A Good Old Moan

And another thing! Get your bloody hair cut!

I turned 50 last week. Few benefits accrue from such ancientness but there is one; I am now honour bound to become a grumpy old git.

With that in mind let’s have a good old moan.

First off, business email accounts! We get about 60 emails a day and my email software battles valiantly to filter out the wheat from the chaff yet, despite thousands of blocks and filters, at least 95% of the emails that arrive can best be described as ‘useless bollocks’. For every email from an existing or potential customer there are legions of them trying to flog me crap that I really don’t want. A large proportion of these are from numpties who think that because we bought a van a few years ago we’ll want to buy another very soon. So, in order not to miss their opportunity, they send me the details of vans I don’t want every. Single. Bloody. Day!  Even more annoying than those wankers are the prats that send me junk emails asking if I’ll like to buy their wonderful databases. Why? So I can send out my own junk email and irritate the pants off millions of other email users!

And another thing! Who was the genius at the spare parts company that decided to send out an email telling me about their “Top 10 most popular spare parts”? I can see the point of someone like Amazon sending out a list of their top selling books or games but why would anyone buy a spare part just because it was popular?

“Yes, I was going to order that gas valve for your broken Alpha boiler but when I went on-line I noticed that the fan assembly for a Worcester was immensely popular, so I decided to buy one of those instead!... Woolly jumpers are very popular at the moment..."

Designers! Especially those that design bathroom stuff. You know the thing, the beautiful, elegant tap that took 12 hours to fit, still wobbles and can’t fill a bath in much under 2 days. I can forgive the frilly cuffs and the long curly hair but it really pisses me off when someone thinks design is solely about form and nothing to do with function. To add insult to injury they then cart these things out the door with an installation pamphlet that reads “To install, turn water off and fit.” There’s one company, that will remain nameless only because I can’t afford a lawyer, whose installation guide says little beyond “Ensure that this product is fitted by a NVQ Level 3 qualified plumber”. You could have amassed 33 lives and fought your way through to NVQ Level 9 and you’d still be left frothing in fury at the stupidity of some of their designs. What the leaflet should read is:

“This product should only be fitted by a fully qualified plumber with unfettered access to NASA, MIT and the spirit of Isambard Kingdom Brunel”

Last, and by no means least, are those customers who know best. We don’t actually have any clients like this for what are probably fairly obvious reasons. However, we have had our brushes with these people. 

We had a woman who could barely spell her own name yet lectured us at length because we’d fitted her taps with the cold on the right and the hot on the left when she knew for a fact that it should have been the other way around. And why did she know this? Because she had a very good friend who was an exceptionally good plumber. Strangely enough this very good friend never, ever, had any time to do any plumbing for her. Odd that!

I have sat and listened whilst a guy told me exactly what the problem was, exactly how to fix it, exactly how long that would take and exactly how much he should be charged. Bizarrely enough the only thing he didn’t seem to understand was why I shook his hand, wished him good luck and left.