We’ve always accepted that age old cliché here at Instanta but an incident this week has left me questioning its truth. A few days ago a customer phoned up to place an order. We quoted a price to him upon which he blew a fuse and said that the price was not the one that he had on his price list. We courteously told him that we had sent him a new price list in July and that he was on our mailing list and should have received it. Instead of calmly saying that he had not received it (in which case we might have come to a fair agreement and perhaps split the difference with him or even honoured the old price), he continued with such a tirade of abuse that our (totally innocent) employee on the receiving end was visibly shaken. There’s no place in business (or in any other part of life) for bullying, especially when the victim is relatively junior, has no say whatsoever in our pricing policies and is a totally innocent party. So, is the customer always right? Certainly not in this case and I would like to suggest a saying for him to take on board in future. “Do as you would be done by”.
I trudged up to Anfield last night to witness another nail being hammered into the coffin of the football club that I have followed since I was twelve. I know it was only the Carling Cup and Liverpool put out an under strength side but they were playing what equates to fourth division opposition and at least six of the team have plenty of Premier League experience .It was an opportunity to show the depth of the squad. The depth was shown to be severely lacking and it soon became clear that Pacheco (much heralded as one for the future) will soon be one for the past and Jovanovic demonstrated that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys (if you call a few million quid peanuts). You can’t blame every Liverpool player for the debacle. Captain for the night Kyrgiakos gave his all in a swashbuckling attempt to salvage something from the game and inspired the team to a late extra time equaliser and I felt sorry for Wilson the new signing from Rangers who demonstrated a fine passing touch that has been severely lacking but at the end of the day the once Mighty Reds were pretty well outclassed and we had to endure a huge crowd of Northampton fans singing “Can we play you every week?” and then walk back to the car in monsoon conditions. We play Blackpool in about ten days. I’m feeling nervous about the headlines already.
Going to Anfield meant that I sacrificed the opportunity to watch the groundbreaking new reality TV show Seven Days and I even forgot to record it. As far as I can tell, this is an original concept (although Paul will no doubt tell me that it’s been done somewhere else – nothing TV related escapes his attention).It certainly raised plenty of comments on Twitter #SevenDays so it must have had a sizeable audience. It seems that Joe Public can offer advice to the real participants in the show, via the show’s website, on how to handle their problems although I doubt that the difficulties encountered by inhabitants of Notting Hill will provide as much interest as those facing sink estate dwellers in Glasgow. “Just doing the Ocado order online Jemima. Ciabatta or Focaccia?”
Still no Broadband service here at Instanta. I’m starting to feel like a donkey with a carrot dangling on a stick before me as our providers keep telling me it will be back on today. At least today they are saying “today” whereas on every other day they have been saying “tomorrow”. So will today be the day? Today they acknowledged my request for a MAC. Seems that they have a legal obligation to provide one within five days but I requested it over eight days ago. But did I get an acknowledgement of my request they ask? I think that their email says that I did but they interpret it differently. Do I want to get lawyers involved? Always a difficult decision when that carrot appears to be so close.Until then no photos and no YouTube on this blog.
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