The whinge thread

[Bunnylump]

Oh, that is bad. Especially as Peter Sutcliffe is such a normal name in every other respect...

Ever thought of changing it? I used to work with a man called Richard O'Shea. (Think about it)

[MBH]

We've done the 'Funny Names' conversation a few times, and it still stays as funny as ever

The 'Peter Sutcliffe' one is bad I belive there's a 60+ year old scaffolder called Harry Potter who is quite glad "that woman has stopped writing those books"

[clvrlad]

would thast be the irish shap shooter?



dont forget laura im of the age where i was at school when he was arrested plus he was held in jail in the town im from

so yes the kids at school noticed......

[supersleuth]

It can be handy having more than one name. I was known by my middle name as a child (don't ask why, and I won't say what it is as there may be someone on the forum with the same name, though I don't think so). Anyway it's dated and altogether horrible, so it was quite nice to change to my first name when I was in my early twenties, and easier than you might think, though my mother never forgave me, in spite of having done EXACTLY the same thing herself.

[Laura]

This really is a whinge, as I don't really have reason to complain, but still......

My choir have all gone to Germany for a week and I'm stuck here in horrible rainy England. They're doing some concerts, but also lots of lovely exciting things like going to theme parks and swimming and bowling and looking around pretty little villages. I can't go because its the last week of school and they won't let me have the time off. Even worse, I only work Wed-Fri, so the last two days I've just been stuck at home imagining all the lovely things they're getting up, and being miserable that I'm not there with them.

[clvrlad]

I only work Wed-Fri, so the last two days I've just been stuck at home imagining all the lovely things they're getting up

what about the mag?

[Laura]

Well, I do the puzzles with my dad, so if I do too much when he's not here, he gets a bit peeved with me!

[Bunnylump]

OH that's really mean of them, isn't it? Especially when I bet you've put a lot of work into what they do. Miserable so and sos.

[Laura]

yes, and its even worse because I've been on the trips previously to the same area before, so I can really imagine what they'll be getting up to at any particular time. Ah, well...... I'm going to London in a few weeks with a couple of the choir leaders to make up for not being able to go.

[Bunnylump]

Could you not have fluttered your eyelashes a bit more productively?
I take it that SOMEONE had to go with them. Why on Earth couldn't that have been you?

[Laura]

Cos its not my schools choir, its a choir outside school. And they weren't awfully keen on me missing the end of term and the performances etc. at the speech day.

[Bunnylump]

Still poo. Poor you.

[giraffe]

Well, I do the puzzles with my dad, so if I do too much when he's not here, he gets a bit peeved with me!

A household where they share copies.....hmmm that's an idea.


No! It would never work. Relies on people behaving like adults

[clvrlad]

No! It would never work. Relies on people behaving like adults

well fernando and kingsley are mature enough..... lol

[Bunnylump]

Maybe they should give me some lessons.

[Laura]

It actually works really well. We'd both be fairly useless on our own. Generally, he does anything that involves knowledge or cryptic clues, with me chipping in the odd bit that I know about, and then I fit it together. I do the laborious filling in letters on codewords and numbers on sudokus, and we both sit and puzzle over the others together. It's really nice actually. I never did much stuff with my dad until he taught me to drive, and then we didn't do much together after I passed my test, but now we do this!

[Bunnylump]

I got my mum to help me with the test solving of this issue! (But that was mainly because I was unable to do it on my own, being a) blind as a bat and b) thick. )

[Bunnylump]

>RANT< BT.

Internet has been intermittent for about a week, and yesterday the phones and broadband died. OH rang BT on his mobile.
"If you are calling from a BT line, you will not be charged for this call". Helpful. We're trying to report the fact that the BT line isn't working.
"All our operators are busy, please hold."

25 minutes later he gave up.

Today I tried to phone from work:
"Please key in your home phone number". Of course, because the work's phone is connected to a switchboard, if I do that I end up cutting off and going through to the school reception.

So I rang on my mobile.
10 minutes later, I got through to a Welsh lady.
"Can I e mail you instructions on how to check your equipment please?"

"Well, no, I'm not at a computer at the moment, can't you just tell me?"

(And I must say, I thought this one was classic)
"I notice you are calling me from a mobile. Would you like me to ring you back on your home number?"

"You can't do that because my phone's not working!" AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH

"There are only two kind of main socket into a house"...she went on to describe them. "You need to disconnect any equipment, then plug in a phone, which you have checked is working, into both the sockets. This will mean the phone line is dead."

"Luckily", I said "I do have another phone line from NTL. So yes, I can check that the phone is working on that. Otherwise that would have been a pretty silly thing for you to have asked me to do, wouldn't it, SINCE I HAVE PHONED TO TELL YOU THAT MY PHONE ISN'T WORKING?"

Anyway, she said she'd test the line for me. About 20 seconds later "There is no problem with your line".
So, I went home, did all the things she told me to (noting as I did that we didn't have either of the sockets she'd described), then rang them again. Long wait again. Another Welshman, but this time with such a strong accent I couldn't understand him.
"I'll just check your line."
"You've already done that."
"Can I e mail you with instructions of what to do?"
"I've already done them."
"How many telephones do you have?"
"WTF does that have to do with anything?"
"You need to have disconnected all the equipment."
"I know. I have."
"So how are you ringing us now if your phone isn't working?"
"I AM ON AN NTL LINE WHICH WORKS".
"Is this line connected to the BT line?"
"No. That'll be why it's called an NTL line."
"I have tested your line and there is a fault on it."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH



Sorry, just needed to get that one out. I feel better now.

[Scurra]

That sounds like a good one. In the pejorative sense of "good" of course.

It's a particularly fine example of why "first-line" support shouldn't just be processed in a call-centre by people following a set list of instructions. Or, rather, why the training given to first-line support people is typically inadequate. But then again, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. No disrespect to the poor call-centre operators, but I think they are being very badly treated by their employers who genuinely don't seem to understand that customer service is about giving service to the customer, and that that involves a certain amount of effort. But when you've got a near-monopoly like BT then that principle can be safely ignored.

[giraffe]

I've had very similar problems with BT. They kept calling for appointments that they reckoned they had made that I knew nothing about, even after the fault was solved. OH's work pay for our broadband (but not the phone etc) and the person I spoke to when I phoned up to complain said that probably someone else from his firm had reported a fault and because they had us both referenced to the same firm with faults in the same week they must have thought it was the same fault. Different addresses in different towns, but there was probably someone wondering why they had waited in for an engineer who didn't turn up. The man that came to look at our phones tried to disconnect the extension in our bedroom because I said we didn't use it. (I hadn't said we didn't want it, or would never use it in the future I had just told him there was nothing plugged into it0

Mind you we terrible trouble with Telewest and we aren't even customers of theirs. People phoning us from telewest numbers kept getting put through to a business, and Telewest wouldn't let me report the fault because we weren't their customer. I had to get a friend to phone them and report the fault on our line.