Can't log into your TSB account? Well, it's your own fault for trying I am a time-waster. And I hate people who waste my time. This means I know what I'm hating – have fun, all you amateur psychologists out there. I don't want to dither about but at least it's my own time I'm wasting. I am a procrastinator. That's not really the same as a time-waster, is it? Perhaps you could spend a few minutes …
"Certainly will judging by the people I talked to in the large queue at my local TSB yesterday."
I found it really odd, I was in a branch yesterday and there were only two other people there - one withdrawing large amounts of £50s and the other not even aware of what was going on but panicking because he had fallen for a phishing scam (Honestly, he was quite young and its 2018 - who honestly things that HMRC are issuing tax rebates via email?)
Anyway he was panicking saying that they were "going to empty my account" because he gave them his card details.
I *definitely* heard the guy serving me mutter "Good luck with that" - Highlight of the day.
On the plus side, Ive managed to get enough money from my business account into my personal account to pay the mortgage! Even if it did mean ten minutes for small talk with the teller while we waited for it to go through!
"The pensioners seemed happy enough"
Huh? This is one who wouldn't have been.
Probably the ones from the old folks home who only get to go out once or twice a month on the bus and know that the drive will get pissed if they make him wait more than 10 minutes. . But in this case, they actually got to stand around and talk to other people. Hopefully, the bus driver was in line with them.
"The pensioners seemed happy enough but everyone else was plainly pissed off."
I am a pensioner and we were fortunate to be first in the queue to open an account at the Nationwide today because by the time we left there was quite a queue.
What made me finally flip? The announcement of the job of Head of Infrastructure. It's a bit like Ford advertising the job of Factory Manager, or Tesco advertising the post of Head of Logistics. It points to a level of cluelessness in Spain that makes the Armada look like a well run project. And the chance of that altering in a reasonable timescale?
first in the queue to open an account at the Nationwide today because by the time we left there was quite a queue
I'll bet that Nationwide[1], as the last of the great Building Societies, are laughing all the way to the cash-tills..
[1] Of which I'm a member, having had an account since about 1987. Which was about when I started getting utterly disillusioned by banks, having been royally shafted by them as a student. And I've used the Natwe as my only banking facility since (other than saving accounts at various other building societies).
"The pensioners seemed happy enough"
Probably because they were first introduced to saving and banks through the school "bank", which I believe was run by the TSB across much or most of the country which then converted into a proper TSB account on reaching 16(?). They've probably never changed banks since then.
What really boils my p*** is when I hear the phrase "unusually high call volumes" being used as an excuse - *every time* that I try to get through to the call centre. Look, I've tried calling every day for nearly a fortnight at different times of the day and night, and always get the same message. The call volumes aren't unusually high, it's just that the call centre is under-staffed and/or under-skilled to be able to deal with them.
When I finally get through and am greeted by an enquiry as to what my call is about..."well I started trying to get in touch with you with a query about my account, but now my call is actually about closing that account so I can take my business elsewhere".
The call volumes aren't unusually high, it's just that the call centre is under-staffed
This.
It seems that no-one in the many consumer-facing industries have heard of the phrase "capacity management" (which doesn't just apply to IT - it also covers the squishy meatbags of mostly water).
Or rather, they have heard about it. And realised that implementing a proper system would require money and *gasp* might result in some of their minimum-wage phone answerers not being 100% busy. And, in an MBA world, we can't have inefficiencies like that! Why, it'll reduce the management bonuses and, if some $MORE_SENIOR manager should happen to see one of the $LOWER_MANAGERs staff sitting idle might question their skills, parentage and budget!
Sadly, it's no use getting angry with the poor saps that have to answer the phone - they don't make policy or set budgets. And you can bet that the ones who do the policy and budget stuff are not readily available to be talked at.
In the depths of time, a major compute manufacturer launched a new platform, and I was working in the newly set up support operation, taking the phone calls of disgruntled customers (experienced people taking the first call, it didn't last) who were having the inevitable teething problems of a completely new system.
Unsurprisingly, there were times when there were more customers with problems than there were people to take the calls, so to limit the waiting times, an overflow answer phone was installed to allow people to request a call back rather than waiting.
The message on the phone went something like this.
"Due the unprecedented success of <major platform name>, we are experiencing high volumes of calls. Please leave you details and a brief description of your issue, and we will call you back"
Remember that this was a support centre, and the only reason customers were calling was because of problems.
Success? We laughed...
whilst not a national building society, the Cumberland is a decent one that has done us fine over the years. One things that does work is their customer service. Each branch has a manager that gets things sorted and do actually call you back or keep appointments.
"Or (the most annoying film watching experience) American or British films dubbed into French?"
Any film dubbed into another language is often annoying - the lip sync is often nowhere near right. IIRC "Battle of Britain" (1969) was unusual for having all the German and Polish dialogue subtitled. Not sure if a German release of that film subtitles the English dialogue.
> Not sure if a German release of that film subtitles the English dialogue.
Almost certainly every single word is dubbed. It's a German thing, certainly does not help to get people used to what other languages sound like.
In one tear inducing moment a German man in his thirties asked me whether a lady speaking French was speaking ... English.
I'm suddenly reminded of my childhood watching "Monkey" which was a Japanese version of a Chinese story dubbed into English.
I don't recall finding it annoying, indeed if it had been left entirely in Japanese it would be been entirely baffling.
It has the catchiest theme tune ever and anyone reading the above will suddenly have fragments of it coming into their head, forcing a youtube frenzy to find it.
Ha, Chipitaka
Ah Monkey! That was brilliant. I tried to track it down a few years ago, and was rather disappointed to see that they'd only dubbed the first series into english, so you couldn't watch it all done by the same people.
About ten years ago I bought the brilliant digitally re-mastered version of Das Boot. There was some awful dubbing in that, as I think the film version was dubbed whereas the TV mini-series used subtitles. Very unusual project that they shot a 3 hour film simultaneously with a 6 hour mini-series.
Only the main actors had done English dialogue. So they went back to all the other original German actors and got them to re-voice themselves.
So you can now watch it in German with subtitles, or in English but with the original actors doing it so it's actually good.
One of the Amazon reviews complained that in english, the voices don't synch with the lips. What you want them to re-shoot the entire 6 hours, as well as re-doing the soundtrack!?!?
"Around the same time as 'Monkey' was The Water Margin, another triumph of poor (or impossible) translations."
Better yet was The Magic Roundabout. No lip-sync issue, but they didn't even bother translating it. They just made up new English language stories to match what was going on in the video.
"They just made up new English language stories to match what was going on in the video."
In my part of the world, the childrens' programmers clearly didn't know what to do, so they played the french soundtrack at low volume underneath the english one.
Then again this is the same bunch of muppets who must've just glanced at the intro to Sapphire and Steel, decided "kids cartoons" and put it on at 4:30pm on a weekday. It scared the shit out of a generation of young children.
"Or (the most annoying film watching experience) American or British films dubbed into French?"
Annoying? I thoroughly enjoyed watching Saving Private Ryan dubbed into French with English and Dutch subtitles. (But I never offered to take my father to watch it in case he created a disturbance and started throwing things at the screen.)
As soon as that last video began to play I was forced to crank up my speakers until the knob broke off so I could air guitar like a freak. They exploded & caught fire, I had to spray them with extinguishing foam, & now my computer corner looks like a bright pink merrangue pie.
I consider this a great weekend already & it's barely started! THANK YOU! =-D
> As soon as that last video began to play I was forced to crank up my speakers until the knob broke off so I could air guitar like a freak.
@ Shadow Systems
At least you were spared the site of Page's lips attempting to launch themselves into space in search of a missing harmonica that one of the roadies had cruelly removed without telling him...
I recently wasted 15 minutes watching a sci-fi movie called Arrowhead. (2016) I honestly thought that they had stopped making such crap in the 80s. It should have gone straight to VHS tape and only be shown in Alaska!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3013160
P.S. It's so bad they changed the name to Alien Arrival
"I recently wasted 15 minutes watching a sci-fi movie called Arrowhead. (2016) I honestly thought that they had stopped making such crap in the 80s. It should have gone straight to VHS tape and only be shown in Alaska!"
Nooo, they are still churning them out 10 a penny, you can find them on SciFi Channel, I occasionally get duped by the synopses if I have a rare couple of hours to kill at the weekend and get drawn in. Often they are so bad it's funny, so i watch the whole thing.
According to Wikipedia, it's an Australian production and the budget was $180,000, which is probably less than the dental floss bill for the latest Avengers film.
What did Alaska do to deserve it anyway? Apart from Sarah Palin, that is.
On second thoughts... yeah, fair enough.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, "Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time".
"I havn't checked to see if it still exists, but there used to be a web page for a "Big Red Button" that literally did nothing at all when pressed..."
Every time you press, somewhere, a computer dies. You bastard!
I still have that somewhere... loved the mechanical typewriter sound effect.
A friend borrowed it once and installed ALL the sound effects on his company laptop. Whatever you did, using whatever software, it would make a sound. A couple of days after, his boss borrowed the laptop (because the boss' laptop was on the fritz) to do a presentation for some customers. A somewhat mixed reaction... it probably would have went better if he had thought of just turning the sound off (this was so long ago, laptops still had an actual dial/knob to turn).
Not to worry, she's experienced worse. Her idea of the ultimate life-wasting movie is Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, an opinion that I like to point out to her is tainted by her admission that she fell asleep in the cinema
If you want to fall asleep watching a film, then may I humbly suggest 'On Golden Pond'. Five times I've started to watch it only for fall asleep after 20-30 minutes.
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