Upselling & Club politics

Well, it's been a while and quite frankly nothing out of the ordinary has really annoyed me till recently. This is ofcourse if we choose to ignore the moronic activity in London and the copy-cats in various other cities throughout England. Back to point as we all know what I think should happen to the oxygen stealers that are "protesting".

Yo Dawg, I heard you like upselling so I thought I'd upsell while I upsell!

Gradually over the years companies have progressively been more and more pushing their gimmicks and storecards etc in order to retain consumer loyalty through financial commitment or otherwise. It's a valid tactic and done in the rite way can be effective.

In reality what is happening very often is one of two things;

1. The first is that shopMonkey#1 is told they'll get £X per X subscriptions so in their untrained sales experience they decide to be more overbearing than a grinder* in the underground turning your purchasing experience into a battle to just get to the point where they ask for "cash or card?". One no should be enough, what intelligent person would think I am going to say yes after saying no twice?
2. The second is the "upsell failsafe" where consumer X decides that their storecard only catchs 20% of customers so they create four or more under the impression that they're bound to say to one of the bleedy things. I was in Shell petrol station only a couple of weeks ago and the conversation went along the lines of;

Shop Assistant #1: Hello, you look in a rush!

Me: Yep, running late for swimming, number 4 please.

Shop Assistant #1: What pump sir?

Me: Erm, Number 4.

Shop Assistant #1: Would you like to take out our shell premium card today?

Me: No thanks I'm really late.

Shop Assistant #1: Ok, Do you have a loyatly card with us?

Me: No.

Shop Assistant #1: Would you like to register for one today?

Me: No, I really need to go.

** Shop Assistant #1 finally takes my card to process payment - but before he puts it in... **

Shop Assistant #1:  Would you like to consider any of our Product X & Y that are on offer?

Me: No, I just need to pay and go.

Shop Assistant #1: Ok sir, please enter your pin...

** Me enters pin **

Shop Assistant #1: That's all gone through, we have an offer on the car wash today, would you like to purchase a coupon?

** At this point I have already paid and got my card, I pretend to not hear and walk out **

Can you imagine a combination of the two types? Would you end up just taking a gimmick or run away without payment risking "da fedz" as our lovely rioters refer to the police as?

* For those that don't know, a grinder is one of those annoying people that think it's ok to rub their chest/crotch/whatever against anyone near them in a crouded underground, uncool.

Club politics, why bother?

Now, before I get underway I will openly admit I am stupidly competitive to the point I will never "let" my poor girlfriend win at anything I just can't help myself! Moving back to the rant many of you will know that I have been doing triathlons recently see the obscene picture above for proof, and a lot of you may know that when I was much younger I was doing archery at a quite competitive level.

As I was a junior when doing archery a lot of comments flew over my head at the time, but when reflecting on the actions and words the ridiculous politics that would go on and the horrible things people said behind each others backs was disgraceful. They were supposed to be part of a team together and they bickered like old married couples, and yet I never heard a bad word about opposing teams!

Moving on to what provoked me to rant about this was something more appauling than anything I had witnessed untill recently, and yes, I am going to name and shame you Leicester Triathlon Club. I had already finished my time and it was nice to run across the finish line with some of the previous finishers to give a cheer and clap to those who have just completed. What I was to soon witness as I was stood behind giving a bit of a cheer was three members from Leicester Triathlon Club cheer on a fellow member run across the line and then when that member was out of sight they continued on to bitch about how slow this person was and to quote they said "why does personX even bother?". I was intent on joining the club after having a swim tryout with them a couple of weeks ago but after that disgusting display I will never consider joining them and will always warn others away from them. Shame on you guys!