Needing a job?

I've just received an advert for someone to work in the local Methodist Church community cafe for 20 hours a week. The advert says they are "looking for a part-time person to manage the Basildon Methodist Community Café project."

The first question I would want to ask any would-be applicant is, "What are they when they are not being a person?"

Height restriction

Queuing at our local Tesco petrol station, I noticed the height restrction sign. You may not be able to read it in the picture, but it says:

Height restriction 13' - 12" (4 m)

Now, when I was at school, if I remember rightly, 13' 12" was actually 14' !

You can't even get the staff at the sign writers!

Mobile muddle

I haven't told you about my recent problems with T-mobile, have I? It all started when I topped up my Pay-as-you-go phone with £15. I walked out of the shop with my receipt saying "payment successful" and waited for the text message to come telling me my account had been updated. But it never came. So I went into our local T-mobile shop and he rang "customer services". They said there had been a problem at that time and it would be credited within 72 hours.

Three days came and went, and nothing. So I rang them up on the said telephone. After a maze of options I finally managed to find someone to speak to. Although I needn't have bothered. You see, he wanted to know the name of the person who bought the phone. It was so long ago, at that point I had no idea, but he confirmed it wasn't me! He said without knowing who the account's name is, he couldn't talk to me about it. I said I didn't want him to tell me anything - just investigate why, in spite of my "payment successful" receipt, the amount hadn't been added. But he couldn't even initiate an investigation!

At one point he even suggested I returned to the shop I topped it up at, and asked them for my money back. As if our local newsagent would say, "Oh yes, it says payment successful, but if you say wasn't we will refund you your money." I don't somehow think so!

I later got a text asking that as I had recently spoken to one of their customer services staff, could I do a survey. This was by texting. So I did. Having gauged things like his helpfulness, whether I was satisfied, etc, I was able to add anything else I wanted. So I told them how useless I thought they were, especially as they had admitted to a problem that day and it should have been easy enough to look up their records and see what had happened.

These surveys are all clearly done by computer and I expect they get out a figure that tells them what percentage of people were satisfied. But if, as a result of it, they can't even be bothered for a human being to look at the results and give me a call when I'm clearly NOT satisfied, what IS the point of doing it?

But back to my missing £15. My wife then went back to the T-mobile shop and spoke to the manager. It transpired that my wife had bought the phone, and she guessed at her password and got it right. Now, she had the phone, the "payment successful" receipt and the Top-up card it was made on. But "customer services" (note the quotation marks!) were not happy with that. They needed it faxed to them and we would hear within 5 working days. They took my wife's mobile phone number so they could get in touch with her. Neither my wife nor the manager were happy about that. Especially as they had spent getting on for an hour trying to sort it out.

I realise now what must have happened. They didn't just have "some problems", but a pretty catastrophic systems failure that meant not only did they not update accounts with the money they had been topped up with, but also they didn't even know what accounts this had happened to. This, to me, can be the only explanation - but, of course, they wouldn't admit to it.

Well, five days later, no contact to my wife, but I got a text message to say, "Your faulty voucher has been received and the credit has now been added to your account." What a cheek! My faulty voucher? No! Their very faulty systems! Any word of apology? Of course not! After all, it's T-mobile.

Travelling by train, continued

Further to my tale of our train trip (below), an observation.

Remember when trains pulled in to a station? On Virgin trains it is now a "station stop" (after all, why not use two words when one will do?) and on Cross Country trains it is a "calling point"(!!)

That reminds me, on our black plastic rubbish sacks from Basildon Council, it very sensibly asks that we wrap up any sharp objects before putting them in the sack. Why? To ensure no injuries to their "collection operatives". What happened to good old-fashioned bin men?

Train travel

Whilst we were on holiday (see blog entry below), my wife and I had to go to a funeral. It was in Warrington and we were near Totnes, in Devon. We entered the stations on the Internet and found we could do the journey in about four and a half hours, with only one change of train. Although on the way back it was quicker by half an hour to do two changes, so we opted for that.


I know some some of my blog followers work in the rail industry, so I thought they in particular would be interested to hear that for the return journey (3 trains) the punctuality rating was 33%!


Let me explain. We had about 12 minutes between train one stopping at Wolverhampton and train two timetabled to arrive there. However, our first train was running about 12 minutes late! It was a Virgin train and we explained this to the conductor when he came round to check our tickets. He knew of the situation as a number of passengers needed that connection and promised to update us over the PA system. And he did. He explained he had been in touch with the signal box and they were ensuring that our train arrived first.


Then a few moments later another message; he had learned that we were arriving on platform 2 and our connection was arriving on platform 4! So he advised us to make haste, but explained that the station staff were aware of the situation and would give us a reasonable time to get across.


So full marks to that Virgin conductor! And it illustrates that as it is possible to be in contact with stations and signal boxes, they can pass on information to passengers about what is happening when there's a problem.


So, all was going well and we were on time for the Cross Country train from Birmingham New Street to Totnes. BUT, when we arrived at Birmingham, the information boards said it was running 50 minutes late! Our hearts sank. But my wife said that for once she was pleased that I'm a bit of a nerd. You see, I'd picked up a timetable for our route when we first arrived at Totnes in the morning. And I could see that the next train from Birmingham to Totnes was due in 30 minutes! And if this one was not delayed, we could catch that. As this one started in Manchester and the one we were due to catch started in Edinburgh, I thought this was quite possible. And it was!


So we boarded this one. We did not have reserved seats, but we found out there were NO reserved seats on this train and as it was not crowded we got a seats at a table. Unfortunately, although it started on time, it was 20 minutes late by the time we arrived in Totnes- no explanations.


So that was our foray on the trains. We were pleased we were able to get to the funeral and see relatives we had not seen for some years. All in all, not too bad a service on the railways. And as we had bought our tickets in advance, they were at the 2010 rate.

Back from a holiday

We've had a week off. Down in Devon with the family. We had a cottage on a farm. Luckily a local farmer had ensured the roads were cleared of snow. You have to travel for at least a mile before you get to a road that is more than a single track! The main Exeter to Plymouth road (the A38) is dual carriageway, quite a good quality road. We turned off for the farm we were going to; up the slip road and you are straight away on a single track road. Very rural!



The local village had no shop, but it did have a pub and a church. We visited both on Sunday. There was a family service at the church, but the two or three usual families that attend were away, so it was just our grandchildren. I think the vicar was quite pleased, he had a talk about advent calendars (I'm not telling what he said as I've made a note of it to use next year!). I have to say they were very friendly and didn't mind our two year old running up and down the side aisle.



The car park for the church and the pub was the same. So it was easy to slip from one to the other for lunch...



As we walked back along the single track road to the farm, we came across this note pinned to a gate.

Ah! The countryside!