Will’s View

Whilst browsing an article on cold calling and call centers I found myself somewhat amazed at some of the stupid cold-calling stories some of the users had come up with. I found myself rudely interrupted in this disjoint but somewhat humourus line of thought by the dull vibrate of my cell phone.

The caller ID showed “Unknown”, but I wasn’t concerned because most of the companies I work for have caller ID blocking, so I duly picked up:

Me:Hello?
Caller:Hello, is this ‘ExpressTrain bar training services?
Me:No
Cold Caller: Because we have a reminder here saying that it is time for your hotel to get it’s quarterly pest control assesment.
Me: Well that’s swell, but you’ve got the wrong guy. I don’t own a hotel, nor a cheesily named training service.
Stupid Cold Caller:Are you sure? This is the number that we have on file for you.
Increasingly incensed Me:Well it may be the number you have on file, but it ain’t for me! I don’t need any pest control!
etc…

Now I know that cold-callers are people too, and they’re just trying to do their job, but you’d think that they’d get the point and stop wasting both people’s time! So then I continued my educational reading of the aforementioned rants about cold-calling, and ended up at The Chronicles of George and instantly felt that someone out there had had a worse time than me, which is always a refreshing thought after having wasted 5 minutes of your time trying to tell someone that you neither own a hotel nor need pest control.

--> Whilst browsing an article on cold calling and call centers I found myself somewhat amazed at some of the stupid cold-calling stories some of the users had come up with. I found myself rudely interrupted in this disjoint but somewhat humourus line of thought by the dull vibrate of my cell phone. The caller ID showed “Unknown”, but I wasn’t concerned because most of the companies I work for have caller ID blocking, so I duly picked up: (More...)

Okay, so you may have noticed that Will’s View is currently looking a little different. I’m working on it, as it seems some of my hacks that generated the old site don’t work so well with the brand spanking new Wordpress… It’ll get fixed!

--> Okay, so you may have noticed that Will’s View is currently looking a little different. I’m working on it, as it seems some of my hacks that generated the old site don’t work so well with the brand spanking new Wordpress… It’ll get fixed!

Well I know it’s been a while since I’ve been active on this here site of mine, but I’ve been working hard for a change!

And while at work, I have been using the godforsaken Visio by Microsoft to draw schematic diagrams of some really random things. Whilst working on one of these drawings I went to one of the bosses and, unsurprisingly, had a bit of a whinge.

“Well,” he said “if you really get that fed-up, we do have a professional draftsman on staff who is available.”

Being a sometimes-lateral, always-absurd thinker, I found myself considering the possibility that they had a professional draughtsman on staff, and wound up with two possibilities:

The Professional Draughts Player
Imagine that, any time you needed a break from work you could just pop down and see him/her for a quick, challenging game of draughts. If you were stuck on a problem, you could sit and talk to him/her about it, whilst stimulating your brain and competitive nature. I think this makes a good alternative to chess, because a game of draughts doesn’t take nearly as long, and it really isn’t as tactical as chess. Plus I was never any good at chess…

The Professional Draughtsman
Next stop on my creative crusade was the (admittedly slightly more ridiculous) possibility of the company mistakenly hiring an actual draughts piece. I was humoured by the supposition that sitting somewhere in an office in the depths of the building was a large disk-shaped draughts piece, which wandered into work every morning with a suitcase and a swipe card. Everyone thinks that he’s somewhat quiet, and odd that he communicates only via email, but he gets the job done. That and you could always tell what sort of weekend he’d had by whether he had been ‘kinged’ or not.

I think I need to get out more.

--> Well I know it’s been a while since I’ve been active on this here site of mine, but I’ve been working hard for a change! And while at work, I have been using the godforsaken Visio by Microsoft to draw schematic diagrams of some really random things. Whilst working on one of these drawings I went to one of the bosses and, unsurprisingly, had a bit of a whinge. “Well,” he said “if you really get that fed-up, we (More...)

Someone I know managed to drop their mobile phone into a cup of tea. Not a large bowl-like cup of coffee, or a bowl of soup even, but a cup of tea! There are very few people I know with the propensity for such ridiculously horrid luck, and I now have reason to add one more.

I’ve heard of people putting their phones through washing machines, or even being thrown into a pool with one in their pocket, but a cup of tea? What’s the world coming to?

--> Someone I know managed to drop their mobile phone into a cup of tea. Not a large bowl-like cup of coffee, or a bowl of soup even, but a cup of tea! There are very few people I know with the propensity for such ridiculously horrid luck, and I now have reason to add one more. I’ve heard of people putting their phones through washing machines, or even being thrown into a pool with one in their pocket, but a cup of tea? What’s the world coming to?

I know it’s been a while since my last post, but I figured if anyone needed a holiday, well, it most likely wasn’t me, but I took one anyway - so sue me.

I was washing my hands in the bathrooms of a wonderful establishment called the Dux in Christchurch, and saw that they had opted for liquid soap dispensers. Whilst reflecting on this choice, I noticed that the soap that it dispensed was pink. Pink?

Now how the hell did they come up with that colour? One of my friends suggested something along the lines of the pink colouring being seen as a pure cleansing colour. I think that’s bollocks. Why does it have to have any colour? I doubt that the choice of colour has some huge psychological effect on the person washing their hands.

Although imagine how much fun it would be to fudge the results of a test to see what effect the colour of the soap has on the person washing their hands:

Our preliminary findings suggest several interesting trends:

-When blue soap was used, people were 78.25% more likely to return from the bathroom more depressed.

-When green soap was used, people were 52% more likely to vote for the Green Party, or possibly Family First. It was difficult to get any sense out of them anyway.

-When black soap was used, people were 98.25% more likely to return from the washroom wearing mascara, studded belts and black skinny-leg jeans. Over 99% felt an unreasonable desire to set up a MySpace account.

-When pink soap was used, 84% of people returned at least 32% more iffeminite and in 76% of cases wanted to have deep and meaningful conversations with the people who were present.

I’m sure the “findings” would go on, and -after weighing up all the pros and cons of the different colours- decide that pink was the colour that was the best for society at large.

Either that or the pink pigment they put in the soap is the cheapest. But who am I to guess?

--> I know it’s been a while since my last post, but I figured if anyone needed a holiday, well, it most likely wasn’t me, but I took one anyway - so sue me. I was washing my hands in the bathrooms of a wonderful establishment called the Dux in Christchurch, and saw that they had opted for liquid soap dispensers. Whilst reflecting on this choice, I noticed that the soap that it dispensed was pink. Pink? Now how (More...)