Naturally, I signed up months ago and so imagine my excitement when the first e-mail from Ben Wellace (hon. member for Lancaster and Wyre) appeared in my in-box seeking my considered advice.

I just wish that in my enthusiasm I had taken a bit longer to think through my opinions, or at least check my sentence structure, before hitting 'send'. The poor man is going to look at the replies so far and resolve never to use the service again. Note how I also oh so un-subtlely invited him for a pint at the local, which goes to show how much I would enjoy spending time with politicians, even Conservative ones.

Why I hate ITV

... as is clear, something has to really wind me up to provoke a new blog post. The English Football team have exited the World Cup on penalties - the fifth time they have taken such a route out of a competition in living memory (i.e. since about 1986). It was distressing to watch, but familiarity dulls the pain. I don't think any cities in Germany will be razed to the ground as the media expects, but that the disappointed fans will most likely quietly return to their campsites and pack their tents for the journey home.

What bothers me is that later on, in their highlights package, ITV obviously had to put on a little montage of all the team's peaks and troughs throughout the tournament set to angsty music. Now I like angsty music of all types, and something angsty-light by Coldplay or Robbie Williams would have been a fine choice. Because England going out of a tournament on penalties is painful, but nothing that we haven't all experienced before and will experience many, many times again. But instead ITV went for angsty-heavy by playing Hurt by Johnny Cash (originally Nine Inch Nails), which is one of my favourite angst ridden tunes of all. This song has no place on one of ITV's stupid montages dammit - it is the song of a wizened man probing the bitterness of his soul. Or something.

What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

They could have meant it for Sven, I suppose, but that is rather cruel, even taking his questionable tactics into account. The poor man tried his best, and here he is being likened to the Michael Henchard by some smart alec vision mixer. Grrr.... I haven't felt so patrionised since the BBC nicked a Radiohead track to try to bully people into paying their little poll tax. That also made me cross.

Route optimisation (... or Do I Have Too Much Time)

Just like Clive Woodward at the last World Cup, I have been using some of the world's most sophisticated computer software (that's Paint Shop Pro) to analyse my tactical sporting performance. This is the surest and quickest route to success, and makes a pleasant change from just training really hard.

Last weekend, Lenka and I took part in another adventure race in the Lake District - we have to visit as many checkpoints as possible in 5 hours on foot and by mountain bike, in any order. The team that scores the post points wins, and different checekpoints are worth different numbers of points (denoted by my handwritten markings on the maps, below). We kept a fairly good pace, didn't suffer any mechanical failures or anything, but still only ranked 11th out of 26 teams.

This map shows our MTB route (in orange) and what must be roughly the route taken by the winners (in purple). So we both covered similar distances.

But this is a comparison of the running route - looks like the winners covered a fair bit more ground here!

However, the winners spent about 1hr 45 mins running, whereas we spent just over an hour. So we took longer than them to cover our MTB route, and made more few questionable route choices. We did the running first, but I'm thinking that it would have been better to get all the strenous mountain biking out the way. Hmmm, so many possibilities - still I think that we are close to getting the right formula for Ultimate Success. We've already stormed up the series table by a mathematical quirk.

Oh, and I was 50% wrong in my Apprentice predictions. Ansell was by far the best candidate, but Sir Allen has obviously fallen for Michelle's rags to riches story, which therefore makes her the odds-on favourite for the final next week. You know that a TV series has touched the national consciousness when there are rambling opinion pieces in the newspaper explaining what it says about the state of the nation (not that I agree, which is unusual for the Guardian)

So frustrating

It is a beautiful hot, sunny day and I'm at a loose end. And yet I'm down in the dumps... the TV, newspapers and radio all tell me that there are Important Local Elections taking place up and down the country but in Lancaster there are none to be found.

To an election addict like me it feels like Christmas has been cancelled - but only in the local area. Only on my travels elsewhere I have been able to observe exciting election posters and read all of the interesting leaflets that have been pushed through the doors of people lucky enough to live in more democratic places such as London and Weymouth... after all half the fun of elections is in the build up and I would have enjoyed volunteering to be a canvasser for a party... any party (well maybe not the BNP) and being able to knock on people's doors wearing a smart rosette and surprise them by already knowing their name from a print-out of the electoral roll.

I do have previous experience campaigning for the Tories (mock school election in 1997 - I thought pushing the Nasty Party in their darkest hour would be a challenge but we scored about 65% of the vote, which probably says more about the school than anything else) and the Lib Dems (Oxford local elections 2002, Carfax Ward - we won by forcing people out of the colleges just before the polls closed!). Because of this I would probably have offered my services to the Green Party this time, since Lancaster is one of their little enclaves. But it is not to be.

I was considering travelling all the way to Manchester to cast a vote, if only to demonstrate how easy it is to commit electoral fraud. I know my brother's birthday and his home address, see, and I am also certain that he will not be voting himself. As it is, however, I will have to console myself with the late night electoral coverage on the BBC as the only 'fix' that I will be getting for a while.

Er... I'm a lightweight, I'm fired!

... well it wasn't quite like that, and to be honest I think I managed to cling on to my role at the CPS for longer than they had intended. But a person had been hired permanently to do my role (probably at less cost to them than my wage plus agency fees), so no need for me. I was very pleased to receive a card, lots of chocolate and some Star Wars biscuits as a leaving present. If only that happened after every temping assignment - all I got from Sunterra was a plastic orange pen. But given all the allegations maybe it's wise not to be too closely associated with receiving gifts from that particular organisation.

It was three and a half months of fun, stress and trying not to make too many bumbling mistakes... the problem with that kind of role is that the English criminal justice system creaks along so slowly that mistakes don't come become apparant straight away but only three or four weeks down the line. In the form of a fuming prosecution lawyer. But I enjoyed the atmosphere in the office, thinking up a 'word of the day' and learning about how crime lurks around every corner, even in a bright, happy place like Lancaster. And I don't think I'll ever be venturing north of the Lune again, now I know what goes on there ;-)

The agency were meant to be sorting something out, but surprise, surprise they haven't as yet - so I may well be paying another visit to my friends at Jobcentre Plus and having the luxury of time to write more frequent blog entries!

You're a lightweight, you're fired!

I can't believe that I haven't found time to pass comment on The Apprentice untill now, when the series is reaching its exciting zenith.

I was sad that Sir Alan fired one of my fave candidates, Nargis, in week two, but otherwise 3 of the final four contestants are exactly as I had predicted after watching the first episode. No-one will believe me on this.

Still, since it is pre-filmed, I don't think I could have made any money at the bookies anywayz. Nevertheless, I predict that following the interview round next week, Michelle and Paul will be fired. Michelle seems very quietly competent but I don't think glamourous people sit comfortably in Sir Alan's imagination. Similarly, Paul is a nice guy but sociable, ex-rugby playing, possibly ex-public school people don't really fit well into Sir Alan's corporate culture either. What Sir Alan clearly likes best is vigilant, brutish sales people so the final face-off is obviously going to be between Ruth and Ansell. Now, Ansell apart, it is interesting that the other three remaining candidates are the youngest of all those who started. However, I still think that Ansell will end up as the eventual winner as he has played the game really well. He always keeps a low profile, never says anything controversial, plays the peacemaker in any arguments and has done well in the sales tasks. Furthermore it seems that he used to play for Millwall FC and grew up in edgy South London. Hence good corporate fit for the rough n' ready Amstrad culture that has been criticised by Sir Richard Branson. Branson is clearly the more successful businessman, but his own Apprentice-style TV show was pathetic.

Just wait and see how I will be proved correct - I am becoming an experienced expert in recruitment psychology and just wish I could put some of this knowledge to practical use in the real world!

Democracy in action

It all started with a chance meeting between Lenka and some suits from the Council on the Canal. Plans were afoot to put gravel on the Lancaster cycle path. We thought that cycling on gravel would be worse than cycling on tarmac, and so I set up a simple online petition. At the time of writing, there are 73 signatures (one guy signed twice, but I can't complain).

I also thought that I would write to the local newspapers. I like reading the letters pages on local newspapers, so set out to make my letter suitably pompous, as befits such letters pages. I wrote to the Lancaster Guardian (the broadsheet), which completely ignored me. I also wrote to the Lancaster & Morecambe Citizen, which not only printed my letter, but also printed Lenka's letter directly beneath it. I appreciated that, as it gives readers the impression that two people were sufficiently motivated to independently contact the press in the same week. Alternatively, a more adept reader might suspect a stage-managed stunt, but it's too late now.

Anyway, this week there are two more letters in the Citizen (maybe or maybe not from the same residence...). Clearly we have touched a nerve and have unearthed a burning issue to rank alongside the Palestinian Question (which, strangely, is another very popular topic in the Lancaster & Morecambe Citizen). As Lenka's out of town and I hate to leave a debate hanging in the air I will have to make a reply of some sort. A problem is that I was really hoping that someone from the Council would also write in this week, as Officials are much easier to attack. I'm also really busy (writing this counts as therapy). Still, I've never abandoned a cause yet and I'm interested to see where this will end...