» Call Centres

Pearoast
At least I think it is.

My old flatmate enjoyed winding up call centre staff so much he decided to let them keep on calling. Now, I did work in a call centre, but that was inbound customer service, and as a result I have no sympathy whatsoever for the sales or outbound staff as I was on the receiving end of complaints when they had lied their arses off to get a sale.

A selection of the Andy's best follows:

1. The surreal tangent

Caller: Hello sir, can I ask you about your mobile phone?
Andy: You may.
Caller: Did you know you can trade in your old phone etc. etc.?
Andy: Why no, I did not.
caller: would you be interested in doing so?
Andy: No, I do not own a phone.
Caller: You do not own a mobile phone sir?
Andy: Nope, no phones at all.
Caller: Sir, do not be funny sir, you must be speaking to me on a phone of some sort.
Andy: No I'm not.
Caller: Sir, please do not make funny with me sir.
Andy: I'm not honestly. It's just that the fridge started ringing and your voice came out of it.
Caller: The fridge sir?
Andy: Refridgerator, yes. Your voice is coming out of it from just behind the mince.
Caller: ...
Andy: Do you get this often?
*click*

2. The 'Actually making that person's day' call
Andy came through to the living room talking on the phone, muted the telly and put the woman on speakerphone.
Woman: ...and apparently one half of your house isn't on a conservation area so that half would be suitable for double glazing...
Andy: Oh, would you remove the bricks?
Woman: I'm sorry?
Andy: They got bricked up after the council levied a tax on windows. We couldn't afford more than 3.
Woman: I didn't know they still did that...
Andy: Well, you know, it's just part of the learning curve.
Woman: Yes.
Andy: I never wanted to be a homeowner...
Woman: No?
Andy: No...I wanted to be a lumberjack, Leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia. The giant larch, the redwood, the mighty scots pine. With my best girl by my side, we'd sing...sing... sing...

And we did. The whole song.

She seemed to enjoy it.

3. Convince them you're a psycho

Caller: And the best thing is that you can take 10 friends' numbers and get a reduced tariff on calls and texts to them.
Andy: Oh dear.
Caller: Do you have that on your current phone?
Andy: I don't think so. I don't know if I need that feature.
Caller: I assure you sir it's very useful, most people only call the same few numbers with any frequency.
Andy: But...I don't know if I have ten friends.
Caller: Well, you don't have to use all of them.
Andy: There's mother...
Caller: Right, family as well.
Andy: Um...
Caller: Does your dad have a phone?
Andy: Who? There's Aunty Sarah - I used to fancy her when I was six - but she's in a retirement home now and doesn't like noise.
(Tue 8th Sep 2009, 11:11, More)

» Worst Band Ever

When you watch this you will understand...
Before you watch I must warn you that you will want to paper cut her eyes and force her to piss her own teeth out.

www.bbc.co.uk/switch/them/amy.shtml

The fact that 'an Indie' is regarded as a thing is annoying enough, but to exemplify an entire group of people using this little sod is excruciating. I would rather have sex with a nail than have the statement 'Oh I like alternative guitar music' equate me to this type of person.

It isn't just because she has no self-awareness. It's hardly her fault she's been chosen to represent an entire group of people with a token title that barely scratches the surface of what people are actually like. It's the fact that she says her life was changed by Razorlight.

Firstly, that wave of post-Libertines landfill indie that turned pub bands into stadium rockers annoys the shit out of me anyway, as every guitar band in the country decided they either had to be from Essex and write about Britishness with all the grace and wit of a Daily Mail discussion board member, or be the new U2 and put delayed guitars on everything and play stadiums and be EPIC while saying things like 'Obviously Bono is a wonderful man...'

Secondly Razorlight epitomise everything I hate about that wave of music. Not only did they come from a suddenyly achingly cool place full Nathan Barleys where NME journalists waited outside pubs to fellate anyone walking past in a leather jacket but, and this is much more important, they were shite. Truly shite. So buttock clenchingly pisspoor that Pete Doherty's tedious life and times were less irritating.

I had heard a couple of songs from the first album and thought 'They're nothing special, there are plenty of bands out there who're better than this', but had reckoned without their totemic bell-end of a front man bragging his way through an NME interview about how spectacularly great he was, and the magazine realised they were onto a good thing and promoted the fuck out of them. They knew that people would want to read Johnny Borrell talking utter bollocks about how he had invented rock and roll and how he had once smoked a spliff and now he could fart new colours and his jizz was the note between B and C and he was better than Dylan, Lennon, and Craddock.

Ignoring the fact that his lyrics are like something you'd expect to find in a volume of poetry written by Adrian Mole, ignoring the fact that the rest of the band clearly hate him, and ignoring the fact that I saw Razorlight at T in the Park playing to a group of e'er dwindling people (after they'd become 'big') which consisted of Borrell staggering about the stage with his top off, hollering and swinging his guitar around. Occasionally he'd hit a chord, but it would probably not be one the rest of the band were playing. They stood long sufferingly playing the actual song while Borrell careered around as if he was in Velvet Goldmine, fucking everything up and acting as if what he was doing was somehow of great artistic value. It was without doubt the worst live performance I've ever seen.

Then they released a second album when I was working at a shop that left the radio on all the time. And they'd somehow got worse. This time, however, I couldn't do anything other to escape. A couple of times I managed to make it to the stock room before 'America' came on, but mainly I had to listen, praying for a customer with a loud voice to come along and talk to me about anything at all. This never happened. Instead I had to listen to a catfaced arsecandle wittering meaningless bollocks over their version of epic music. Razorlight are a pub rock band, but they got caught up in the whole fucking EPIC music thing until they got to Live Aid and decided they were U2. Everything had to be soaring and grand and able to, y'know, heal the world and bring people together because that's what music is about, yeah?

Cunt off. Cunt right off. Razorlight are an ego project for a spongelike vanity-felch rodent-faced pen-scratching attention seeking English-language-sodomising vacuum packed nodular scuntbucket and their inexplicable popularity was part of the crest of a wave that contained The Kooks singing 'She moves in her own way' about Katie bloody Melua, every guitar band in the world taking turns to feel Bono's flaccid cock settle on their lips before they started working the foreskin as EPICALLY as fucking possible before getting a papercut on their tongue because that's where the bastard keeps his tax break money and he never actually comes anyway because even his climaxes have delay pedals on them while Snow Patrol chime away in the background with another of their "*guitar* chime,chime,chime,chime, chime...*oirish vocals* you have such pretty eyes, let's run away together...*guitar*DERNERNERNERNERNERNER-DER-NERNERNERNERNERNER etc. " songs and Biffy Clyro have managed to become popular by writing whole albums worth of Foo Fighters b-sides and The Pigeon Detectives were actually popular rather than being dismissed as a satire on boring music by people who think that being 'an Indie' means you have to wear converse and artfully slashed jeans and who stopped watching Doctor Who after David Tennant left.

So in conclusion, I hate Razorlight.
(Tue 4th Jan 2011, 13:10, More)

» Protest!

A Very British Protest
Tony Blair, erstwhile Prime Mover in this here country of ours, did a big pamphlet all by himself. And some other people. But mainly him. His macabre, gormless look of repressed sexual longing is staring out at everyone from the cover and so we can assume he put most of the work in. And it's about the job he had before he wrote the book about the job.

People started hiding it. These were the twee-er types of protester, who presumably had to fill the void left in the lives by the cancellation of Last of the Summer Wine by coming up with other attempts at almost offensively gentle comedy. Some people wanted it banned, because apparently Freedom of Speech doesn't apply to people that you really don't like. Hiding it is also a form of censorship of course, though not a very good one. But it was done en masse as an act of protest, accelerated by a Facebook group.

Now, I'm not massively keen on Tony Blair. I think he's convinced himself of the benevolence of his actions, but then I think that anyone who wants the job of Prime Minister is dangerously insane anyway. Who wants to have all those deaths on their hands? Because being an MP is likely enough to give you direct responsibility for having to lie, and cheat, and occasionally cause a death. You have to OD on idealism to get anywhere near Number 10 or else you'd have a breakdown. However I think that the idea to move his book, far from being a 'wonderfully British protest' (which must be why we're such a dominant world power these days) is a pathetic indication of how little ability the average citizen has to influence anything. Some people seemed to acknowledge this, and said 'At least it'll be a bit of fun for us!' Which seems to be paraphrasing Nietzsche to saying 'I stared into the Abyss, and the Abyss stared back...so I mooned the Abyss, and people were like "Yeah, you totally pwned that Abyss!" and the Abyss was like "Dude, I have literally no idea who you are."'

There was also the argument that satire and humour are the best weapons to bring down the political classes. Except that this seemed to presume that the message was going to filter through to Tony Blair, and also to people visiting the bookshop.

NO-ONE, absolutely NO-ONE is going to go into a bookshop looking for the new Mark Billingham and say 'Why, but this is Tony Blair's book! In the Crime Section! Surely some mistake? But wait, NO! I see it all now! This means he's a criminal! Oh the wool has been pulled from my eyes and no mistake! Thank heavens that some responsible citizen has taken the book and put it here so that I can see that, rather than being the Prime Minister whose decisions I wasn't entirely comfortable with but I kept voting in anyway, the man is a mass murdering zealot! I shall now go forth and devote my life to putting him behind bars!'

But on the other hand, Tony Blair came into the bookshop I work at the other day. He was skipping merrily, as is his wont. 'Hullo boys and girls, ladies and germs! Isn't it a wunnerful day! he cried, beaming his mesmeric smile across the entire bookshop despite this being a physical and mental impossibility. He radiated sunbeams from his anal cleft, and came Factor 50 Suntan Lotion into the face of a small child so he would not burn his soft body by farting UV rays on him. 'Thank you Tony Blair!' chirruped the small child, who ran straight to the embrace of his adoring mother's hip. Tony saluted the mother, who waves her lace handkerchief at him in celebration at this people's champion. But then the smile disappeared from Tony's face, and disappeared forever.

There was a copy of his book in the Crime section.

'But...'

Tony Blair's upper lip was not stiff. His eyes lost their lustre.

'But...unless I wrote a Crime Fiction book starring myself as the main character hunting down the terrible Sadsama B'Insania and his Cudgels of Massively Traumatising A Series of Prostitutes About the Head and Arms...unless all of that...then that means...'

At this point Tony Blair let out a terrible bellow. No words. Just the raw and horrible sounds of a wounded animal. He bellowed so loud that he woke up Keir Hardie. He bellowed so terribly that God shed a single tear. Looking down from Heaven, Diana immediately cried out in empathy.

Tony Blair bellowed. He continued bellowing for around seven to eight minutes.

Then, when he had finally stopped, bloody saliva flecking the floor around him, he curled up into the foetal position around the Non-Fiction 3 for 2 browser, and never got up.

Security Camera footage showed his body turning into ash at around 3.47 am.

Strangely enough, this happened in every single shop people moved his book in.

Actually I'm lying. It happened in none of them. If someone told Tony Blair that several thousand people moved his book, I doubt it'd peturb him more than the many thousands more who went on anti-war protests. Anyone who saw the book in the Crime section and agreed with the sentiment laughed once, possibly saying 'LOL' out loud, and then got on with their lives. The end result was some severely irked booksellers and people who may have been neutral coming to Tony Blair's defence. No-one who was meant to be annoyed was even slightly bothered by this protest. Not that it was much of a protest, just a load of people sharing an in-joke that wasn't sufficiently funny to bear repeating. At best it was a political statement that would entertain people who did not need to be convinced of the sentiment it represented. At worst it was a colossal waste of fucking time and effort that could have been better spent coming up with an actual protest that didn't compromise anyone's values.

But then I am biased. I work in a bookshop. We sell Mein Kampf. Twilight. Harry Potter. The Chopper books. A 'Painful Lives' section. A whole section devoted to religion and Mind, Body and Soul books. I don't think a bookshop's job is to pick what people should read, but to stock what people want to read, even if it's controversial and even if it's utter crap.

So if 25% of the population think that Tony Blair is a war criminal, perhaps it is time for one of them to write a book about it? There's a market after all, and compiling a list of the evidence could hardly hurt. And hey, it'd give you a chance to show how tolerant you are when Cherie hires people to go around and put it in the Conspiracy Theories section.

Which is, oddly, shelved in between Mind, Body and Spirit and Religion as the filling in some sort of bullshit sandwich.
(Sun 14th Nov 2010, 19:18, More)

» Professions I Hate

Journalists
The Telegraph last year broke the story about MPs expenses claims. The News of the World breaks many stories using undercover journalists. They report these things as it is our right to know what the great and the good are up to, and whether they deserve those titles.

But who judges them?

The News of the World makes its own news. Say what you like about the Fergie thing, but that wasn't a reporter going out and finding a story, it was a guy dressed up attempting to create one.

Look at the MMR scare, with its longterm health implications and many lives damaged. Have half the papers involved apologised for their part in exacerbating the bullshit? Have they fuck.

Journalists wield massive influence and power over people, because many do not question the validity of what appears in the papers, instead getting angry about whatever scandal is rocking the front pages today. Fair enough people are angry about MPs, feeling that we can no longer fully trust our elected representatives (meanwhile the cynical lean back in their chairs, glare, and mutter 'What fucking kept you?') as they are mired in corruption and greed, pursuing their own agenda at the expense of all those abstract concepts David Cameron always goes on about - truth, decency, leaving your door open so your nan can borrow your E45 cream, fair play, jolly hockey sticks, British values.

Stephen Fry said, in the wake of the expenses scandal, 'What's the big fuss? Everyone claims money back on expenses for ridiculous stuff. Journalists do it all the time. I certainly have done it before.' Or words to that effect.

Whether or not you agree with him, it raises the point that the people lecturing about our moral decline are in no position to as they lie, cheat and cajole people into positions based on fear, loathing and ignorance. If there's to be a big investigation into our MPs behaviour, how about an investigation into the behaviour of journalists? How about the Standards Agency that actually has the power to do something about people like Jan Moir, with her evil Mumsy dead eyed stare?

But of course, the people who investigate corruption and greed are the journalists, and so nothing will happen unless one paper delights in making another one look bad.

But really, if you're a journalist, you're going to have to work hard to prove to me that you're not a lying, duplicitous, double-standard abusing, unscrupulous cunt.
(Tue 1st Jun 2010, 9:54, More)

» Irrational Hatred

Actually I've thought about this too much...
Very simple, and borne entirely of working in retail:

People who don't put things back properly.

To begin with this seems like a churlish annoyance of someone who hates their job, which is partly true. To me though it exhibits the kind of thoughtlessness and sociopathy which makes me genuinely think that we are doomed as a species (not to destruction, necessarily, but certainly to unhappiness).

It's very simple - you are in a book shop, a clothes shop, a record shop, whatever. You pick something up, you should put it back where you found it, to the best of your abilities (which, frankly, should include having mastered the fucking alphabet by now). You are not a child. We do not expect children to put stuff away because they are children, and are idiots. You though should be capable of the following simple thought: 'The reason they are in order is to help people find things'.

That's why there are systems of order. To help people. So if you are too lazy, or stupid, or thoughtless to put something down at the other fucking side of the shop, or to put it in sideways so that it gets damaged or falls down the back, you are causing a degree of hassle for someone else. This could range from the employee finding it, tutting to themselves, and putting the item back in the right place, or it could result in someone not getting what they wanted, to the knock on effect of that person not going back to that shop, to that shop going out of business. In smaller shops that's not that unlikely.

If you think this is petty, then let me extrapolate a bit. If people are this thoughtless on a general basis in shops then they're not likely to be any more thoughtful and considerate outside. It's not like people are any better behaved elsewhere, and will usually come up with some bullshit bravado about how people should expect a bit of this sort of thing. It's basically how Frankie Boyle justifies being a cunt to people, how FIFA manages to get away with being hideously corrupt, corpulent and ridden with scary old men whose banknotes are probably as ridden with smegma as they are cocaine, it's how that complete cunt down the road manages not to realise he's a complete cunt - a complete lack of basic empathy.

Leaving something in the wrong place is basically saying that it's somebody else's problem. You're busy, you've got bigger fish to fry.

We all know that isn't true. You're just becoming a cunt, increment by increment.
(Tue 5th Apr 2011, 23:36, More)