The Problem with Groupon (*Get 3 of your friends to read this blog, and you can read it for free!*)

Hi! I’m the former Chief Executive of Groupon’s 8 year old child, and I’m here to explain to you why my daddy got fired today for not understanding the basics of how his business stays profitable.


As far as I see it, if I act as a broker for you, and find you a car (for example) then it is a waste of all of our time. You have to pay me to find a car that you could probably have found yourself. You’re also more aware of exactly what you are after. In addition, if I find a shit car that breaks, you’ll blame me even if it was the same car that you would’ve bought yourself, because that’s how most people work when it comes to blame and responsibility. Also, I’m 8 so I can’t drive it over to your house for you without a booster seat.



If, however, I can act as a broker for you, your brother, his best mate, his best mate’s girlfriend and everyone from Melton Mowbray… then I can get a job lot of cars at a decent price, sell them to you and the others for a discount, and rake in the difference for myself. The more people I buy the cars for, the better the difference I can levy, and the more money I make for ice pops and penny whistles. If I sell enough, even the odd one of two that break I can sort out without the process becoming unprofitable.


But this only really works well if I can focus on certain items, that are guaranteed to be popular and keep lots of people interested. If I get discount budgie cages, even though they’re super pretty and they’re dirt cheap, chances are I won’t sell enough to cover the cost of the booster seat I bought to drive over to the pet shop, because not enough people have budgies.



But the biggest problem is when I source business for other businesses, and take a percentage of the take. For example, last week I sold vouchers for lemonade from a friend’s lemonade stand down in the park. People paid up front, 75p a go, and I took 10% of all sales. But it turned out the friend was just pissing in a bottle and selling it to people in plastic beakers. I had no idea because I don’t have the time to quality check everything I source, because I source so many different types of products and services and I only have 20 different colours of crayons to keep notes on them.


Anyway, I was happily counting the money I made from someone else’s lemonade business, but then suddenly I had lots of people coming round to my house shouting about wanting their money back and how bad a child’s piss tastes, and so on. Because I brokered the deal, they blamed me when it went wrong… and never came back to buy more deals.



Because I was acting as an agent for another party, little Jimmy Monroe who pisses in bottles, I couldn’t really do anything except try and hide my face from all the loud nasty noises coming through my letterbox. Little Jimmy didn’t really care – he knew that it would be hard work for me to get him to pay the money back, and he was shielded by the fact that people were blaming me for the pissy taste in their mouths.


Anyway, I’m going to have to leave it there as I believe it’s almost nap time and I’m pretty sure I saw a cat in the garden, but I hope this has been interesting reading for you. Come back to mine for a cool glass of lemonade whenever you like!

xxx

Requests from the Computer Illiterati: Volume 1

 

1. Can you email me some 10-minute high-quality video clips please? ... What's WinZip?

2. I can’t get onto Google. Please help.

3. My account has changed my password without my permission; can you reset it please? I'm getting really annoyed with this.

4. I used Google to get on the internet, but now I can’t find Chrome.

5. Can you call IT helpdesk for me, and if I leave my account password can you login to my computer and help them fix it please? I’m leaving early today to catch a train to my second home for the weekend. I won't be contactable.

6. I’ve logged onto another computer and my desktop shortcuts have gone- can you come and recreate them all for me?

7. You know that 2-page newsletter you do? I need to put 12 pages of text into it.


8. I want the whole-team template to auto-insert my name each time. It's a matter of extreme urgency.

9. Why can’t the form just auto-tick the boxes I want ticked on my behalf?

10. Why can’t we just go back to using paper files? It was simpler then (*murmurs of agreement round the table*).

11. So what I don’t understand is that we’ve got all these things, like Google and website and ‘browsers’ and the cloud and I have to remember all these different logins!

12. I've been using autocomplete in MS Outlook emails for 10 years. Now we're moving and we can only export our contacts. What can you do to fix this?

13. I deleted a folder off the hard drive, and I need someone to ask IT to bring them back somehow. You’re good with computers. Can you call them for me?


14. I printed some forms out and wrote on them, but I've lost the file. Can you tipex my handwriting out and re-scan please? If you can, there's a box here with about 200 other one's in it...

15. I don't care how big the web pages are, I need this document on the front page of the website!

‘An Ode To Mitt’, Or, ‘Upon Autumnal Waking, Behold! A Romneyshambles!’

‘An Ode To Mitt’,

Or, 

‘Upon Autumnal Waking, Behold! A Romneyshambles!’

Oh, courageously cowardly Mitt the twit

He thinks he knows, he should have known

He thought he knew… but now it’s gone.

“Attack, attack” now comes Mitt’s cry

As Obama bares his shoulder for tears

And the rest of the country dries its eyes

Defensively reflects on national fears

But Mitt’s ideas are from yesteryear…

“Defend, apologise” murmurs Rom

As a political opening comes-and-is-gone

His gold-plated laurels now ground to sand

And Hardy weeps at his right hand…

And Romney’s rich buttocks are bared to the air -

“If only the public were stocks and shares!”

I’d know what to do

I’d pull out their screws

And strip them down, and sell their wares

I’d export them to China, and make money there…

Oh, friends and brethren please take note

Of how to bail water back into the boat

Of how to use petrol to douse a housefire

And how to use nails to affix your car tyres.

Old Mitt, he knows, that there’s no flies on him.

But it’s only ‘cos flies like a man who can win.

The American house fly has grown so much wiser

Since Mitt was heard pledging

To cut taxes for spiders.

I Gave Up Smoking

I gave up smoking, then I died.
(I went cold turkey).

“It was a truly massive haemorrhage”, they said
To my grieving, common-law-widow
“Quite interesting, actually. From a medical
Perspective”.
“…”.
“Shh... she doesn’t
Want to hear about that now.
Christ sakes...”.
There was, or would have been, or will be
Nothing she could have done anyway, even
If she’d been there for me to fall at her
Feet.
(And an awkward pat on the shoulder).
“He bucked the odds, defied the trend for ages
Look at the chart. Go on!”. The curve
Peaked at 13 years, 7 Months.
/give or take.

“That tumour!”.
They shook their heads.
You know
He gave as good as he got.

And when they found him,
Creased up, doubled-over
White as a sheet.
He had managed to crawl
Half in, and
Half out of
An unmade bed.

People Who Should be Tried at the Hague

1. Individuals who use an asterisk to qualify a statement, but then do not provide the qualification anywhere on the page. Extra marks for businesses who do so over important transactional matters*.

2. Anyone who says or writes ‘Should Of’ instead of ‘Should Have’ or ‘Should’ve’.

3. Anyone who barges through a narrowing in the road when there are cars waiting to whom they should be giving way. Extra demerits for those who give a wave of thanks as though the poor unfortunates waiting were in some way letting them through.

4. Anyone who pulls their car forward onto a grid in the road, over a crossing or over a ‘keep clear’ marking, then raises their hands helplessly as if to say “it’s not my fault!”.

5. People who stand in the queue for the ticket machines at the train station, then wait until it’s their turn before they slowly get out their money / ticket reference slip / bank card.

6. Shop cashiers who finish conversations with strangers / idiots / previous customers / all their mothers before serving the waiting queue.

7. Anyone who says “I could care less”. Saying “I could care less” doesn’t mean anything. These people should be kept in solitary confinement until trial to minimise the spread of this verbal, corrosive disease.

8. All members of the Kardashian family, up to, and including, family members twice removed. This might be a little draconian, but you can’t be too careful with that family. Next thing you know, you’ll turn around and some little-known second cousin will be on MTV acting like a c*nt and getting paid for it.

9. Anyone who cannot master the very basic difference in the use of ‘your’ vs. ‘you’re’.

10. War Criminals


















* I’m glad you checked for this little fella down here. Congrats to you and yours

Welcome to the Public Sector

I work with incompetent idiots
They jerk like hooked fishes in the bowels of the boat
They thrash and they wriggle and awkwardly squirm
And bitterly squeal til the boat overturns

(The boat is our countries, all chock-full of promise
And they are the guppies, their heads stuffed with cabbage).

I work with lazy incompetents
They trim at their task list (as thin as a pancake)
And stretch out their timeframes
To fit endless teabreaks

(The kitchen sees action the PC would drool over
The budget can wait til a year next October).

I wade through their teenage impressions
I minute their petty and petulant whining
And sit through debates over money for doghats
And budgerigar glasses and insect fine-dining

(“The earwigs are poison- but, laced in a poultice,
Can be dried and in six months you’ve got a new necklace!”).

14/06/12

MGM (Not the Film Studio!)

A lot has been said about FGM of late (that's female genital mutilation, to those of you lucky enough not to have experienced it or seen/heard about the consequences). A current legal case in the UK might well result in the first ever prosecution under FGM legislation after a Birmingham-based dentist was filmed telling patients that he would perform the mutilation on two girls for £750- all done in absolute secret, of course.

Anyway, in relation to the practice of removing part of the anatomy of a child, I saw this video which is interesting and worth watching if you've got 15 mins spare! The man in the video also has a cool accent.