Entertainment For Lively Minds
Because we care
I'm in the Starbucks at Newport Pagnell motorway services, where the offer of the day is a Caramel Macchiato, and I'm looking at a sign on the wall which says this:
To protect the quality of our coffee, we ask you not to smoke
Now. Two things about this. One: I'm pretty sure there's a law about not smoking in public places like restaurants and coffee shops. Two: if they really give a flying fuckuccino about the quality of their coffee, why do they so proudly desecrate it with a hastily-hockled caramel flob-job and a sneeze of baby vomit?
After five nights in hotels, I've had it drummed into me that using more towels than I need is a crime against the environment, and much as the hotel would be happy to go to the expense of washing them, they can't help but shed a tear for all the dolphins that will die if I attempt to dry myself thoroughly. Or something.
Weasels. Snakes. Worms. Self interest camoflagued as caring. Anyone else spotted a corporate Flying Fuckuccino?
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Those useless coat hangers
with the hook cut off in hotels. Nothing screams "we think the customer is a thief" quite like them.
Not being funny,
But I bet you normal coat-hangers would go missing from a hotel pretty sharpish.
Not
when I'm staying in the room they wouldn't.
The benefit of the Captain being on tour is the addition of
the phrases:
Having a Lenny
Mayonnaise-willpowered
A flying fuckuccino
to the English language
Aye...I was thinking the same thing
and that perhaps we could write to Mrs Captain Underpants and tell her to change the locks on the SS Underpants, so that we could have more of this. He's like an anti Bill Bryson...
Cap'n Pants
Long may you suffer fuckwits, bad hotels and corporate toshery for it gives us very funny and finely crafted posts.
I fully intend to claim "I don't give a flying fuckaccino" as my default response to imbecilic events in the future
Big Babies
By Michael Bywater covers this territory too. It's funny until you realize that he has some issues of his own.
Because they care about being sued
I get annoyed when I hear recorded tannoy announcements at Paddington to the approximate tune of,'Please take care when walking through the station. Recent adverse weather conditions have made certain areas of the concourse slippery'
Meaning, 'Look if you fall over on your fat arse it's not our fault. In fact we told you about it so don't even think about calling ClaimsFuckingDirect, OK? You just slipped. It was an Act of God. If He exists, which, frankly, is in doubt in this day and age. Just piss off to work and stop making the place look untidy. And take your hands out your pockets.'
Jesus! You're playing russian roulette with that statement
Have you not seen the God thread?!
M&S carrier bags
We have amassed a large collection of 'bags for life' but occasionally forget them. The M&S crappy ones that usually split before you get home and which used to be free now cost 5p. Fair enough I suppose, it's not much and I should remember to bring some but don't pretend it's for the environment, not when I can pop upstairs and buy a cheap pair of socks and have them put in a free carrier bag without ever being asked if I want them to.
Similarly
Pret a Manger seem to bleat on about goodness and greeness continually, but happily dole out plastic bags to protect your sandwich on its mammoth journey back to the office.
Ian, head of crisps
Seriously, read the back of one of their bags of crisps if you want to see an example of corporate ga-ga.
Gen Y
That shi... stuff is aimed at their Generation Y customers, not us over-the-hill Gen X-ers! Seriously. Apparently Gen Y love all that touchy-feely crap.
There's a lot of it about
The towel thing is clearly to save on laundry bills. And even if you do dare to deposit your soiled towels in the bathtub as directed, they just fold them up and hang them up again, I'm quite sure.
All that packaging that goes with new hotel rooms: little paper caps on glasses, matchbooks, cards telling you about the inevitable free wi-fi and broadband, endless toiletries, loo seat covers, coathanger covers - all surely of more danger to the environment than a once-used handtowel.
In Boots
I'm always asked if I need a bag and I feel like it's a loaded question.
While they still give
you a foot-long receipt for a 10p purchase.
And a Boots no.7 voucher
irrespective of the purchaser's gender.
I'm wondering..
.. did he mean c-bag and we all missed the joke S-:
No end to corporate nannying & bullying.
I've always enjoyed:-
- Being lectured about not standing the other side of the yellow line on the underground as if this is really going to put off a potential suicide case.
- Being told to take all my personal belongings when leaving the train. As Michael Bywater in Big Babies said "but I don't have all my personal belongings with me".
- Train announcers advising you of the next station stop thereby absolving the company for any responsibility for any unscheduled stops en route.
- Leeds United calling me a customer, rather than a supporter.
It's not just corporates, but the state who are intent on infantilising us.
Is there any chance...
Of a Captain Underpants tour 2010 t-shirt?
I'm imagining his name in gothic lettering with a couple of random umlauts scattered about, or maybe even a horned underpants logo...
Captain
You need to go home man!
I'm trying, Bing, I'm trying
Home tomorrow. Scotland next week. Anyone up for a drink in Aberdeen on Tuesday?
I have seen that Starbucks sign too
and it makes my blood boil. Unlike their coffees which will either be thermo-nuclear hot or ambient temperature. The quality of Starbucks products in general is poor, the coffee, the food etc, and the loos always seem to be out of order or unpleasant.
What is the point of that sign? As you point out, you are not allowed to smoke in coffee shops because it's the law. Nothing to do with impairing the quality of the coffee.
It seems to me that Starbucks along with Google (first, do no evil) and Apple seem to specialise in this sort of sanctimonious piffle. They are all gigantic corporations who would have you believe that they share the same Slacker values as the characters in the movie "Clerks".
I think Starbucks
would be a WAAAAAY better company if they shared some of Randall's values.
MY favourite (though luckily I've avoided it for a couple of years) was Manchester Airport's continuous loop of "No smoking" and "Security Announcement" bons mots. I'd have thought your average suicide bombing nutjob would try to get the rucksack full of semtex onto the actual plane, not do the frankly anti-climactic (and shit) thing of bombing the fucking departure lounge.
And the voice on the Tyneside Metro, "Stand clear of the doors, please", that's sounds like a Geordie special needs reader is speaking it off a card, writen in crayon. Though the Metro itself is great.
Metro
Funnily enough I was on the Metro once and the driver came over the tannoy and said 'Next stop Central Station, which is where the big choo-choo trains live'.
Not really in the spirit of the thread as he was joking, rather than talking down to adults a la Innocent, but I thought it worth relaying!
Choo-choo puff-puff
Years ago my mate was on a train, running late, and the train announcer duly advised the passengers: "We apologise for the late arrival of this train. This is due to chronic underfunding of the rail industry".
Hit and Miss
To be fair to Starbucks, those signs have been up in their stores since well before the smoking ban. I would agree that a simple No Smoking sign is less likely to cause a comment though.
On the quality front, they need to buck their ideas up, they used to be leaders but their standards have been slowly slipping over the years.
All I want is a proper cup of coffee
There was a sign outside a proper coffee place near my house that read: 'Starbucks Coffee is like having sex in prison: you wait a long time for it and when it arrives it's pretty rough!'
Innocent Smoothies
or Ocado vans are the worst.
"I'm a veggie van! I drink bio diesel!"
Fuck you. I'm 45.
Another vote for supermarkets and carrier bags
I frequently have to bite my tongue when receiving a a single gossamer thin bag to pack a basket of shopping into.
What really gets my goat about this is that if they really cared about the environment then why on earth do they sell fruit and vegetables washed and packaged in plastic? I cannot fathom a good reason for packing apples in plastic bags or courgettes in packs of 3.
By all means try and get people to bring their own bags but don't even dream of trying to tell me that it's out of concern for the environment and not pursuit of profit.
Natural Packaging
I once saw a shrink-wrapped coconut in Sainsburys. What kind of warped mind needs to package a coconut in plastic?
Any sign
requesting you do or do not do something and then it's accompanied by an exclamation mark in some kind of chummy 'is that alright with you' way.
Basically any kind of passive aggressive bullshit.
Still makes for an hilarious website www.passiveaggressivenotes.com
Have an "up"
I've just wasted a happy hour on the site. Brilliant.
taking the credit
I will post that blog to my pals tomorrow who will think I am such a cool guy for finding it - or maybe not. Its a great blog though
Calling "customer service", being put on hold...
...and told every thirty seconds "Thank you for staying on the line, you will be keeping your place in the queue".
I don't want to keep my place in the queue, I want to move forward!
Oh don't get me started...
...well, OK then,
Virgin Media - that effing patronising recorded message 'Now let's get you sorted, straight away' Well fine, Miss Ubercool Virgin Media, if you bloody well did, instead of making me press gazillions of buttons on the phone before getting connected to some call centre in Uzbekhistan.
And politicians who preface any answer with 'Look...' Because that's really going to make me think that here's a matey, honest Joe who's going to give a straight answer.
Sleepers and lies
The one and only time I really wanted a train helpline it was closed.
The reason for calling was that after the Sunday rail maintenance way, way overrunning, the Cardiff to Chester service turns into a single train stop to Newport and then two coach loads crawl along the slow roads to Hereford, where..no train. Helpline closed , station staff knew nothing, except to suggest everyone to go via Birmingham. Three hour journey ? Nope, seven and a half.
I would have put up with such egregious cant from Arriva Trains (for it is they) if they actually had some useful info at the end of it. However the helpful website did advise my mates that my train had arrived three minutes early, while I was getting an unexpected view of the Cadbury factory. Yes, the connecting train departed from Hereford (cough) on time. Punctuality targets were met, though just not by anything as vulgar as actually transporting paying passengers to their destinations. This gets my goat far more than some downtrodden call centre bod having to chant corporate bollocks at me.
Bags, bags, bags
I am irritated to the nth degree whenever I'm made to feel like the biggest threat to the planet just because I'd like a bag to carry more than an armful's of groceries.
In her teaching days, my wife had to gather different items of supermarket produce to make her pupils think about where their food came from. It took her less than 10 minutes to find products from almost 20 countries. So, Mr Green Supermarket Man, don't charge me money for a bag that harms the environment when you've got a ship bringing in 10,000 pairs of jeans all the way from China just so you can sell them for a pound less than Asda.
And another thing: lately Wal-Mart is asking us for our postcode whenever we pay (it may be the same at Asda in the UK). It's only so our neighbourhood can be bombarded with marketing fliers, but somehow I go away feeling like I've committed a crime just because I don't want to hand over some of my details to some spotty herbert behind a till.
Slightly off topic, but as I'm venting: one more thing that makes my blood boil? Piers Morgan. Just because. Thank you.
No
It's OUR data, so (frankly) they can fuck right off - though I suppose I could sell it to them if their offer were right.
and it's for that very reason
that I won't sign up for a loyalty card. As I understand it, they get a shitload of data about what I buy, when I buy it, where I buy it and how I choose to pay for it, and in return I get, on average, a 1% reduction on my bill, and a few extra vouchers thrown in every once in a while.
On the same (rather pathetic) basis that 'you can't beat the house in Vegas' I know that this information is of significant use to supermarkets. Otherwise they wouldn't try and offer me an incentive to part with it. Assuming that they're in the habit of riding their suppliers silly for the best bargain THEY can get, I'm pretty sure that I'd be getting a shitty bargain if I took them up on their 1% offer.
So I don't.
There's a Tesco in Scarborough
where I work, though I live in Whitby, where there isn't one. Occasionally, I will wander into the one in Scarborough. Now, I have a Clubcard, so my attitude is to piss in their information pool: I basically decide, at random, whether I will pay by card or cash, whether I'll use the card or not and indeed which thing snot to buy (saving it till I get home and to the Co-op). My theorising here is that the incomplete or bad data they get form me is actively anti-productive for them: I'm not sure their data mining software will be able to work out too much about me.
It's probably got you down as
not liking them very much. These computers are bloody good you know....
Software Engineering
and this kind of stuff is my bag, baby. If it has me down as "he doesn't like us" they'll have a bugger of a time working out quite why. Which is just how I like it...
I hate
those signs in loos that say "Now wash your hands". Who else's am I going to wash?
Or, indeed "what" else
I'm not a Portsmouth-based dentist, so I'll leave it at that.
The new ones are worse
Step by step instructions, carefully laid out so you don't get them in the wrong order.
FFS
We've had this
In the North East.
Believe it or not, it's aimed at adults.
Although
to be fair, many blokes don't bother anyway.
Washing your hands.
I dont wash my hands after I have a pee.
I was in the Royal Navy - I was taught not to piss on my fingers.
Remind me
not to eat from the same bowl of nuts as you :-)
Televisions
I don't mind the hotels trying to get us to decrease wastage when the environment benefits but they then waste power by greeting me with a switched on television when I enter the room. Normally these days, I switch it straight off and it doesn't get used again.
When it's pouring with rain
and the assistant in WHS pushes my copy of The Word at me asking if I need a bag for that. It's enough to make me buy a subscription...
toblerone
would you like a king size toblerone with that
Pounded
"And can I interest you in any of our chocolates for a pound today?"
Your call is important to us
please hold the line.
If it's that important to you employ some more people and answer the bloody phone.
Is there anything else I can help you with today?
No!! I'm 50 not 3 if there was I'd ask.
Anyone selling me something I
didn't ask for.
If I had wanted it, I would have asked. If you haven't heard me asking for it, there should be some kind of clue there for you, monkey boy.
Captain,
You should have popped into Drake Towers for a cup of tea. (I live in Newport Pagnell about half a mile away from the services).
If you'd given me warning I would have had time to remove the "Don't Sprinkle When You Tinkle' sign in the loo, the 'Please Remove Your Shoes - I Don't Want Shit All Over My Floor' doormat, and the banner in the kitchen, stating: 'No Coffee Served Here - I Find The Aroma Ruins The Taste Of My Gauloises' .
Ah well, next time.
"For your comfort and safety"
A quick Google...
Hewlett Packard cares about your comfort, productivity, well-being and productivity
Quantas is passionate about not getting sued because they pack you in like cattle and keep you strapped down until your arteries burst. Oh, and they're saving you from the Cosmic Radiation. So much love...