The £100 billion theft of time
The Count has had a most unpleasant discussion with his bank manager. The bank manager was hoping to repossess what is left of the Kostov estate. Little does the bank manager realise that:
a) all that is left of the Kostov estate is a window box with a dead geranium in it and
b) there are about four other banks who have also had the same idea, not to mention my nemesis at the tax office HP Potts. Mr Potts labours under the illusion that Counts are obliged to pay tax. He should be horsewhipped for impertinence.
The real insult was not the discussion, but the waiting. The bank manager appeared to be looking at his emails in the vain hope that someone might be offering to teach his cat how to play the ukelele, while he kept the Count waiting. After horsewhipping Mr Potts, it will be the turn of the bank manager.
The waiting time, with a tepid cup of tea in a plastic cup, gave plenty of time for thinking about the cost of waiting. The Count proceeded to count the waiting time in the day.
Three minutes: turning computer on
Five minutes: rebooting computer when it freezes
Four minutes: waiting to get through to bank while they reassure me that they value my call so much they can not be arsed to answer it. They clearly value aristocratic time as less than that of a call centre operator in Bangalore on $3 a month. In this respect, they have common cause with the Countess who reckons the Count is worth much less than $3 a month.
Twenty two minutes trying to find, then wait for, the microsoft help desk.
Thirteen minutes waiting for the tube and getting delayed on it.
Nine minutes waiting for the Countess to decide whether her outfit will go with the colour scheme at Sainsbury.
Six minutes waiting to get to the front of the check out queue: Sainsbury have a system for punishing their most valuable customers. They let all their lowest value customers (with five items or less) go through a fast queue, while making all their most valuable customers wait in line. And they never have enough staff at check out: don't they even want to take our money? No wonder they are in so much shit.
Four minutes waiting at Sainsbury check out while the stupid cow in fronts waits for all her items to be scanned; only then does she look in a bag for her wallet, then in another bag, then back to the first bag, find the wallet, open the wallet, then look in her coat for the precise change, then offer a mix of coins and lithuanian luncheon vouchers as payment before finally offering up a credit card. Belatedly she offers a store loyalty card. After all this she starts packing her items and looks all shirty and pissed off when the Count's very refined shopping starts going through the till.
Twelve minutes waiting for the bank manager to turn up to his own meeting.
Five minutes waiting at the cashiers in the bank: two tills open. The other three were staffed but all the staff were drinking coffee and talking to each other about the stress of their jobs.
Two minutes waiting for the traffic lights to turn and wondering whether it is worth risking death anyway to cross the road. Death would be a merciful way out, but I fear I will be kept waiting for that as well.
By this stage the Count was going into a kamikaze zen like trance. The older you get, the less time there is to waste. The novelty of watching Tracey gift wrap the 60p bar of chocolate for the customer in front of you, and then hearing her take a phone call from the boyfriend wears off after a few decades. These time thieves are everywhere: unlike other sorts of theft, there is no chance of getting the stolen time back. It is mugging people of the only real resource we have: our time and our lives. So all the time thieves can join the queue for a good horse whipping, and rest assured that they will be kept waiting.
At this point I have to defer to DigDog, my butler, to provide the sophisticated mathematical calculations which may or may not make sense of this. He assures me that the following is true
a) I am bankrupt, so he would rather be paid in cash thank you very much sir. I will add him to the extensive horse whipping queue in good time.
b) I am typically wasting 90 minutes a day in queues: the Countess is tartly observing that I waste the other 22.5 hours a day quite successfully without any help from time thieves.
c) 40 million working hours are being lost every day in the UK to queues and time thieves, which is £400 million a year or £100 billion a year.
A calculation like this would normally qualify as pure meadow mayonnaise if it came from some dodgy, self-interested lobby group. But this comes from the Count, so it must be objective and there is no self interest in here at all. Clearly, something needs to be done about this disaster for British productivity: all that is needed is a small grant of, say, £1 billion to research the problem properly. As it happens, the Count has the perfect research forum for this effort: CATTI (Campaign Against Time Thieves Institute). You may rest assured that the £1 billion will be well spent as, by pure coincidence, the sole proprietor of CATTI is the Count himself. Please forward your cheques in some haste as the bank manager and Mr Potts grow more insolent by the day.
a) all that is left of the Kostov estate is a window box with a dead geranium in it and
b) there are about four other banks who have also had the same idea, not to mention my nemesis at the tax office HP Potts. Mr Potts labours under the illusion that Counts are obliged to pay tax. He should be horsewhipped for impertinence.
The real insult was not the discussion, but the waiting. The bank manager appeared to be looking at his emails in the vain hope that someone might be offering to teach his cat how to play the ukelele, while he kept the Count waiting. After horsewhipping Mr Potts, it will be the turn of the bank manager.
The waiting time, with a tepid cup of tea in a plastic cup, gave plenty of time for thinking about the cost of waiting. The Count proceeded to count the waiting time in the day.
Three minutes: turning computer on
Five minutes: rebooting computer when it freezes
Four minutes: waiting to get through to bank while they reassure me that they value my call so much they can not be arsed to answer it. They clearly value aristocratic time as less than that of a call centre operator in Bangalore on $3 a month. In this respect, they have common cause with the Countess who reckons the Count is worth much less than $3 a month.
Twenty two minutes trying to find, then wait for, the microsoft help desk.
Thirteen minutes waiting for the tube and getting delayed on it.
Nine minutes waiting for the Countess to decide whether her outfit will go with the colour scheme at Sainsbury.
Six minutes waiting to get to the front of the check out queue: Sainsbury have a system for punishing their most valuable customers. They let all their lowest value customers (with five items or less) go through a fast queue, while making all their most valuable customers wait in line. And they never have enough staff at check out: don't they even want to take our money? No wonder they are in so much shit.
Four minutes waiting at Sainsbury check out while the stupid cow in fronts waits for all her items to be scanned; only then does she look in a bag for her wallet, then in another bag, then back to the first bag, find the wallet, open the wallet, then look in her coat for the precise change, then offer a mix of coins and lithuanian luncheon vouchers as payment before finally offering up a credit card. Belatedly she offers a store loyalty card. After all this she starts packing her items and looks all shirty and pissed off when the Count's very refined shopping starts going through the till.
Twelve minutes waiting for the bank manager to turn up to his own meeting.
Five minutes waiting at the cashiers in the bank: two tills open. The other three were staffed but all the staff were drinking coffee and talking to each other about the stress of their jobs.
Two minutes waiting for the traffic lights to turn and wondering whether it is worth risking death anyway to cross the road. Death would be a merciful way out, but I fear I will be kept waiting for that as well.
By this stage the Count was going into a kamikaze zen like trance. The older you get, the less time there is to waste. The novelty of watching Tracey gift wrap the 60p bar of chocolate for the customer in front of you, and then hearing her take a phone call from the boyfriend wears off after a few decades. These time thieves are everywhere: unlike other sorts of theft, there is no chance of getting the stolen time back. It is mugging people of the only real resource we have: our time and our lives. So all the time thieves can join the queue for a good horse whipping, and rest assured that they will be kept waiting.
At this point I have to defer to DigDog, my butler, to provide the sophisticated mathematical calculations which may or may not make sense of this. He assures me that the following is true
a) I am bankrupt, so he would rather be paid in cash thank you very much sir. I will add him to the extensive horse whipping queue in good time.
b) I am typically wasting 90 minutes a day in queues: the Countess is tartly observing that I waste the other 22.5 hours a day quite successfully without any help from time thieves.
c) 40 million working hours are being lost every day in the UK to queues and time thieves, which is £400 million a year or £100 billion a year.
A calculation like this would normally qualify as pure meadow mayonnaise if it came from some dodgy, self-interested lobby group. But this comes from the Count, so it must be objective and there is no self interest in here at all. Clearly, something needs to be done about this disaster for British productivity: all that is needed is a small grant of, say, £1 billion to research the problem properly. As it happens, the Count has the perfect research forum for this effort: CATTI (Campaign Against Time Thieves Institute). You may rest assured that the £1 billion will be well spent as, by pure coincidence, the sole proprietor of CATTI is the Count himself. Please forward your cheques in some haste as the bank manager and Mr Potts grow more insolent by the day.
posted by Count Kostov at
2:22 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home