Monday, 7 February 2005
Under the Scotsman's kilt
It's true what they say about what's under a Scotsman's kilt. Or, at least, one particular actor playing a Scotsman in the "The Amorous Prawn", a 1962 comedy which is lightweight and dated but entertaining enough if you don't take it too seriously.
A few years back I videoed that film as it was on in the mid-afternoon of a weekday, and I was working.
Towards the end of the movie there's a scene where a Scotsman in a kilt leaps into a bedroom through a hatch in the ceiling. He jumped down, the kilt flew up, I thought "W-h-a-t?!" and hit rewind. Did a frame by frame playback and - yup. No underwear. And a clear view of what lies beneath underwear but which we are seldom lucky enough (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) to be vouchsafed even a glimpse of, except maybe for a nanosecond in an out of focus documentary on Channel 5 after midnight. Yes, at 4 in the afternoon. In full anatomical glory.
Cue lots of dirty laughter, telling of friends and lending of video to a friend's mother who had a great time inviting the little old ladies of the neighbourhood round for a fun-filled afternoon of pause-rewind and tittering. This was a film familiar to many of them from their youth, and they'd never spotted that before. Ah, the wonders of modern technology...
Sadly, what technology giveth, technology can taketh away. Recently The Amorous Prawn was shown on TV again, and I set the digital video recorder with bated breath. Was I disappointed to find that they'd digitally airbrushed out what was all too visible just a few years ago. Don't know who told them, the spoilsport, but it sure wasn't me.
Now I wish I hadn't taped over that video. Could have made a tidy sum renting it out to the disbelieving. But that's life...
Technorati Tags: Humor, Humour, Funny, Dirty
Lakeland: great customer service
There is only one company in the UK that consistently delivers on customer service, and indeed outperforms on occasion: Lakeland.
Unsexy they may be, yes - kitchen/household items and consumables, though branching more now into into other stuff for the home (even some PC-related stuff like a laptop cooler!).
But other companies in the UK, and indeed elsewhere, could learn a thing or two from them.
Recently I ordered from them, paying extra for a next day delivery service as I was going to be home to receive delivery of the stuff the next day. Unusually, by 5pm it hadn't arrived, and when I rang them they apologised profusely and said they'd experienced exceptional demand. It would be delivered the next working day instead. I would have had to take that day off to be in - so I asked them to refund the cost of the next day delivery service. Which they did without a quibble.
When my boxes arrived, I found that they'd included a voucher for 20 pounds off my next order, along with a note of apology. Even though they'd already refunded the special delivery charge.
Now that's customer service. And it's not the first time I've had something similar with Lakeland. I'm pretty fussy and have high standards - and I've always been delighted with Lakeland (except for one incident I won't go into, and which I willingly forgave them for given everything else before and since). Yet I've shopped with Lakeland for years, and I intend to continue to do so. They're a joy to deal with, and I don't often say that about a home shopping (or indeed any) company!
Most companies don't realise that customers acknowledge everyone makes mistakes, and with the best will in the world things will go wrong sometimes. What separates the company which will keep an almost fanatically loyal customer base from the indifferent rest is how it deals with the situation when things go wrong. And in this area, Lakeland is unequalled, in my experience.
Technorati Tags: Home Shopping, Household Goods, Customer Service, Review, Reviews, Consumer Review, Consumer Reviews
Sunday, 6 February 2005
Colley's Rule: making decisions
What's the best way to choose the most suitable Christmas gift, or the most fun party to go to, etc etc?
In December I saw a lighthearted article by Robert Matthews in the Financial Times, in the pre-Christmas context, suggesting the application of scientific rules to some Christmas-related problems. One which particularly struck me was Collee's Rule (also known it seems as Colley's Rule), apparently named after a British doctor who popularised it in the 1990's, although the rule seems to date back from before that.
The article said that the rule had recently been mathematically proven - and it seems to me a brilliantly simple yet fantastically useful rule one could apply in practice.
Here's how it works:
* Find yourself something which looks suitable
* Then put it back or reject it!
* Keep looking
* Take the first thing you find that's better than the one you put back or rejected.
It seems that, scientifically speaking, following this rule makes it much more likely that you'll end up making the best choice, compared with taking the first thing that comes along.
But note that the rule only works to produce the best outcome for decisions in situations where there is no going back (e.g. because you've no time to retrace your steps, like when you're on a one-day shopping trip, or it's something like a job offer where you can't exactly go back and take the one you rejected before!). The article applied the rule somewhat tongue in cheek (and obviously against the principles behind the rule) to party invites too, suggesting that if you didn't get a better offer than the first invite that you'd already rejected, you could always go gatecrash it!
Oddly enough I could find very little on the Net about Collee's Rule - just this blog mention and this newsgroup thread (which I must say I found a bit of a struggle to comprehend, maths eeeek!). [Added 9 June 2005:] See also this interesting article from smh.com.
If anyone decides to try Collee's Rule and would like to share their experiences about their use of Colley's Rule in real life, and whether it actually worked for them, I'd be really interested to hear all about it.
Technorati Tags: Decision Making, Making Decisions, Decisions, Rules, Life, Choices, Mathematics
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