Dead 'good'...

Barnsley has 3 Greggs. Now, don't get me wrong, Greggs is an incredible business, however, it's a shame that the business which thrives the most at times of recession is a purveyor of greasy pastries.

With this high horse, judgmental perspective, imagine my delight when I saw a healthy food established having opened right next door to one of the town's stalwart pasty dispensers.

However, if I'm anal about a healthy lifestyle, I'm twice as anal about the use of language.

This new shop is called 'Gud 2 Eat'.

I can remember how risque Toys 'R' Us once seemed with it's abbreviation, especially when they placed the 'R' backwards. I remember the odd Chippy having a sign which confirmed that they sold Fish 'n' Chips but even these independent heroes still had the common courtesy to correctly use apostrophes to indicate the omitted letters.

Since the explosion of the mobile phone and 'txt spk' business have suddenly taken to using this trend in their names. 'Phones 4 U', 'Fish 4 Jobs' and so on. An acquaintance of mine runs a letting agency called '2 Let 2 U' and an estate agency called '4 Sales 2 U' (sorry Chris). All this could well be acceptable with the straight forward replacement of a number or single letter for a word in a 'clever' kind of way but changing 'good' to 'gud'????

It terrifies me (it probably shouldn't but it does) to think that we think so little of our language that we would just change the spelling of a word for the sake of saving a letter. I can't possible think of the benefit either. Did they think that healthy food and a reasonable standard of English would be just too much for the simple folk of Barnsley?

And what next? 'New Luk', 'Alfuds', 'Wikz', a sign outside a shop representing a grunt?

And where did I observe all this from? Subway. Make of that what you will...

How much are people willing to pay to be an idiot? I don't know but it's definitely less than £1.

I shop at one of two of the major supermarkets. Either Tesco (as it's the closest, open 24 hours and you can get some decent deals) or Morrison's (as its the best for fresh stuff and overall great quality). However, this article is about one difference in policy between Tesco and Morrison's that fascinates me. And here it is:

At Morrison's you have to utilise a pound coin (or one of those pound coin equivalents that you can usually buy for charity) to access your trolley and at Tesco I can access a trolley without a deposit.

At first glance, this seems like something a bit anal and repressive from Morrison's. If someone wanted to steal a trolley, it's probably still a bargain for a pound as well as the inconvenience of having to make sure you have the relevant change on you when you get to the supermarket (something I'm terrible at) it also seems to be an unnecessary burden on their customers. Something which if you're having a bad day can wind you up. Why can't you just access trolleys freely like at Tesco? Well, this winds me up because I'm in the majority of folk who ALWAYS TAKE THEIR TROLLEY BACK.

When I do go to Tesco now I am constantly amazed by how many lazy, ignorant dipshits just leave their trolleys strewn across the car park in spite of the fact that they would have to walk a mere fifteen feet to place it in the nearest trolley collection zone (or whatever they're called). People are not willing to be this lazy if it risks loosing them a whole pound! A pound they could spend presumably on two and a half cigarettes, a third of a pint of Stella or put towards the paint work they need doing because of someone's roaming trolley in a supermarket car park....

I never see a loose trolley at Morrison's, all trolleys are constantly and perfectly aligned in the right sizes and yet I must slalom my way through dozens on each visit to Tesco. If £1 is a sufficient deterrent to stop people acting in an anti-social manner perhaps this is something judges across the land could pick up on. Rather than issuing ABSO's, community service or short prison sentences, just simply threaten the delinquents with a £1 fine....

If I ran a supermarket I would definitely adopt the £1 trolley deposit..... and I would have Gillian McKeith checking people's trolleys on their way out....

Pale Blue Dot

This blog is about perspective.

This photo of what looks like a blurred spectrum is in fact a very famous image known as 'pale blue dot'. You may have seen it mentioned recently on Brian Cox's 'Wonders of The Universe'.

I use this image to help gain a bit of perspective. This is a picture of the Earth taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 and it shows the Earth from 3.7 billion miles away. That's right, 3.7 billion miles away! Bear in mind that the sun is 93 million miles away.

When you pause to remember the shear blip of existence that we actually occupy it can really make you concentrate on those things that are important in life and not get stressed by inconsequential things such as a client taking their time to pay a bill or a member of staff arriving 3 minutes late to work. When you realise how incredibly trivial these things are it will alleviate stress and make you far far more productive.

PS. What is also good fun is to show this image to a Christian and ask them what they think of it. If you're into that kind of thing that is....

I'm on strike!

I caused quite a stir on Linked-In today by complaining about teachers who go on strike. People who I've never even met commented on my post.

I observed that teachers have a 'cushy' job to which I was promptly corrected by several pillars of the community. Of course teachers have a cushy job. I'm not saying anything about how much they should/shouldn't be paid, that's not for me to have an opinion on but if teaching isn't a cushy job I don't know what is. Lots of people from my University course (I did English) went into teaching precisely because it was a cushy option!

13 weeks holidays, no weekend work. Apart from around exam time you always have the option of finishing work at 3:30. How cushy can it get? I'd love to see a teacher try and claim that they didn't have a cushy job to a Nurse, Fireman or Police Officer! We need teachers, they are very important of course but its not exactly hard labour or the most pressured of jobs is it??? Teachers don't have to make life/death decisions on a daily basis do they (unless perhaps they teach at Willowgarth!).

Unions should be there to be a voice of a workforce to ensure fair working conditions. It should not create a line of sheep who walk away from educating children for financial gain.

Right, I'm going on a week long strike now because my boss is just too good looking!

How to shut someone up!

Point a camera at them!!!

I like to consider myself a reasonable articulate and confident speaker but even for someone who could make such a bold claim I flounder and lose the ability to string a coherent sentence together the moment a camera is placed in front me.

I experienced this last year when we were doing the test videos for The VT Network (if you haven't seen The VT Network visit www.thevtnetwork.com and you can see first hand my inability to talk to camera, even on take 46). And in my defence we have people who struggle a lot more than me when we do The VT Network VTs!

Anyway, I've raised the point again because I'm going to be doing some short sales training videos especially for YouTube and I'm currently just figuring out how to use this new camcorder I've bought. There's no one where but I still start every sentence to the damn thing with hmmwwwaammmbbbb... errrrrr....

Gives me a whole new respect for Ant & Dec.....

Derren Brown

This week I got one of the best phone calls I've had in ages. It was from a good friend and business contact of mine who asked me three brilliant questions. 1. Do you like curry? (er - yeah!) 2. Do you know who Derren Brown is? (are you kidding? I'm a little bit obsessed with the guy) and 3. what are you doing tonight? (get in!). Luckily the first two questions did indeed link to the third and it wasn't just a ploy to get me to go dogging.... Tickets to see Derren Brown live and a curry - all paid for! Not bad for a Tuesday!

Anyway - I could talk about Derren Brown until the cows came home and given that I don't know where the cows live, that would take some time. What I actually want to write about here are three brilliant business (or indeed life) principals that we can learn from Derren Brown.

1. Honesty. Derren stands up at the beginning of every show and declares to his audience that he is not a Psychic, possesses no magic powers and generally is a human. He describes his show as "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship". His point is that for years people have claimed that these stunts were in some way supernatural and that by admitting that they are not, it makes the audience no less impressed but significantly less patronised. Honesty in business works much the same way. It handles your customer expectations more effectively, gives them a greater understanding of how you work and builds a better foundation for a long term relationship.

2. Basic & simple wins every time. Derren tricks look extraordinary but when you know the explanation you are bound to be disappointed by how amazingly simple they are. When I tried to explain one of the trick's mechanics my friend just couldn't accept the explanation because its just too pathetically straight forward. This is Derren's greatest ability. To make the very very ordinary appear anything but. By keeping it simple it ensures that it works every time and it can be perfected. Business processes should be just as profoundly simple. How often have you called a business and found them to take the longest route possible to sort something basic?

3. Good communication is key. Derren can plant ideas in people's mind purely through his use of language and paralanguage. You can too! Excellent communication skills are vital in business. Listen carefully, be thorough in your descriptions and remember - if someone doesn't clearly understand what you mean, the fault lies with you. Better consider how you get your point across and exactly what your customer needs to know.

If you're not familiar with Derren Brown's work then 1 - I don't know why you read this far - and 2. Go to You Tube now!

Stock Levels

Sometimes the mind boggles. It really does...

The other day, a Tuesday to be precise, we phoned a sandwich shop close to the office. The Tuesday thing is relevant because Tuesday is the day that pork sandwiches are on their 'specials'.

It was 11:50am. They were out of pork! This is not the first time that this has happened. One Tuesday it happened when we phoned at 12:30, so we phoned the next time at 12:15 and the next time at 12:05 and 12:00, hence trying to order lunch at 11:50...

Now don't get me wrong, we have achieved pork sandwiches for lunch on the occasional Tuesday so we're not just accidentally ringing a hair dressers but what amazes me is that a sandwich shop, which makes its money from selling food, runs out of said food before the time of day when people tend to buy food!

Its only happened to me in Subway once. They ran out of bread. Enough said.

If you run out of pork one Tuesday, by lunchtime, and have more customers asking for pork, surely, next Tuesday you make sure you have more pork! And you keep buying in more pork on a Tuesday until you no longer run out of pork!

When it comes to stock levels companies should always abide by the 'one left' rule. If you've got one left you're certain that you couldn't possibly have sold any more.

And if you want a pork sandwich on a Tuesday when you're in our neck of the woods just make sure you order it on Monday!