Posted: Wed 25 August, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Business, Domestic, Health, People, Thoughts, Weight Loss, Work-related |
This week at work, I’ve broken the chair I’ve been using since October. Completely, categorically broken it. The central piston (for raising/lowering the seat) has cracked through the plastic baseplate, and now hits the floor. This has resulted in a chair that is politely known as “broken”. Or in my terminology, it’s “totally fucked”.
Thankfully the directors are OK about it – it’s wear and tear (and me being a weighty bastard) rather than that I’ve wilfully abused/broken the chair.
But because I know that at least some of the blame is due to being rather bulkier than most people, I had a look at the specs for some new office chairs as a replacement. And I know Argos isn’t exactly the centre of the office-furniture world, but it’s a useful reference point.
So looking through the chairs they’ve got listed, and all of them seem to have a ‘recommended max weight’ of 110kg – 17ish stone. You can see what I mean by looking at this one. And don’t just think it’s the cheap-ass ones – even this one for £150 has the same limitaton.
I know I’m not an average size – I’d need to lose four stone just to get down to that ‘max recommended weight’ – but equally I’m not massively obese. Fairly solid, I think it’s fair to say, but not supersized or owt. So why is it that chairs just aren’t available (in Argos, I know, I know) that are designed to support – or at least not fuck up and break – for someone my size?
Posted: Wed 11 August, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Cynicism, Own Business, People, Thoughts, Work-related |
Another work(ish)-related post, but a subject close to my heart, and usually good for some thoughts and rants.
In this case, we’re currently considering buying one of the most-pirated pieces of software in Christendom, Adobe’s Creative Suite. The reason it’s massively pirated is simple – the fucking ridiculous cost of it.
If we look at getting one licenced copy of the full bells-and-whistles CS5 Master Suite, it costs no less than £2,700. For a piece of software that’ll be updated/outdated within a year. What small company (or even medium-sized company) is going to pay nearly three grand for CS5 ? Let alone what little one-man-band web design company. And yes, you can get a smaller/cheaper CS5 Web Premium for web design. That’s a mere £1,680.
Even more insane, that’s the prices if they send the software in a box. For download purposes, CS5 Master Suite is – um – £2,780. Yep – it costs you more to download the fucking thing than for them to box it up and stick it in the post. What?
Adobe are forever bitching that their software is the most pirated. There’s a reason for that – it’s priced itself out of the “reasonably affordable” market.
I’m pretty sure that if Adobe charged (for argument’s sake) £270 for the CS5 Master – 10% of the current price – the piracy figures for it would drop like a stone. £270 is reasonable for the software – perhaps even a bit more, but 10% was a nice example. Piracy wouldn’t stop completely – there will always be those for who even a pound is “too much” – but it would reduce epically. More people would buy the software – my own suspicion is that they’d actually sell more and make more by having the software at the cheaper price.
Sure, the price has been cut by 90%. But if you get 100 people buying it at £270 instead of one or two at £2,700, you’ve made a shitload more money on your bottom line than you have at £2,700 per copy. Even on the upgrades, people would be more likely to pay again for an upgrade, rather than pirating it.
And that’s the logic that seems to escape these companies. Reduce the price to a sensible/affordable level, more people will buy, less people will evade. Seems logical to me, anyway.
Posted: Tue 10 August, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Advertising, Business, Design, Norfolk, People, Thoughts, Weirdness, Work-related |
Over the last few weeks at work (roughly three months, give or take) we’ve been looking at recruiting a graphic designer – it’s the one area where the IT team lack skills, and with a lot of [currently unmentionable] big projects coming up, a designer is going to be a highly relevant part of the role.
What I wanted was a newly-graduated designer, looking for work experience, and getting them some solid commercial experience. I contacted two of the local colleges (including one with whom we’ve had a previous positive experience with getting in a web geek) as well as UEA and the STEP programme, both of whom have services for finding placements for graduates. Like a bell-end, I believed all the media pap about “[x] graduates applying for every job“. What a mistake.
The entire process turned into a nightmare. The colleges didn’t come back with anything – the one we’d previously used didn’t even bother responding – and UEA and STEP between them threw back ten applicants, of whom six were useless from the start, and not even qualified as graphic designers. Three of those had decided that “designing a new site” meant “developing a new site” – which it doesn’t and didn’t – despite us specifying that it was a graphic design role.
Of the four we interviewed, three were incredibly awful. I understand that they’re just out of university, but if that’s the level for recent graduates, it’s a real concern. Even the CVs they sent out were all formulaic and dull – if I’m looking at potential designers, I want to know they’ve got an eye for at least how a CV should look, something “designed” to make it stand out from the pack.
Now maybe it’s me being unrealistic – it’s certainly based on the other graphic designers I know and have worked with before – but if I’m interviewing a designer, I shouldn’t receive a blank look when I ask what things inspire their designs, or to name me a design that they really love. I wouldn’t have cared at that point whether it was something on cars, bikes, office equipment, technology, websites, anything – I just wanted to know what they thought of the industry they’d chosen to be part of, the sphere they had just graduated in. Three of the four responded to both those questions with a look of total incomprehension, no spark, no nothing. Not one of those three could name me even one designer they liked. Me, I could whiff on for ages about certain designers, concepts etc. – I love design, I just can’t draw to save my life.
We have finally found someone who I think will be really good. His work stood out from the first moment – a CV with a design to it, even though I personally hated the image used, it was still designed – and the projects he’d done at university, including his final project which was fantastic. In interview he brought in a portfolio (none of the others had) and could talk about what inspired him, the stuff he liked, the way he worked and so on. It was a reassuring interview after so many let-downs, and I’m really pleased that he’s come through.
It’s been an awesomely frustrating experience – one that’s put me to the edge of saying “Screw it” and going a completely different route. I find it utterly amazing how bad most of the people who applied for the role were. And it’s not even like we were trying to get the role as an internship, which seems to be the new ‘latest greatest’ way of getting work experience. We’re paying the designer – I believe that good work should be rewarded, not got for free as an internship – and while it’s not great money, it’s better than nothing. (We’re using the standard established STEP rates) So it’s not like we’re taking the piss, or taking advantage of the graduates – it just seems like they don’t know what the hell they’re actually doing.
Posted: Tue 3 August, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Business, Customer Services |
In general, when I buy books or other odds and sods, my first port of call is usually Amazon.
It’s not the cheapest – although I’m not always looking to save pence on these things anyway – but I find that in general if I want something, it’s going to be available through Amazon.
I also pay for the Amazon Prime – £50 a year, and next-day deliveries for the year. Looking back, I made 31 orders in the last twelve months, and didn’t pay postage and packing on any of them. That works out as £1.61 per order for next-day delivery. Amazon charge £4.95 for Express “get it tomorrow” delivery. On 31 orders, that would be near as dammit £155 just on delivery. (Admittedly if it weren’t for Prime I’d be using normal postage for the most part, but you know what I mean)
Needless to say, I’m renewing my Prime subscription. It’s paid for itself a couple of times over.
Posted: Sat 17 July, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Business, Catering, Customer Services, Thoughts, Travel |
On Saturday, the Js and I went out to the Olive Branch in Marsden, which they’d been to before and highly recommended.
The place is/was lovely, and the food was really good. Well worth the visit if you’re in the area.
There was one aspect that was really disappointing, though – and that was the vegetarian options. Both of the Js are veggie, and they’d said that the Olive Branch usually had a good selection. On this occasion though, the option was pasta. Fair enough, it’s “Ribbons of pasta, sauteed with mushrooms, garlic & sundried tomato, goats cheese & pine nuts“, but all the same, it’s pasta.
I think it’s still tremendously disappointing to go out to a restaurant and only see one or two fairly desultory veggie options. It just shows a complete lack of imagination and/or interest in the veggie market – and there’s a lot of vegetarians out there.
Even more importantly, if Herself had come along as well, she’d not have been able to eat anything, as she’s a) veggie and b) wheat-intolerant. Now sure, the Olive Branch says that you can let them know about food allergies/issues when ordering, but by then it’s a bit sodding late in some cases.
Doing good vegetarian options doesn’t take much – even a vegetarian stir-fry with some nice spices and a sauce is easily doable – and there are plenty of options out there. I just don’t know why the options aren’t more imaginative. Sure, not everyone is going to run a business like Greens in Didsbury, Manchester which is entirely vegetarian, but any decent chef could get some inspiration from the ideas there, or in any other veggie cookbook.
Posted: Wed 7 July, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Driving, Travel, Weirdness |
Last night was the day I took Herself and Others down to London. I’d already worked all day (as usual) so it was always going to be a late one.
As it turned out, I got everyone down to central London (Kings Cross / St Pancras) in two hours flat, dropping them off at 9:50.
By that time I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, but wasn’t massively hungry, so just headed back up, thinking that if I got hungry I could stop at the services near Stanstead airport. (Birchanger Green, not that it means much) It was 10:45 by the time I got there, and by that point I was hungry enough that I could’ve eaten a scabby donkey between two pieces of bread. (Which is, of course, why I was even considering something from Motorway Services)
Only it turns out that Birchanger Green pretty much shuts at 10:30.
- Burger King – closed, cleaned up, and one lowly person wiping the surfaces.
- KFC – closed, deserted
- Waitrose – closed, deserted, barriers in front of the doors
- “Eat In” – open, a poxy range of crap (and overpriced) sandwiches, with a queue of people that outnumbered the sandwiches available.
- Shop – closed, barriered off.
And that was it. Nothing else. I assume it stays open for people in dire need of a piss, and that’s about it.
Bear in mind, Birchanger Green is the only services on the entire M11. And it shuts at half-ten.
Call me naïve, but I always thought services were supposed to be open super-long hours – if not 24-hours. That impression appears to have been wrong.
But I wonder how much business Birchanger Green loses by closing at half-ten ? The car-park was at least a third full when I got there. You’d think that being open ’til half eleven or midnight would make sense – particularly when they’re the only one in god knows how many miles.
Very strange.
Posted: Tue 20 April, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Reviews(ish) |
So following on from yesterday’s discovery of a flat tyre, I booked in (and paid in advance) through eTyres.co.uk to get it fixed at home. eTyres offer their service at home, which is ideal when you’ve got a flat.
However, the motto of this entire story is that if you’re going to have a puncture and use eTyres, don’t do it on a weekend. Despite being able to book and order online, for some fuckforsaken reason they can’t organise things ’til the Monday morning. And at that point they’ve also got to deal with all the people who’ve booked on the Saturday.
I did try to change the tyre myself so I could get down to the local tyre place, but the wheelnuts were on so tight I couldn’t even move the sodding things. Insurance-wise I was going to be lowest of the low priority calls, and they couldn’t even give me a time expectation. So all told that left me pretty much at the mercy of eTyres.
Having made the booking online yesterday evening, they finally arrived at 5.30. Yep, a whole day. So much for the speed of booking via the internet etc. etc.
In the end they’ve done a decent job, and for a fairly decent price. Not as great as they make out in their marketing, but not bad.
But if you need a swift service that’ll actually get the job done, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend eTyres to anyone.