My Fascinating Life – Page 2

Customer Service

I spoke to the bank the other day.

Well, I say spoke. I was messaging a chatbot. I asked to speak to a human, and got put onto someone called James (I’ve changed the name, you’ll see why later on).

James was not a good customer service representative. His mind was clearly elsewhere. He didn’t read my questions properly, he just posted standard answers based on the first couple of words I wrote. He was so unhelpful I began to suspect that James was just another chatbot, and I said so.

James took offence to this. He said that he was real human, and I should have known that as he’d introduced himself as James. He then spent some time trying to justify his previous answers.

The conversation became increasingly petty with James trying to score points over what he thought I had said (he still hadn’t read my questions properly). I thought about just ending the chat but with patience I eventually got the answer I needed, I said thank you and goodbye and broke the connection.

I could imagine James turning at that point to the person next to him and complaining about me. I certainly wasn’t happy with his attitude.

Two minutes later the satisfaction survey arrived.

Do you know what I did then?

Nothing.

I might not have liked James’s attitude, but I like these surveys even less. Maybe James was having a bad day. Maybe he was overworked and I was just one call among many. Maybe I was a little tetchy having to speak to a chatbot and I was a little short with him. Whatever the reason, a bad conversation is not the worst thing that can happen in a day.

I hate the way that every transaction nowadays is reduced to a five star rating and a comment. Those surveys aren’t about improving the customer experience, they’re a way for our corporate overlords to keep us workers in our place by turning our fellow proles against each other.

I’d had a tetchy conversation, nothing more. If I really wanted to complain about James, then I would have complained properly. There’s something really rather pathetic about firing off one of these surveys after the event as a way of exacting revenge.

Anyway.

I just heard that Gordon Goodwin has died. That’s a sad loss. Amongst other things, he was the leader of Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, one of the great modern big bands.

I’ve written this listening to his Big Phat Christmas. Why not give it a try?

Three stories from my fascinating life

This week my wife and I finally watched the last episode of the TV series Edge of Darkness. We watched the first five episodes back in 1992 but were away in Paris visiting a friend when the sixth episode aired. We returned home to find our flat had been burgled. The video recorder containing the tape with the last episode was one of the things taken. How times change. Nowadays we can watch the last episode when we please using catch up.

The BBC have been repeating the series over the past three weekends on so we finally caught up on Sunday.

Was it worth the wait? Definitely. Here’s a link to the series that should work if you’re based in the UK. I’m aware that the majority of this blog’s readers are in the US. If someone can drop a link in the comments (if such a thing exists), that would be great.

Thinking about video recorders makes me feel old, though not as old as standing in a shop last night whilst my wife bought a new laptop. The (admittedly very helpful) assistant went out of her way to explain to us how computers worked and how easy they were to use. She finished by asking my wife what she was going to use it for. My wife has been using computers since the 80’s when she learned to program. Nonetheless, she smiled sweetly at the assistant and said she hoped to use it to email her children.

Lastly, let’s talk about avocados. The first one I remember eating was when I started work and my flatmate prepared us avocados and prawns for dinner. I watched her eating and copied her as I wasn’t sure what to do. Which leads me to when I was in a cafe today with a friend.

The waiter apologised for the fact they had run out of avocado substitute and only had real avocados available. This cafe prides itself on its ethical approach to avocados (I don’t have any strong opinions about avocados, but it’s a good cafe) but it did make me wonder, why did they have real avocados? It would be like a vegetarian restaurant running out of plant based burgers and so offering beef ones as a substitute. Why would they have bought beef in the first place? And who would they expect to buy it?

Anyway, I’m off to eat guacamole dip while watching youTube on my iPad. Until next week.

Reflections on 37 Years of Teaching and Retirement

This summer I’m retiring as a teacher after 37 years. As my wife points out, I’m only retiring from teaching, I will still be employed as a musician and a writer (which should be good news for Penrose fans).

I’m proud to have been a teacher. The following is an extract from my leaving speech.

I was reading in the paper about the crisis in British schools. It might surprise you to learn that there is a shortage of teachers, that schools are underfunded, that buildings are crumbling and class sizes are growing. It might also surprise you to know that the article I’m talking about was one that I read back in 1988, the year I started teaching. Things have always been bad.

Back then I was given a £1250 bursary to train as a Maths teacher (I think I spent it on a keyboard and a pair of walking boots)

That wasn’t why I did it, though. I’d spent two summers in the US teaching fencing on a children’s camp and it was there that I realised two things:

First, teaching was great fun

Second, teaching is probably the most important job in the world. Helping people to grow into responsible adults capable of listening to both sides of the story, teaching them how to control their emotions and to learn to forgive and forget is always going to make a bigger difference to the world than any book or song.

Which is why I’m so proud to have been a teacher. It was an incredibly hard job when I started, it’s much much harder now.

And yet this what we have chosen to do. And looking around the staff in this room right now I think you were right to make that choice, because when I think of all the things happening in the world right now I genuinely believe you are the only people between these kids and chaos. I’m convinced of that now more than ever.

So well done all of you

And good luck!