Aye, jaffa jelly joke you all

Ah, customers.  You can't reason with them and you can't poke them in the eye either.  I had one of my regular customers in the other day, a Mr James Brown.  Quite different from the 'hardest-working-man-in-show-business and drug-fuelled-maniac James Brown' in the sense that he's white and if he tried to get up offa that thing, he'd probably put his hip out. 


James Brown was actually a republican!  Seriously!

Anyway, he usually has a go at me for being a bit of a lefty and reading the Herald and the Guardian.  And I belittle him on his choice of Nazi periodical, the Daily Mail.

However, when I was talking to him, we actually managed to agree on certain points.  Not just concurring that it was indeed a sunny day but he mentioned something about the Icelandic volcano,Eyjafjallajökull (probably the most copy-pasted word this year) causing havoc with our airspace.  I mentioned about how this was Iceland's revenge on the British and European economy and he laughed and told me that he also said this and I was the first person to say that to him.

Now, naturally I don't actually believe that Iceland deliberately set about causing European airspace to remain plane-free for the past six days, but he's read the Daily Mail so there could well be a venomous letter from "Disgusted, Turnbridge Wells" about it and he's got it from there.

We then decided to talk about Kraft buying over Cadbury and then screwing-over the British workers when they said that the jobs were going to be secure initially... until they actually completed the purchase then they changed their mind.  I said that they were then going to outsource production to Poland and the chocolate wouldn't taste the same.  He agreed, and I also told him how Kraft did the same with the Norwegian chocolate company Freia.  Moved production to Eastern Europe and the chocolate that was once "a small piece of Norway" is now "not-quite-as-tasty imitation chocolate of Norway via Poland".

Plus, we also agreed that Kraft didn't exactly make the best cheese... instead it was all just... well... processed crap.

Then he told me about Santander being in financial trouble at the moment, which I can see why when the Spanish mortgage market has taken a nosedive and repossessions are rife.  Plus, with their UK banking division offer high rates... I think we know exactly what happened in Iceland with them offering ridiculously high rates.

And finally, just to prove his Daily Mail paranoia and to get in another kick at Gordon Brown he says "the only reason that Brown saved Northern Rock was because him and all his pals had their money in there."  As much as I consider myself a conspiracy theorist, i'm just not buying this one.  They couldn't allow Northern Rock to go to the wall as it would have had a worse effect on the economy.  Mind you, i'd quite like them to nationalise all the banks and shoot all the directors.  That would certainly save on compensation packages.

So from one surprisingly agreeable conversation with Mr Brown to one that was very different.  My boss says to me today "Did you speak to a customer that was complaining about his interest?"

I thought about telling her to narrow that down slightly as in the past month it could have been anyone.  "Anyone specifically?"

"A man that's complaining about your attitude." she says.

I pause for a moment before repeating "anyone specifically?" with a wry smile.

"He says he phoned the other day about his interest and then he proceeded to say about how we got a bad press in the Daily Mail and you told him that 'you don't read that paper'."

"Well it's true, I don't read that paper because i'm not a racist moron!"

"Yes, but you don't need to say it like that.  He seemed quite angry."

"Of course he's angry!  He reads the Daily Mail!  Christ, even I can feel my blood-pressure rising just reading the headline of it.  For different reasons though."

"You can't just give out your opinions like that."

"He gives me his opinion... I give him mine.  The difference is that mine can be justified rationally with sense and logic."

"Right... well... I said i'd have a word with you... so consider this it."

And so I went back about my day.  Satisfied that i'd pissed-off another Daily Mail reader.  Just giving them their daily hate.  That's what they want, is it not?

~Stripes