Who moved my Cheese?

"Who moved my Cheese?", by Spencer Johnson, is a fantastic little book, all about coping with change. I read it last year, and copped a fair amount of derisive comments from my colleagues at work. However when I needed to move on to pastures new towards the end of the year, its teachings were highly beneficial.

Using "Cheese" as a metaphor for whatever is important to you (good health, happiness, enjoyable work, etc. - you can use it in almost any context), the book tells the story of four mice, trapped in a maze (a metaphor for "life"), who wake up one day to discover that their supply of cheese has run out. The signs have been there for a while, but they were largely ignored. Now the mice must decide what to do - do they explore the maze, and find a new source of cheese, or complain bitterly, and ask why their cheese has been taken away, and sit morosely, waiting in a forlorn hope that it will be replaced.

After some deliberation, I made a list of what my work-based "Cheese" actually was:

- Doing work that's interesting and challenging
- Feeling valued and respected by my peers, and by management
- Working in a friendly team, who actually want to be there
- Having a salary that doesn't insult my wallet
- Having some formal training every now and then
- Working for a company that knows where it's going, and how it'll get there
- Wanting to go to work when I get out of bed in the mornings
- Feeling that I'm making a positive difference to the company

For many years at Epic I was quite content, because almost all of these "cheese" must-haves were there for me. From November 2006 onwards however, our team fell apart, and the work dried up, for various reasons which I won't go into. Throw in some managerial incompetence, and severe financial difficulties (for the company), and my mind was made up!

My new company is giving me all the cheese I require - and more. All it takes is a little courage to go looking for it, and it's there to be found. I strongly urge all those bereft of cheese, to make a list of what their "cheese" looks like, then to start looking for a new source - it'll make your life a lot more enjoyable.

All this talk of food is making me hungry... I'm off to find a cheese sandwich :)

In praise of Sky

It's finally happened (as you can probably tell by my recent radio silence) - I've got Sky TV. For the last four months I've had no TV signal at my flat, and combined with a lack of Internet access (see my previous posts), I was starting to feel somewhat isolated. The Pipex debacle made me evaulate other options, and I spotted that Sky charge a mere £5 a month for a 40GB/month broadband service (4x the capacity of the more expensive and non-functioning Pipex offering). Deciding to get Sky TV was a logical decision - I'm now paying £23 a month for about 200 channels, and a fast broadband service, as opposed to Pipex's offering of £15 a month and no TV.

Sky customer services have been pretty awesome. The engineer turned up on time, and got the whole thing rigged up within 2 hours. I was notified by text message the day before he came, and was given his mobile number, in case I needed to contact him. He tuned the Sky remote in to my TV, and checked that everything worked perfectly before he left. Setting up broadband was a doddle - they sent the router out within 24 hours, and the CD-rom based installation routine was the best I've ever seen. It's pretty fast too, at 4.5mbps. All Sky's paperwork has been clearly written, and their call centre staff are friendly and well informed. On top of all this, I'm getting £50 of Marks & Sparks vouchers, because I was recommended by a friend. Now THAT'S what I call service! Well done Sky.

As for the TV service itself, there's an awful lot of rubbish, but the UKTV channels are very good, and the documentary channels are quite compelling. Film4 is rapidly becoming a personal favourite, and I've found a channel that shows almost nothing but Star Trek. I've also been enjoying the Parliamentary broadcast channel, and have finally seen Channel 5! The only problem now, is finding time to watch the damn thing...

Silly Season in Customer Services Land

You'll be pleased to hear that my TV turned up! My grumble today, however, is about Pipex (the Internet Service Provider), and their incredibly bad, atrocious, awful, jaw-droppingly incompetent and clueless customer service "team".

Firstly, I suppose it's partly my fault. I wanted broadband in my new flat, so I shopped around, and Pipex looked like value for money at £15 a month for a 10GB limit. I duly signed up on January 9th, and the router, welcome pack etc. arrived the next day, albeit at the wrong address. I waited the 7 working days specified in the welcome letter, and turned the router on - nothing. I purchased a spare micro-filter, and tried a spare router, but still, nothing. Cue two weeks of trying to contact Pipex. If you talk to their customer service people, they'll just say "it's a technical problem, you need to re-dial and talk to Technical Support". If you dial Technical Support, you won't get through. Believe me, I've tried! You just sit in a queue for hours after hours, listening to the same cheesy music. I finally got an email from them last week, saying that they've had a "provisioning problem", and that the broadband would go live on February 15th - five weeks after I ordered it. No explanation as to what the problem is, just "there's a problem". Hmmm....

This morning I spotted how reasonable the Sky TV / broadband prices are, and decided to cancel the Pipex setup. I phoned Pipex, and after 10 minutes in a queue, got through to their cancellations department (says it all really!). I asked for my MAC code, so I could switch to Sky, and was told "sorry, but because your broadband has never worked, there's no MAC code to give you". Interesting... I phoned the BT Broadband tagging team, who laughed, said "It's all Pipex's fault, and it's up to them to remove the ADSL tag request on the line", and wished me luck dealing with them. They also pointed out that the request to ADSL-enable my phone line only came through on January 28th, a whopping THREE WEEKS after I ordered it. So it seems that the "problem" was a case of "we forgot to turn your broadband on".

I now have the joyous task of speaking to the dimwits at Pipex, and trying to get them to remove their ADSL tag from my phone line. At least I'm not alone - check out www.pipexproblems.co.uk

To be continued...