Rants » Phil Barker

So last night I offered to head over to Ikea in Leeds with my mum to help her buy a new TV cabinet and load it in the car. I could also have done with some shelving for my spare room, and some drawers for my bedrooom.

It was my first ever visit to Ikea, and while there is breath left in my body will be my last too.
I have never before come across such a retarded stock control system in operation.

When you arrive you are guided into an area filled with all their furniture and items in real-life layouts. It takes about an hour and a half to walk around all these mock bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms etc.. but its technically a brilliant idea as you can write down what you want as you go round and get ideas of how to layout your own house.
I took pictures of everything I liked and the little tags telling me where to collect them at the end… brilliant so far. In my head I’d spent triple what I’d budgeted by the time we got round it all.

Then comes the staggeringly retarded part – you walk out the back into a warehouse full of flat packed furniture. You collect a trolley and are expected to then find all the items you want on the racking and pick it yourself. No problem I thought, IQ over 50 and the racks are labeled we should have no problem.

First row – chest of drawers, oh no they’re out of stock. Thats a pain, well I’ll get the others I liked, no wait they’re out of stock of those too.
Hrmmmmmm well what about the storage solution I wanted for the spare room… nope sold out as well. What about the other 3 storage solutions, oh sold out too!
Ok what about the nice expensive tv/media cabinet my mum wants – sold out too….. riiight

Then my mum goes over to the information desk to ask if they have a catalogue as we can’t remember the other stuff that that possibly could have worked, and don’t really want to drive for 90minutes home empty handed. They don’t have catalogues, but the guy at the information desk tells her if she goes to the information desk they can help her.

Errrr hi? Retarded much? Honestly to work at Ikea I think you have to actually have an IQ level which makes breathing challenging.
About this point I felt like stabbing myself, you waste over an hour of your life picking furniture out and planning your own house, only to get to the end to find out they have literally nothing in stock.

If you are considering a trip to Ikea I can tell you know, save yourself some time… load up the Ikea website and browse all their lovely goods, then sit and stare at a wall and waste 4 hours of your life. It save’s the petrol and has the exact same outcome!

Web development.. the wrong way

June 23, 2009 Coding / Web Dev / Rants

No comments

For most of my career as a web developer, I have been re-writing web systems that already exist for various companies.
Most of those web systems have some sort of in-company processes assigned to them, such as order processing, despatching, etc…

I like to view re-developing existing systems as a point of change for the better, where existing processes within a company can be analysed and optimised. That way the company can save some money, and everyone can be a little bit happier in there job.

However I always find that other staff within companies are reluctant to change, they know how they currently work and they want to stick to that, even when the current processes within the company are slow, laborious and in places just plain wrong.

I don’t understand why other people find it so hard to step back, look at what they’re doing, and see where they can save time and stress with just a few changes!
This is the most frustrating part of my life, I find it very hard to motivate myself to model web applications around company processes that I can see are wrong.

In order to save myself from a heart-attack mid way through my 30′s I’m not sure if I need to find a way to stop caring about improving the companies I work at, or whether I should try to migrate my job away from writing apps into some kind of business processes analyst?

For now I’ll stick to drinking JD every night until I stop caring

Vodafone Customer Service

June 20, 2009 Rants

3 comments

Yesterday I went out and bought an iPhone 3G-S
I have been with vodafone for over 3 years, paying £60+ a month, and have never had an issue
But I need an iPhone for work (to-do lists, project plans, mobile email etc..) and its not available on Vodafone so I had to cancel

Upon ringing the cancellation team the gentleman who answered my called asked me why I was leaving – so I said because i’d bought an iPhone

He then said “so you bought the old one”
me – “no I bought the new one that came out yesterday”
him – “no thats the old one – a new one comes out july 1st”
me – “no that came out yesterday – I already have it”
him – “oh so they brought it out early then”
me – “no not really, it was out yesterday”
him – “have you looked at the new google phone because its much better than the iPhone”
me – “I don’t really want to be told that you think i’ve bought the wrong phone I just want to cancel the contract’

AND HE HUNG UP!!
Continue reading →

08450 264628

April 22, 2009 Cars / Rants

2 comments

I made the horrible, horrible mistake of buying a phone from Phones4U 3 long years ago.
18 months ago when my first contract with them was coming to an end, I started getting daily phone calls (up to 5 a day) from 08450 264628
When I answered a young chavvy sounding lad, who kept calling me “mate”, informed me he was calling from Phones4U head office to offer me an upgrade deal

I was in Lincoln at the time, ironically heading to the Phones4u store to upgrade anyway. So I told the lad that I would just do it in store so I could look at the phones.
“We can do you a better deal than the shop mate, cos we work at head office”.. hrmmm
I hung up and told the guys in the store what had happened, and they said the number wasn’t Phones4U and they weren’t sure who it was.
The number then rang again… I told them they weren’t who they said they were. The lad then told me my name, address, date of birth, mobile phone I had, and contract I was on…

WOW what a complete failure in confidentiality on Phones4U and/or Vodafones behalf!!

I eventually took an upgrade in-store, and informed the lad who kept ringing that I had already upgraded. The calls eventually stopped

Fast forward another 18months… I’ve now had 81 calls in the last week from this number.
I originally explained I wasnt interested in another phone, or changing my contract. But that got me a very angry “What so you dont want to save money then?” Grrr..
So then I started just cancelling the call, then answering the call but not speaking to see if that would stop them ringing.. it didn’t.
I then tried random swearing down the phone, and eventually today I’ve resorted to waiting till they speak then smashing the phone into the desk over and over until they hang up

So enough being well and truly enough, I rang vodafone to get a block put on this number.
After 5 minutes on hold I get a customer services woman who politely informs me “I don’t think we can block numbers, let me talk to a colleague”, and then put me on hold for 15 minutes until I got bored and hung up

The level of sheer incomptence on the behalf of primarily Phones4U, but also Vodafone, as a service provider is ASTOUNDING

My contract ends in June, I have no intention of renewing it whatsoever. I will be taking £345 of my hard earned cash to the nearest O2 store and walking out with an iPhone. I sincerely hope anyone reading this who works at whatever company resides behind the 08450 264628 has to spend a week trapped in a closet listening to a permanent repeat of “The greatest elevator music ever”! Grrrrr