People Are The Biggest Problem Faced

Customer service. Its something that we love and hate in equal measure, and flip on a hairpin at the slightest notice. If done well, someone going above and beyond their job role to help you out and deal with your grievances quickly can brighten your mood and give you renewed belief in humanity.

Done wrong, and it’s a right nightmare.

We have a local supermarket that is much cheaper than the others, and for this reason, they do things a little differently. At the till point, you are sped through like you are part of a competitive trolley dash, and the staff are rude to the point of you actually inconveniencing their lives.

The funniest was the other day when I was in there buying a few bits, and the guy on the till, who sported a “duty manager” badge, spent the whole time distractedly talking on the phone. He was so distracted that once he had put my items through, he forgot to ask me to pay, and started ringing in all the groceries from the man behind. I can be charitable, but there is no way I’m paying for a complete stranger’s weekly shop.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get customer service for your life? Some of the most difficult things that we experience in life are often made better on the advice of others, os wouldn’t it be great if you had a dedicated line you could call up to put you back on the straight and narrow, and help you stay motivated / achieve your dreams?

Just imagine. Your New Year’s resolution is to cut out something, and make your diet far healthier. You know what you should be doing in theory, but wouldn’t it be perfect if you could jump on Skype and talk through with someone to give you hints and tips that you hadn’t thought of? Or maybe your dream is to travel the world. If you could drop an email to someone with your hopes and dreams, and them come back to you with realistic ways to achieve your goals, wouldn’t your life be so much easier?

Just a thought.

What would you get life customer service help with?

I Should Take My Own Advice

I am great at giving advice. I know this sounds like one of those sweeping statements, but I am particularly good at listening to all the points of view and then giving a measured answer (if I don’t say so myself!) I think I missed my calling in life, as a judge. My word would be final. But honestly though, I am a bit of a messiah for the afflicted, and I regularly find myself with a housemate on the end of my bed, pondering the great mysteries of what to do about this or how to go about that.

If only I could take my own advice. If I could, I would be a much better and more rounded individual. It applies to every corner of my life, and annoys me at how easy it would be just to listen to my own sage advice, rather that knowing that what I am about to do is wrong, yet doing it anyway. I don’t even plunge in without any warning, I’m one of those sorts of girls whose angel on her shoulder is screaming “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!! THIS WILL END BADLY!!!”, so she just brushes it into her knicker drawer, slams it closed and proceeds anyway.

Example number one: Work.

If there is something that happens with my friends at work that they are concerned about or feel that they aren’t getting help with, I give good advice. I instruct them to be calm and explain rationally what is the issue and how they feel it could be resolved, being constructive and not getting upset.

My reality: I know this all to be true, yet I keep quiet over certain things for too long. Then when I get so annoyed about something that I just have to bring it up, it makes me look like I am having a massive rant over something really small, rather than adding to something that people are already aware of. I’m aware this makes me come across as abrupt and a bit difficult, and it’s funny because that’s not what I’m like at all.

Example number two: Men.

The age old story, I can give my advice but I cannot take it. Man messing my sister around? Just don’t answer the phone any more. Boy giving my housemate grief? Maintain your distance. You are better than that. Toughen up.

My reality: I used to be fairly easy going, until recently. Said individual and I stopped seeing each other on the basis that he was too busy with work and lives a bit away which made the whole thing a bit fraught and more stressful than it should be. The issue is, we still talk to each other. And I don’t think this is healthy for me. He calls, I miss it. I call him back, he misses it. We carry on playing answerphone leapfrog till one of us messages the standard sorry love, missed you, try again tomorrow, hope you’re well…. text. I went through a stage where I thought I would not answer the calls any more, it would get easier and life would resume as normal. Oh no. What really happens is that I miss the call, find myself feeling all smug that I have resisted the urge to pick it up and babble inanely about my week, but then end up either messaging apologising for missing the call, or calling back the next day, and the answerphone leapfrog continues.

Example number three: (this is a silly one) Car Maintenance.

If my friend breaks down because she played the petrol lottery, I wisely instruct her that maybe in future she should fill up more often (I’m conscious that I’m sounding a little patronising!) and do the whole oh well you’ll know for next time won’t you? line.

Yet should my car flick onto the fuel light on the way home I do a petrol bargain with myself. I think that I can get home on the fuel light, and I will have a cup of tea and then head out later to fill up my tank. I get up the next morning, having forgotten to go back out, and the fuel light twinkles at me all the way to work. No matter, I think, ill head out at lunchtime so that I don’t have the same trouble as yesterday with not wanting to head out again. But then I eat some lunch, forget and do the mad dash from the office to the petrol station while the fuel light flashes manically at me, my car threatens to die and runs just on the petrol fumes.

There are some things I will just never learn!

What advice of your own should you take?

What Goes Down Must Come Up ~ Or Is It The Other Way??

Sometimes the most haunting or memorable words come from the darkest of places. I mean one of my most popular posts was the one about the aftermath of watching ‘Yes Man’ and meeting up with my first boyfriend for a drink (if you think this is a bad idea then you wouldn’t be the only one, and yes, it was a horrible idea. It’s not really Jim Carrey’s fault either. Its mine. And yes, you would also be right in thinking that sometimes I am a sucker for punishment, and you are watching a train wreck about to happen, over and over).

It seems that when I am at my most fragile and tempestuous, I write the best stuff. Whether that’s because I am channelling my inner Victor Meldrew or because discontent is behind the words I don’t know, but what I do know is you guys are suckers for applauding a girl when she’s down! My posts have been a little lacklustre recently, but I have been in a good place thanks to the introduction to my world of a larger than life personality with a sense for the amusing and a rare and unusual temperament, a caring soul who I would have done anything for. Not like me, I hear you cry! Well, quite.

And as they say, people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. I’m not sure where this one fits in but like every season the leaves must change, and for whatever reason they have fallen. They go through those beautiful colours; the oranges and reds of the autumn, until they fall to the ground, dead and done with. Part of me thinks that Mother Nature was a woman scorned, and she punishes us with the dark days and cold nights of winter, to prove to us that you can have the glorious and hazy summer days, but then they must be ripped for you like a plaster off a wound, so you can fully appreciate it when the buds push up through the earth signalling the arrival of spring.

Simple. Sim – puhl, meaning not elaborate, artificial, unaffected, unassuming. Not complicated.

Apparently not. Nothing in my life is ever simple, and I think that times are often sent to test us, to make us prove that we are stronger than we think. Don’t get me wrong, on a scale of mass murder and organised crime there is nothing terrible going on in my life, but I have that feeling that I need to get moving and forget my ideals and thought processes. It seems to me that in a time when you never get something for nothing, wanting a life that is simple is never going to happen. I just want things to go without a hitch for one time. Just one! But I often get the feeling that what I want isn’t the path I have been given, so I need to stitch up the holes, patch the battle wounds and get back up again. I feel a bit like a zombie in a computer game; destined to always get back up with a groan and get on with it but to look a little worse for wear and like I need a good rest. It feels a little like recently; although I am still bouncing back a bit of the spring has gone, and like a tired old mattress, if you jump on me you might feel the floor rather than springing off to the ceiling.

I’m going to play the lottery tonight. And then I’m going to go home and channel all my energy into wishing upon a star, and maybe one day soon the pieces of the puzzle might just fall into place. But I lucked out on puzzle delivery; when some other people stood in line and received the My Little Pony one, I got the magic eye. You know the one where all the pieces look the same and you can’t work out what goes where? Well that’s just me all over!

(you wouldn’t want to look at that with a hangover now would you?!)

So when you see me on the news holding the massive paper cheque, being all smug at my win be pleased for me. I promise I will buy a house somewhere fantastic and let you all stay in it for free. After all, the catharsis of the written word and the pleasure I get from the support you people give will not go unnoticed, sometimes when you feel the worst people who cannot put a face to your name lift your spirits the most and turn the light back on in the darkness of a foul mood.

Or the helpful comments of a friend who is always there to pick me up at my most miserable.

“Don’t worry Tink. You might feel bad, but at least you aren’t stationed in Germany eating sausage and singing folk tunes.”

There is always that.

You’re The One That I Want…. ooohohohohoooh Honey!

Megan wrote a brilliant post recently about her ideal man (read here) and it got me thinking about the prince charming complex and how every girl dreams of her prince.

Freak Like Me

I am a really bad nail biter. I long to have gorgeous long French polished nails, but I just chew them off. I go through stages where I will grow them and then something stresses me out and before I know it they are all gone and my fingers look ragged and horrible.

I’ve tried everything. The worst thing is the little bits of skin that you get round them that are sore when you chew them off. I’ve tried hand cream but I always end up getting covered in it when the phone rings unexpectedly, or asked to do something that ruins me soft and silky mitts.

It’s such a disgusting habit. When I think of all the things that could be under my nails it sends me into an OCD style spin and I feel ill, but i compulsively pick at them when I am feeling tense and uneasy.

I would be a rubbish princess!!!

What are your bad habits? I watched a programme once about people’s compulsions, and I can safely say that mine is pretty minor. It was called freak like me, and it had all sort of revolting things like a man who couldn’t help himself from eating out of bins and another guy who saved up all his farts when he was in the bath so he could make a rocket (this is serious guys, it ACTUALLY HAPPENED). Other nuances included the man who felt it far too disgusting to ever wear the same pair of pants on more than one occasion or the girl who loved to chew her toenails. For half an hour once a week I watched in horror on the iplayer at the freaky habits of great Britain. And then I saw a boy I went to school with!!!

Seriously. I think its still available if you like in the UK. Watch it. its horrible!!

(image courtesy of Natalie Dee one of the funniest producers of cartoons I have ever seen!)