hatmandu

New 'pub quiz' puzzle is up. Oh, and read about nude religious sect of the 17th century, if you like.

Five years on from the Personality Declaration Act 2009, we are in a position to evaluate the indubitable changes it has wrought on society.

A reminder of the background to the legislation - which itself obliges me at this point to declare my red status. Towards the end of 2008, the general populace was growing restless against the use of call centres for businesses to manage their customer relations. There was also a rising tide of complaints against shop floor staff in many retail outlets having no clear interest in or knowledge of the products they were selling (in the cases where they had not been replaced by electronic information points and automated tills).

In a White Paper, communications analyst James McCully proposed that customer service, from both sides of the fence, would be rendered much more effective if the customer were able to determine the level of sincerity of the salesperson or support operative and their personal investment in the matter in hand. He further proposed the use of Myers-Briggs Type Indicators, then still in vogue with human resources professionals, and ran trials in a number of large utility companies where software was used to determine the broad emotional nature of a calling customer (their emotional state was indicated by detecting stress patterns in the voice). The operative then appointed to handle the enquiry was chosen according to their own MTBI profile and how likely it was that they could help the customer (or get rid of them) without further emotional escalation.

To everyone's surprise, the experiment was generally successful in terms of customer retention - but in practice around 80% of the work was allocated to only 20% of the customer service operatives. Only those with certain personality traits were likely to achieve a positive outcome.

The reader is likely to recall the next stage, a radical simplification of this process where all workers in a public-facing capacity - whether in person, online or as a skypist - were obliged to declare their 'enthusiasm', with the use of a statement such as 'I am obliged to tell you I am personally invested in this company/product', or its counterpart 'NOT personally invested'. As with the MBTI experiment, the ratio of the former to the latter was something in the region of four to one. However, the new system threw up successful outcomes, even with the operatives 'not invested'.

The simple reason was that customers could relate to an operative 'just doing their job' (as many were in the same situation in their own workplace) and forgive the lack of interest. To start with there were headlines along the lines of 'STAFF URGED NOT TO BE BOVVERED', but when the policy was enshrined in legislation, the journalists themselves were obliged to declare their motivation or lack thereof, and the threat of hypocrisy soon ironed out controversy.

The further simplification in 2012 of this system into a 'traffic light' system of 'green' and 'red' status (for enthusiasm or lack of it respectively) was even more popular and avoided the unwieldy jargon of 'personal investment' - although some foreign visitors for the Olympic Games were no doubt somewhat baffled.

Although 'red' staff achieved higher levels of customer satisfaction than hitherto, naturally the 'greens' remained more popular where detailed information or assistance was required, and they began to attract higher salaries. The occasional cases where members of the red group attempted to fake a green personality were soon weeded out with advances in the burgeoning field of neurorecruitment. Whether the minority of highly paid, ever-smiling and persistently helpful workers retains this popularity is for the future to tell.

This article was written largely with the assistance of Wal*Martopedia, "the free encyclopedia anyone green can edit" (TM). It took 20 minutes to compile and I have been paid 30 euros.

Marvellous:

My gob was genuinely and utterly smacked this week to discover Mark Heap was born in 1952. 1952! 55! 55! I thought he was about 15 years younger than that. In other news, rewatching the first series of Green Wing is very rewarding - genius.

PS 55!

Good news: Pearson (Penguin et al) is providing electronic versions of all of its books later this year. Idiotic news: they plan to charge the same price as the printed versions.

Someone should start up www.belmingcompany.com.

Grr. I've spent a whole bloody hour trying to fix a puncture on the Brompton, only to be rewarded with painful thumbs and... another puncture. Trying to get 16" tyres back on is on the wrong side of impossible. So, back to square one - I'll probably end up doing what i_ludicrous does and pay someone else to do it. Time for Kevlar tyres, maybe.

In other news, Duncan, how about the Smithfield nocturne? (Edit: bum, we've got people staying that weekend.)

1. What he says
2. World plate-spinning champion
3. Horse!

Great stuff.

Finally got leisure for the...

( dialect meme )

In a Georgian farmhouse in the hills, with a stream running across the meadow, and a mix of ancient oak and beech woods nearby, and a view for dreams to float across from my upstairs study window, punctuated by the occasional bleat of the goat or sleepy woof of the dog as it wakes from the hearthside.

Let's hope editor doesn't annoy his employer.

As Mr Small Beds has explained, it's the Oxfringe Open Mic again tonight - blimey, a whole year after the last one. Please come! Read something for fun, or just come and listen. There's live music, too, from Mew and Wooster.

Here's what replaces my monthly cryptic crossword (though I'll still do one now and again): a new pub quiz puzzle format. (This one's a bit rough around the edges - hopefully next time I'll make it better...)

What an excellent stag weekend that was, if you haven't already heard. Great work by sillage.

Break the strike! Write as many posts as you possibly can on Friday 21 March!

Why? Because we've been lucky to have something for nothing for so long, and LJ has every right to charge us (or advertise at us) to spew our semi-digested thoughts over its cyberland day after day!

(Edit: I should add that I do think the editing of users' interests was despicable, and certainly grounds to hold the new owners in suspicion; but I think the withdrawal of ad-free accounts is entirely their prerogative.)

Somewhere on the web today a young graphic designer ranted about how they hate their clients and the work they have to do for them, and wanted to know how to earn money by doing things they love and respect (they had a startlingly high opinion of their own skills). Someone responded with Hugh McLeod's wise Sex and Cash theory. Today I give you a restatement of this in the form of...

Hat's Three-Step Plan for Fulfilment
1. Do things you don't like for money.
2. Do things you like for free.
3. On the occasions when you get money for doing something you like, count yourself lucky.

Anyway, I'm off to the pub for lunch now.

Oh, and have a look at this, if you like.

So. In January the missus finally (after three years of gentle persuasion) won me over to seeing a financial adviser to address the I'm-36-and-have-no-pension matter. At that meeting, when asked when I want to retire, I grandiosely declared 'never'. A bit like King Lear but with 80% fewer nevers. I also tried to explain that I have no concept of the future. I failed.

Anyway, today was the rematch and I've been wooed into signing up, and parcelling away bits of my monthly income so that some raddled, dribbling old fool who shares my name can still afford a few bottles of port to finish off the pickling process in 30 years' time. So it goes.

Inevitably, the IFA persistently tried to win us over to critical illness insurance, income protection insurance and a five-year extended warranty on that pencil sharpener I bought. Thus far we've fended these off.

Seriously, folks, what's your view of insurance? I see insurance firms purely as bookmakers who I don't see any statistical need to gamble with. When the bus hits (ironically I really did come alarmingly close to death by omnibus only two weeks ago), maybe I'll be sorry. Which of you lot cares about that stuff? I'm interested.

This 'no concept of the future' stuff, I really mean it. In these meetings I feel like Dickens' Skimpole - "I'm a child" - though hopefully less of a spongeing wanker (a man's use of a sponge is a private matter). I just can't see beyond the end of my nose. Maybe that's why I stick with being a freelancer, weathering the feasts and famines.

( Let's get that rubbish meme out of the way )

Look, what is this bloody Binge stuff that everyone seems to be drinking lately? I assume it must some strange amalgam of beer and orange - or: half of beer with gin mixed in the middle (5).

Latest crossword is up.

'tis the last of my cryptic ones, alas, simply because the money I get doesn't pay enough for the time it takes to compile them - I'll still be doing a monthly crossword but from March it will be a general knowledge one instead.

This week, sillage and I have been interviewed by an American journalist about the election site; editor has been asked for a quote about computer mice, and vardebedian for one about scriptwriting. When a bunch of drunken idiots like us is becoming the world's opinion formers, what hope is there, eh?