SERVES YOU RIGHT

I heard a story recently about some people eating in a restaurant in Helsinki. The food when it arrived was not what they’d ordered. They pointed this out to the waitress who said :-  “I know”. Thinking perhaps that she hadn’t understood them they said again :- “this…is…not…what…we…ordered”. “I know” she said “I made a mistake. Eat it please”.

It sounds like Saga in the Bridge. An unforgettable putting-you-in-your-place tactic.

Last Sunday we had our own “I’m so cross I couldn’t eat it now if it was free and served by Beyoncé” experience. We went to this idyllic country gastropub for lunch. The sun had brought out unusual crowds but there was no reason to believe they couldn’t cope (oh yes there was – the addition of the six letters GASTRO doesn’t change the fact it’s a traditional British Pub…old Britain…they don’t do service). Anyway (what do mean anyway…you didn’t stay did you?) – yes – well anyway we’d booked for 2.30 and we ordered and actually I ordered smoked salmon and they did say it might take up to 40 minutes which seemed a bit long (they were lying weren’t they?) Yes. We were still waiting after 1 ½ hours. And we walked out with them begging us to stay as we were next. (So you won’t be going back will you?)  No we won’t.

Spot what’s missing here

Customer service is always top of my list.

In London, in particular, standards have improved dramatically. Today we expect smiling, attentive, the customer-is-our-first-concern-and they -are-always-right attitude. We do not want or expect fawning servility. We want New Britain. The Ivy not the Café Royal. BAA not British Rail. New not old. And if you love your customers, really love them, it’s not that hard.

It was what I most enjoyed about advertising – cooking up great creative work – serving it to needy clients and watching it do their business good. They even paid us for having this much fun.

Which brings me to two RIPs for old Britain.

To the always infuriating and yet curiously entertaining Bob Crow. Like an old Music Hall comedian he strutted the ticket halls of London Underground defending the indefensible.

And to the Co-op. I love my local Co-op. Great staff. Good product but underlying it all a perverse Royal Mail-ness. Horror after horror has unfolded as it’s become clear the organisational terrorists within who leak and brief against management – Al and Frieda rather than Al-Quaeda – want to revert to the old Co-op.

Sadly I fear this is a vote for suicide. Whilst Mr Sutherland was well paid for sure (too well? – well, there’s an important cultural debate here) no one would dispute he’s been trying to pull off a massive rescue and turnaround, probably in so doing shortening his own life. In effectively ousting him his uncooperative colleagues will, as I said at the outset, sadly be served right.

New Co-op HQ – old Co-op attitudes

www.colourfulthinkers.com

THE POISON OF XENOPHOBIA

No, this is not an attack on UKIP, who will carry on muttering their stuff regardless of me and be very happy, on their own, in a pub with locked doors.

No, it’s a reflection on the dangers I see in isolationism and resistance to change.  It seems entirely possible that we could soon have a resignation and a divorce pretty well all at once with Britain saying goodbye to Europe and Scotland saying goodbye to Britain.

All done and dusted, we’d be proudly on our own.

But why stop there? Let’s ditch everything apart from London and the South East. We’re roughly 40 % of the UK and twice as rich as the rest. A £1.5 trillion gated community of an economy and no need to worry about Labour or Liberals anymore or those strange Northern accents or greyhounds or pies or the Co-op. Burn the cloth cap and build another runway or two at Heathrow and who needs HS2? We’ll spend it on skyscrapers instead.

Increasingly we’ll retreat indoors behind our PCs and read about the Bulgarian invasion of Scotland and laugh drily.  But weren’t we born to huddle together, laugh, drink and tell stories?  Weren’t we born to exchange views and change minds?  Aren’t we hard wired to work together?

I was asked today if I thought travelling broadened the mind. Not exactly, I reflected, it’s bigger than that. It explodes boundaries. Go to China or India and you see unimaginable scale, poverty, wealth, growth and a sheer sense of wonder and discovery in their eyes and through your own. These are places that are devouring a diet of change. They have infinite  horizons just as extraordinary and wide as Columbus saw.
Caitlin Moran lamented her London being stolen by a new rich foreign cadre who’ve taken it over. Yet I rejoice to hear people describe Mile End as trendy and smart. I’m amazed (happily) that Park Royal is cool – a sort of South Ealing without the ponce and that Clapham is the Chelsea of today.

Because there is only one poison more toxic than that of hating abroad and that’s the small ‘c’,  conservative resistance to change and hostility to ambition.

You know, the view that we can’t afford to do whatever it takes to get to the next level when all the evidence of history has consistently shown ambition, investment, drive and change has, nearly always, led to a better life. Isn’t that the lesson of the Olympics?

I realise how much I like being part of Scotland and how refreshing, foibles and all (and we’re good ones to talk) Europe is (from Greece to Sweden) and how good it is being a European citizen…..because here’s where I live.

Maybe we’ve got bored or gone mad but as Tom Peters once put it “you can’t shrink into greatness”.

Here’s hoping lots of people hear that.