Customer Complaint I: Not at Currys PC World, if I could help it

Bad, bad service

In many cases when businesses run into difficulty, a good investigation of the root cause might well lead to errors of omission or commission by the owners of the business or just bad customer service.

My evening has been quite eventful starting with an order that I placed with Currys PC World Ancoats Manchester. It was received and acknowledged with the opportunity to pick up my goods in an hour.

Almost 40 minutes after I placed my order, I got a phone call that my reserved order was on display in the showroom and that was the only one in stock and I could collect it for the same price as new.

That is just not on

There was no way I was going to let Currys PC World pass off unboxed goods as pristine, except where it was unboxed in my presence for me to check the contents before the leaving the store.

At worst, an offer could have been made to knock-down the price because the product was no more new, but none of that was forthcoming and their weak apologies for the situation left me feeling like they were in this to pull a fast one on me.

With staff like this

Where they could have had the initiative to have one delivered from a nearby store for me to pick up the next day, they were unpersuadable that it got to a point after knowing that I had shopped at Currys PC World for years and in fact, the high-specification laptop I am blogging from was acquired from the same shop last year, they were unhelpful.

Maybe hostile is not the word, but unfriendly, uncooperative and lacking in customer service decorum sums it up. With staff like this, you might well close shop.

I would rather take my money elsewhere and wait eons for my order than besmirch my dignity with a visit to Currys PC World again. It is little things like this, dishonest, underhand and reprehensible that could destroy a reputation built over decades, and just because staff fail to appreciate the responsibility they hold in an organisation.

Opinion: Thank you, Kellie Palace Maloney for accepting who you are

I see

I just read that Frank Maloney, the boxing promoter is now undergoing gender reassignment having apparently been living as a woman for a while.

Now, Frank Maloney would in all terms be regarded a tough man with regards to his career as a boxing promoter, that business environment is at best brutal, if not quite difficult too.

However, she is now to be known as Kellie Palace Maloney which is both brave and interesting.

The conflicts of before

The Wikipedia entry for Kellie Maloney which has been revised to accommodate the feminine gender of the person, reads as an interesting struggle with inner turmoil between what was presented as publicly hard-faced whilst privately conflicted.

Besides having been a boxing trainer, manager and promoter, she made uncomplimentary comments about the lesbian and gay communities and when she dabbled in politics, she stood for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) whose right-wing populism is fearful and worrisome.

It would be curmudgeonly to suggest that publicly, Kellie had been a vocally strident opponent of the things she was as a person, in what is a bizarre form of aversion therapy bordering on rank hypocrisy, yet, people do have a long and difficult journey to realising who they really are and are ready to be.

Coming to terms

Coming to a point of self-acceptance where one does not care for accusation, abuse, stigma or shame is a personal victory of sorts over the wider influences of society that persuades people to conform and toe the line.

Surprised as I may be at this development, I can only congratulate Kellie Maloney for taking this decision in the pursuit of her happiness and the fulfilment of who she really believes she is.

However, like many us on the journey to openly accepting who we really are, there are some well-rehearsed lines of why we conform and how we get to the point where we are ready to live.

Offloading burdens

“I was born in the wrong body and have always known I was a woman. I can’t keep living in the shadows, that is why I am doing what I am today. Living with the burden any longer would have killed me.”

We could find different paraphrases of these lines spoken by Kellie Maloney to address many choices we have made under pressure to conform, for careers, for relationships, for coming-out, for gender reassignment and the much wider spectrum of human endeavour and expression.

Whether society is open-minded and accepting of it is the different topic, but too many of us have sacrificed ourselves to living with a burden of who we are not and it has left us unhappy, depressed, despairing, ashamed, guilt-ridden and sometimes suicidal.

The amazing thing is how easy it is to breathe when we release ourselves into living the truth of who we are and just get on with enjoying our lives.

Kelli Maloney, thank you for accepting and becoming who you are.

Thought Picnic: Toughened, Roughened, Hardened

To toughen

To be toughened up, that was the idea when they sent him down South to attend boarding school and get somewhat integrated in their culture.

Probably it was a sheltered kind of life, every need met or rather no need to have needs because the provision was there as both a duty and responsibility, maybe a sign of love too.

To roughen

However, this exposed him to things that were beyond the control of both himself and those who were always there to protect him, either by support, excoriation or some ritual, and that was what the semblance of home life became.

Yet, as he toughened up, he also hardened up, hardened in resolve, hardened in heart and hardened on various elements of life. What resulted was a breakdown of communication, a widening of the gulf such that when he most desired someone to understand and help, there was no one to talk to.

It was a rough time, as if life had really roughened him up and many times that roughening up has happened over decades.

To harden

Now, the detachment is so tangible that the relationship is just historical and almost trivial. Besides, that seems to have become of the foundation of many areas of relationship building that have never endured for long.

It is a sad development, sometimes one of regret, but life must go on, since that detachment was such that when he lay alone dying in a faraway land, none were there to mop his brow. Much as one cannot hold it against them, other ties have developed and the original ones have diminished in value and quality.

Beware of the temptation to send off your offspring for toughening because they might well end up hardened, an unintended consequence and a serious one at that.

Simplicity in the bric-a-brac house

Not exactly true

The cost of simplicity is sometimes not evident. You find yourself weighing options at the point of entry hoping that having others bear the cost would save you lots in the long run.

The lesson, hard as it might be is that one should be ready to face certain costs so as to avoid other incidental and unexpected costs.

It came fully furnished, at least that is what gave it the premium rate and the inventory looked like an easy task of view, count and note.

Things falling apart

Nothing could be further from the truth, first it was the scales that could not be reset to zero; it was broken. Bread out of the bag for toast and the toaster fell apart, the warning being don’t plug this in.

The dawn broke and the thirst for tea had Polly reaching out to put the kettle on, there was no point waiting for Sooty to put it off again, the screws holding the lid were out, the attachment broken and the handle far from handling the jug. Water in this would be the difference between the finesse of elocution and the suddenness of electrocution. Time for replacements.

Up the stairs, three steps in all, a rumpled shirt needed ironing. With the choice of one of four irons, you wondered which one was wired to blow the fuse, but before that, reach out for the ironing table and notice that it is a paraplegic, the legs broken off.

Suction lost

Looking down from that is the vacuum cleaner, parts everywhere and none fitting together, it might have gone to war, lost a limb and an eye, maybe more, but there was nothing to walk with this kit.

Welcome to the house of bric-a-brac, it has everything, yet nothing you can use and that list does not end there, but the quest for simplicity continues.

Their fault will cost you

What about a television? Let’s get one delivered in 1:45 hours, the offer says, and so an order goes in and money goes out. 12 hours later, you learn that you were on the unfortunate side of a computer error or technical problem.

No anger, no frustration, just perplexity as a new time is arranged for the delivery and an email lands in your inbox with all the details, only that it appears you are being changed an extra 60% for a service they did not deliver, in the first place.

The time for a torrent of expletives is nigh and no opprobrium should ensue, but calmly after 8 phone calls all before 10:30AM, everything seems to have been sorted out, or so it seems.

The cost of simplicity is simply the fact that many things are not as simple as they seem at first sight.

Thought Picnic: Learn to play again

To work and to play

“They who don’t know how to work, don’t know how to play.” These were the words of the renowned educationist, Dr Tai Solarin.

The truth in this is too evident, yet, many fail to see the significance of this statement and its meaning towards wellbeing and happiness in life.

He worked to the end

I remember a cartoon of I saw early when I started contracting in 1995, a man appeared at the heaven’s gates and all the hosts of heaven were rejoicing and the record innings of age he had put in on earth and that number had not been recorded since close to the beginning of time.

In his confusion, at the fanfare, he asked Apostle Paul, why all the jollity and ululation, to which the apostle answered, “We totted up all your contracting hours and that gave you an age of 140 years when you died.” The reality on earth was that the man had died at 36, but he had worked all hours for the highest reward he could get with overtime and much else until one day he expired from exhaustion.

He probably thought he knew how to work, but he never learnt to play, it is possible he had opined that play could come at a much later time when all the work was done. Sadly, he never got to play.

Break away to hold sway

This is a story that is probably told in many lives, people who have become slaves of work and enemies of play and fun, having failed to develop a work-life balance then sadly reap a bad harvest of poor health, failing relationships, depression and possibly early death. It out not to be so.

We need to make time for our minds and lives to escape the rat race, get off the treadmill of routine and let a sense of the carefree take hold so that laughter, enjoyment and fun can tease out the child in us. It is not escapist, in fact, it is renewing, rejuvenation, refreshing and re-equipping us for new goals and purpose, and it brings meaning to life and the joy of living.

Bad examples are lessons too

Too many times, I have watched people of my parents’ generation go on annual leave and they simply plough themselves in other strenuous activity that they are neither resting nor relaxing. On returning to work, they are like they need another holiday, yet they carry on bringing stress and blood pressure issues into their lives because that have not learnt the art of play in their quest to maintain the aloofness of their status in the family and community, it is a shame.

We their children are not learning new lessons either, the many living in Diaspora who choose to take their holidays in Nigeria just heap on themselves additional strain and in their delusions they assume they are achieving something, not really.

Make time for play

Life is more than work and whatever the success of a workaholic is, one should hope that it does not end up being in vain, they having made themselves seemingly indispensable, then find that life dispenses of them in quick despatch.

When I first started contracting, I gave a lot of attention to my rest periods, it was such that I only worked 40 to 42 weeks a year and found time to enjoy the finer things in life. With time, I never allowed anyone to usurp my time, I had a life outside work and responsibilities for my rest period.

Even when I had the generous remuneration of double-rates for overtime and triple-rates for weekends, I spent that time for myself, money is not everything, much as money can do a lot of things.

Rediscover your sense of fun

I learnt the need and benefit of a work-life balance and most importantly I learnt that when any job was beginning to have an adverse effect on my wellbeing, it was time to walk away and recover than stay there and expire.

Take time off and spent it doing exciting, adventurous and wild things, find time to rediscover the joy of living and never lose your sense of fun, renew your youth with experiences that take you places to discover beauty, wonder, intrigue, mystique and magic. Find time to dream and feel free to live it.

Know how to work and know how to play.

Thought Picnic: Find something to live for and live for it

Why die?

As I walked back home this afternoon, a young man passed by me wearing a big sign on his T-shirt, “DIE for success” it screamed.

The ‘DIE’ was quite prominent that the poorly sighted might just have seen the offensiveness of the first word and the rest of the text appeared greeked.

The first question to my mind was, “Then what?” We play with the notion of death so easily as if everything depends on dying for something to make it worthwhile, you begin to wonder what is then worth living for.

Heroes live

As a general once said, this is more of a paraphrased than a direct quote, “The best general at war is the one who makes others die for their country.”

We recognise and honour those who die for our country as heroes, we even dare to say they gave their lives for victory, if that war is won, but the reality is, it is the living, the soldier still fighting that win the war much as we do acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice of the others lost to that conflict.

The living memorialise and take lessons of the experience away with the promise that those who died have not died in vain.

To die for what?

Then, we constantly hear the phrase, “to die for”, metaphorically, it suggests giving up everything for something, but when a life is given up, whose life is left to enjoy that something? This is a question we must be willing to ask of our reality. There is a price to pay, but how high a price are we willing to pay for anything we so desire?

When I returned from protesting about the burning down of the tallest building in Nigeria, NITEL, it was then, in 1983, the President, the morning after had jetted off to India to receive an honorary doctorate, just a few weeks after the Ministry of Education had suggested Indian university degrees were sub-standard to Nigerian degrees.

My father took me aside and said to me, “There was a time when Nigeria was worth dying for, that time is past.”

To live for, always

Obviously, one does wonder if “to die for” is an ode to desperation or worse. Care must be taken for what kind of sacrifices we are willing to make, yet, some sacrifices are necessary for the bigger experience of life and dare I say, a life worth living.

Having found myself literally on a death bed, and though I have let slip in an unguarded moment when someone was doing a pensions hard-sell on me that I am a dying man, the truth is I live, I enjoy life, I live for happiness, for fun, for love and for success.

Until the day I die, I am living and I hope to live well too.