Toot as much as you like, wee man

I was dropping my husband off at the airport sometime during the middle of the night.

Actually it was 6 in the morning but it felt like the day before, if you see what I mean.

Edinburgh Airport (where Scotland meets the world (apparently)) is like most airports in that they try to shaft every last penny from the poor traveller... although I have to say Edinburgh isn't as bad as Norwich Airport which actually charges you £10 to use security!

The particular charge I'm on about is the £1 you have to pay to drop someone off at the airport unless you want to dump them a mile and a half away.  Anyway, it doesn't seem like a lot and I always have my pound ready to throw into the coin bin.

This morning my pound was made up from a 50p piece, 2 20p pieces and a 10p.

The 50p went in fine, as did the 20p pieces but, OMG, my 10p was rejected!

I had to jump out of the car to pick up the 10p from the reject bin (which was nowhere near  where I could get at it easily) before trying again.

As I got out the guy behind revved his engine at me.

Why?

Did he think I was having my 10p rejected deliberately to naff him off?

So I asked him.  'Why are you revving your engine?'  Said I.  He just looked at me sheepishly and sort of waved apologetically.

Anyway, I found 2 5p pieces to replace my 10p and threw them in the bin... I think you can probably see where this is going.

Yes, they were rejected, too.

So it was out of the car, into the boot where my purse was to find more coins.

This time there was a toot of a horn.

My head snapped round... the guy behind who had revved his engine earlier smiled wanly at me and shrugged his shoulders.  His message was clear: 'It wasn't me love.  Have a go at someone else.'

So I did.

'You can toot as much as you like,' I shouted at the tooter.  Do you think I'm doing this on purpose?  Or maybe you'd like me to crash through the barrier so you can be out 10 seconds sooner.'

Don't get me wrong, I'm as impatient as the next person if, say, a driver has missed a traffic light turning green.  But, come on, tooting your horn for something that's not in my control?

A lesson for me there, too.  Impatience in work is fine.  There's a job to do and we have to get on with it.  But I'm not going to get frustrated at the wrong things.

Oh, and by the way, my second 10p, extracted from the depths of my purse worked fine.

One of the funniest emails I've received

I received this email a couple of weeks ago and thought I could do nothing better than re-produce it word for word, other than to change the names to protect the guilty… enjoy:

Hi Renee

Whilst I would prefer to remain anonymous, I have a cautionary tale for those grappling their way painfully around the edges “Social Media”

I’ve been trying to take on-board the social media thing for a while now and, whilst I’ve had a Facebook account for a long time, I only ever used it to live vicariously through my family’s experiences and nothing else. 

About a year ago I created an account for my [Business Name] persona and gathered about me some “friends” so that I could peep into the lives clients too like a flasher-mac weirdo.

At dinner with the family a few months ago we were chatting about inane crap, as you do, and I was encouraged to dip my toe further into the virtual world by creating a Facebook account for our cat, Buzz who is an indoor cat and does nothing.  But, the children thought it would be fun to have a “Diary of an Indoor House Cat”, particularly the boys’ WAGs.  And I duly set to it the next evening.

I created a Facebook account for BuzzCat, invited all the family to be “Friends” and put a few postings up.

A week later Peter, the youngest, came in and said “You know you are posting Buzz’s messages on your [Business Name] Facebook account as if it’s you saying those things, don’t you?” and my heart stopped!   My postings said something along the lines of:

“I had a bit of a tummy ache tonight and I was yowling for an hour. Jonathan tried cuddling me but nothing helped. Nobody knew what was wrong with me and I didn’t know how to tell them.  ‘I know,’ I thought ‘I’ll shit in that lovely pile of clean washing at the end of our bed, that’ll make me feel better’ and do you know, it did!”

“I often find that if I lick Jonathan’s face in the night he stops snoring and I can get some bloody sleep!”

“I spent hours manically grooming today, I’ll really must have a rest now.”

“Hardcore Parkour in the bedroom tonight.  I need a day off tomorrow”

The message – don’t warble before you can tweet.

Anyway, I do hope you are well.  I’ll probably see you at the conference next spring. 

Take care

Carole

My Twitter Account Was Hacked

Well, it might have been… but my children, who seem to know a lot more about these things than I do, thought it might have been a virus.

Whatever… the net result was the same.

A variety of direct messages were sent from my Twitter account to people who are (or more accurately I suspect, were) following me.  The first message wasn’t particularly nice, saying something like this:

People are saying bad things about you… click here to find out what they are saying!

The second one was slightly funnier:

I laughed my head off when I saw this picture of you…

Anyway, I think I’ve fixed the problem by changing my password, deactivating and reactivating my account and then running round a church five times at the full moon without thinking about a lemon.

But the thing that was intriguing about the whole experience were the different reactions from people.  I had maybe a couple of hundred followers (all, no doubt, hanging on my every word) and I suppose about 30 responded to me either by email or a direct message via Twitter.

Most of them, it’s true, simply said something like: Your Twitter account has been hacked, you muppet, you need to sort it out.

But others seem to trust me to such an extent that they took the rogue tweets at face value.  A mate who I haven’t spoken with for a few years tweeted me to ask what it was all about and, as a result, I called him and we’re back in touch.

Another guy, who was responding to the ‘Laughed my head off’ tweet was simply the victim of timing.  A picture of him had just been put up on Facebook.  He was receiving an award and the camera angle made it look as though he was standing in a hole.

He responded by saying: ‘Yeah, I know… must make a note to make sure I get presented an award by someone my own height!’

Now I’m not sure what all this is saying about me or Twitter or the scumbag hackers, but how about this for a stab at analysis?:

• There’s was no rancour directed at me for getting hacked – and most people recognised the rogue tweets for what they were… meaning this is a regular occurrence

• Those who didn’t spot them as rogue tweets took what I was saying at face value which means I need to tweet more to get my message out there

• I guess about 25% of the people who were following me read the tweets meaning the reach of Twitter is much greater than I thought

What do you think?  Answers on a post card, or even better to reneemackay@taxassist.co.uk

You can see my other blogs at

www.taxassist.co.uk/reneemackay and

www.enterprisebritain.com

Number Plates: the antithesis of franchising

I think private number plates are brilliant.  The really clever ones always make me smile.  Here are some examples:

On a really smart Mercedes SLK roadster:

H12 MYX – the numbers were shuffled to read HI 2 MY X

On a fabulous, modern, smart horse truck carrying thoroughbred racehorses:

C1 NAG

I could even get into private plate spotting.  I’d like to rack up G5 POT (G 5POT).  Finally, 2 BE and NOT 2B… which are actually owned by the same person, apparently.

I’d love to buy wife a private plate (remember she’s an accountant): LE55 TAX

Or (remember her name is Renee) R3 NEE or REN 33

I suspect these would be a little on the pricey side, though.

The thing is, I’ve noticed something about private plates and franchising… they don’t go together.  Or, rather, they don’t go together if a franchisee comes with their own private number plate; it’s fine if they acquire one to promote their business.

Let me explain what I mean.

The other week I was training a group of new franchisees.  It’s more of a blue colour franchise, so the sales, marketing and business element is a little bit smaller than some other franchises.

There were 8 fellas on the course and 7 of them were fabulous; really excited and looking forward to the challenge – nervous but excited.

The eighth guy had more money and had left a high powered job (for ‘left’ read ‘made redundant’) and he still had a chip on his shoulder and a big corporate attitude.  Personally, I also believe that he was feeling a little bruised by his experience and embarrassed to find himself in the position he was in.

This manifested itself in an aggressive attitude in the training room.  And guess what?  Yep, on this occasion, you’re quite right.  He had a private number plate.

This got me thinking and I kept my eyes open.  A trend soon emerged.  Private plate = less compliant franchisee.  In most cases this doesn’t show itself as aggression, rather as less willingness to follow the system because, quite clearly, they have a private plate and therefore, they know better.

Do you think I’m on to something and franchisors should follow this new approach to franchisee recruitment?  Even if everything else stacks up, you can’t join the network if you have a private number plate!

Perhaps not, but it would be interesting to do a formal study about the relative success of franchisees who didn’t have a plate that reads J4 SON (J4SON)… or their own equivalent.