Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Organizations

  • A Bunch of Bankers

    Here’s a salutary tale from an overseas student at Cambridge. He received a letter from his bank (the HSBC Group) telling him that they no longer wished to provide him with banking services, and that he had 30 days to move to another bank before his HSBC account would be closed by them.
     
    After unsuccessfully trying a number of times to ring the contact number on the letter (his local HSBC branch could do nothing), let him take up the story:
    After two written complaints and a phone call to customer services, a member of the “Team” finally contacted me. She enquired about a single international deposit into my account, which I then explained to be my study grant for the coming year. Upon this explanation I was told that the bank would not close my account, and I was given a vague explanation of them not expecting students to get large deposits. I found this strange, since it had not been a problem in previous years, and even stranger since my deposit had cleared into my account two days after the letter was sent.  
    I love that: the bank "doesn’t expect students to get large deposits". Dear lord, when I was at university forty years ago, I got my student grant paid to me in a single large deposit each year, hasn’t the penny dropped yet at the HSBC that this is what happens?
     
    I note that this student isn’t the only one to receive a similar letter from the HSBC. Clearly, some newly-introduced fraud or anti-terrorist checking system has been throwing up false positives. It all leaves a nasty taste, particularly after reading the similar experiences of others who have commented on the student’s Blog entry. Cockney rhyming slang doesn’t even begin to describe this bunch of bankers.
     
    (hat tip to Bruce Schneier for the link)

  • Management Madness

    In large organisations, it often seems that more time is spent in trying to manage things than in actually doing productive work. Moishe Lettvin provides a good example when he describes his time working on Microsoft’s Vista operating system. He worked on a team that was responsible, amongst other things, for the design and implementation of Vista’s shutdown menu. As he says, the implementation took a couple of hundred lines of code. But he found himself interacting with 42 other people in the attempt to design and implement the feature. Madness. It’s a miracle that Vista ever made it out of the doors of Microsoft at all.

  • The World’s Greatest Bureaucracy

    Based on personal experience, I often think that The Netherlands must rank high as a leading contender to be the world’s greatest bureaucracy (we’re guaranteed to grind you down…). However, on reflection I think that the honour should probably be passed to India. After all, they’ve been taught by a master in the form of the British Raj. The evidence is here.

  • Not Sensible

    So there I was, making a backup of some data, when my eye happened to fall on the box containing the CD blanks. Pleomax, it proudly proclaimed, along with the tagline underneath: "a sensible bit of SAMSUNG".
     
    And that got me thinking. What on earth does that actually mean? Does it mean:
    Congratulations, you’ve bought these CD blanks from a sensible bit of our corporation, when you could, just as easily, have bought something from us that was not sensible. It could have been downright stupid, for example, or actively evil. For example, you could have bought this from this SAMSUNG division and you would have been exposing yourself to invisible sperm-destroying rays. So count yourself bloody lucky that you have purchased merely a sensible CD blank from a sensible SAMSUNG division. Phew, what a relief, eh?
    What is it about marketing people? They get paid to sit around to dream up this stuff? Ridiculous blue cartoon figures? I thought Belgium had the monopoly on that shite. Life is too short.

  • Fingerpointing Again

    Here we go again, the fun of trying to deal with organisations that just blame each other instead of resolving issues.
     
    I ordered a DVD recently from Bol.com ("the biggest mediashop in the Netherlands"). My purchases from them are charged to my American Express card.
     
    I noticed when the charge came through on the last statement that it had been charged, not in Euros, but in Singapore dollars. Odd, thought I. Particularly since the original invoice from Bol.com was in Euros. And it meant that I ended up paying more than the amount shown on the original invoice.  
     
    So I rang American Express… "Oh yes, sir, Bol submitted the charge in Singapore dollars – we suggest that you contact them to find out why they did that".
     
    So I rang Bol.com… "But sir, our Finance department records show that we have only received the original Euro amount from your credit card company. We don’t know why you have been charged extra, perhaps it is commission costs from your credit card company. We suggest that you contact them to find out why they did that".
     
    Aaaarrrggghhh!!!
     
    Still, this particular cloud does seem to have a silver lining. I sent an email back to Bol.com expressing my frustration at the situation(!) and they have just sent me a coupon that covers the cost difference. No word of an explanation though. My nasty suspicious mind is thinking that perhaps someone inside Bol has got a nice little scam going on. It may be only a few cents on each transaction, but spread over enough customers and enough purchases, and it could add up to a tidy sum. On the other hand, it might have been just a single mistake at the keyboard. I guess I’ll never know.

  • Thinking On Your Feet

    Lateral thinking is a useful skill to have. The Times reports that would-be entrants to Oxford and Cambridge are asked apparently bizarre questions by tutors to test their ability to think on their feet. One question that came up last year was:
    If there were three beautiful, naked women standing in front of you, which one would you pick? Does this have any relevance to economics?
    Stumbling and Mumbling provides a particularly good answer to this tricky little poser. One would hope that the tutor asking that question didn’t think this answer was given by a tricky little poseur.

  • I Know What He Means

    Diamond Geezer touches upon a necessary skill for survival in the office jungle. I recall it well. Although I’m old enough to remember that the skill predates emails. I recollect quite a few memos went through the officespeak translator before being issued. And I remember seeing a copy of an apparently friendly and jovial memo sent by one manager to another that was spoken of in hushed tones as being the perfect example of the style. On reading it, the words and sentiments of "dear crabface" were plain to perceive without any need to be so obvious as to actually write them.

  • Bank Charges

    Like death and taxes, bank charges are inescapable. Some banks, e.g. the British bank of Abbey National, seem to want to make it as difficult as possible to find out what they charge you for their so-called services. NeOnbubble has the tale of woe.

  • Scientific Alliance

    I see that the news about the letter from the Royal Society to ExxonMobil has drawn a response from the Scientific Alliance. Luckily, Steven Poole is on hand to point out the unspeak in the response. Reading their web site, it doesn’t surprise me, it scores high on the Unspeak Meter (which I also like to think of as the Bullshit Meter).  

  • Branding

    As Zune, Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s iPod, prepares to be launched, there’s a good overview on the likely impact on the digital music market in today’s Guardian.
     
    Also in the article is a reference to a parody video that purports to show what happens when Microsoft’s designers stamp their branding on the iPod packaging. I’d seen the video before, and it’s worth seeing, because it is so very true. But what I hadn’t appreciated until now is that apparently it had been produced within Microsoft itself. An organisation that can laugh at itself can’t be all bad. 

  • A Shot Across The Bows

    I see that the Royal Society has taken a shot across the bows of the supertanker that is ExxonMobil – telling it to stop funding organisations that undermine research done on global warming. All very laudable, but supertankers take 20 miles to turn. My suspicion is that ExxonMobil will continue steaming ahead as usual.

  • The Mind Boggles…

    …That this advertisement ever escaped from the ad agency (M&C Saatchi) that dreamed it up. My instant reaction was eeuwww…

  • La, La, La,

    … I can’t hear you… The US National Association of Manufacturers appears to have fingers stuck in its collective ears…

  • The Training Videos From Hell

    The UK arm of Microsoft commissioned a couple of training videos from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Gervais is in his full-on cringeworthy David Brent character, while Merchant plays the increasingly embarrassed Microsoft employee.
     
    Good stuff, but probably the humour is lost on many non-British speakers. And while Microsoft UK probably thought they were being really cool commissioning these videos, I have a sneaking suspicion that Gervais and Merchant end up subverting the whole idea of company values (video 1) and personal development reviews (video 2). Probably not what Microsoft would have wished for…

  • Run For The Hills

    To paraphrase Hermann Göring, "when I hear the words management consultancy, I reach for my gun". This news has got my trigger-finger real itchy.

  • I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue

    OK, so it’s 15 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. And, one would think, that commercial organisations would be pretty savvy on how to use it to get information out there to the likes of you and me.
     
    Yesterday, as you probably know if you’ve been reading my blog meanderings, I went to watch the Amsterdam Canal Parade. Last year, Shell in the Netherlands took a chance and sponsored its GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender) employees’ network to put a boat in the parade. It was a great success, and yesterday as a result (I think) the Shell boat was joined by boats from employee networks in other major companies: IBM, ABN-AMRO Bank and the ING Bank.
     
    I was curious to see how all these companies (Shell included) would handle the public message that they were comfortable with the fact that their employee networks were participating in the Canal Parade. So I went to each of their web sites and typed in "Canal Parade" into each of their search engines. And do you know what I found? Yes, you guessed: Zilch, nada, nothing…
     
    What a missed opportunity! Now, it’s quite likely that these companies had some sort of press statement deep in their media relations offices, which they would refer to if they were approached by the mainstream media. But the fact that they couldn’t be bothered to get it out onto their public web site would seem to indicate that they are all still a long way from understanding the cluetrain manifesto. They need to wake up. The last time I saw this head in the sand approach to marketing your message was the Brent Spar fiasco of Shell. I’m disappointed that they at least do not seem to have learned a lesson from that bruising experience.

  • Kwik-Fit

    Mr. Duck points out that all is not well in this, the best of all possible worlds.

  • Photo Response

    I have a few thousand photos up on Flickr at the moment. Occasionally one of them gets commented on. This was the comment that one of them received today:
     
    Dear Ms/Sir:
    How are you!
    Having had your name and address from the Internet ,We have pleasure in establishing business ship with you and we would appreciate your pushing the sales on your market.
    We are a factory including manufacturing and saling daily-used ceramics,also have the right to export .This yesr ,Our products possess many fashion and newest style and deco.which sale at a preferent price to let you compare.You can view our website which is xxx.xxx.com. Or you can add my MSN.
    If you have any interesting in the business of ceramics,Please contact with us.
    We look forward to hearing from you and I hope a glory future will be created by us.
    TKS&B.RGDS
    Your faithfully
    RAY
     
    Oh well, at least it wasn’t someone from Nigeria wanting to empty my bank account…

  • Stripping the Enamel

    I know that poking fun at Disneyworld is a soft target, but it gives me enormous satisfaction – particularly when it is done so satisfyingly as in Tim Adams’ column in The Observer today. There’s something about the place that I found creepy, while at the same time I confess that I did enjoy some of the rides. I think it’s the constant artificial cheeriness of the place that made me feel as though the enamel was being stripped from my teeth.

  • Brand Evolution

    Kodak has announced a new version of its logo. I suppose that I’ll get used to it, but it looks a bit odd to me. The effect of the new font on me is to make the whole word seem unfamiliar. At a stroke, all the ancillary brand associations have been lost to me. Surely this isn’t the intention?