Fuck you too C**e C**a, you don't know me either

Not so very long ago, seeing your name in print was a Very Big Thing, especially if it was for the right reasons rather than as a result of your name appearing in newspaper story titled ‘Convent School Flasher Apprehended’.  Even today, certain Sunday newspapers, not all tabloids, contain little glossy magazines you can order personalised items from.  Golf balls seem to be a speciality, although surely it would be simpler to change your name to ‘Slazenger’.  There’s a cottage industry, presumably, stamping initials on everything from handkerchiefs to corkscrews.  The same sort of chap who has his initials on his jumper probably has them, or a close approximation, on his car’s number plate.  But if you don’t have a tiny cock, there are acceptable uses for personalisation, such as school kit or, well, that’s about it really.  And of course where your name appears is all important, for instance, on a car parking space, probably good, on a cell door, probably bad.

Recently, Starbucks started to ask you your name, rank and serial number when you ordered a coffee, and so it came to pass that a lot of immigrant, minimum wage workers learned first hand that the English can be a surly, belligerent but oddly creative bunch first thing in the morning before they have had their coffee.  Either that, or ‘Fuksake’ is a really, really popular first name.

Where one beverage giant wanders, another aimlessly trundles after, and so we have the personalised cola bottle.

That’s right, a cola company has decided to add a little bit of soul to a product that is, if the ingredients are to be believed, water, sugar, more sugar, syrup and a colour to turn the entire thing the shade your piss goes after a three day fast.  OK, so that may not be exactly the ingredients, but I can’t be arsed to fetch a bottle and check for myself.

Cola is suffering something of an identity crisis itself.  During the adverts it’s drunk by attractive people.  When the adverts end and it’s back to ‘Britain’s fattest slobs’ it’s drunk, by the gallon, by fatties who are crying either shame, or because they have a self-righteous teevee presenter screaming at them.

Now though, somebody who had obviously drunk far too much fizzy pop for breakfast decided to put names on cola bottles.  This is genius!  You can actually drink out of a bottle that has your name on it or, even better, drink from a bottle with somebody else’s name on it.  How subversive is that?

The upshot of this is that there are now three categories of cola drinker.  The first is the ‘don’t give a shit whose name is on the bottle’ type.  The second is the sort who will look through the stock to see if their name is there, and be a little bit disappointed if it’s not.  Finally, and also my favourite, are the people who will choose the most interesting name, often of the opposite sex, just like in the early days of internet chat rooms.  Surely nothing is more impressive than the sight of a hairy arsed tattooed, bearded bloke builder sucking on a bottle labelled ‘Marjory’.  It’s so wrong it’s right!

Like everything that comes out of the boardroom, there’s room for conspiracy here, so certain names are forbidden no doubt (so (more) bad luck if you have the misfortune to be called ‘Adolf’) whilst there is probably no chance of you, or more likely your servants, finding a bottled labelled ‘Crispin’.

I am actually all for personalisation of beverage containers.  I remember years ago a Scottish beer company used to adorn their cans with, I understand the technical phrase is, ‘dolly birds’.  Collect the set and become a harmless alcoholic with a soft porn gallery that you will one day display on ‘Antiques Roadshow’, rather than a sugar fuelled rage machine because the shop has run out of ‘Jimmies’.

Although, obviously, if you should see a ‘Kylie’, you must purchase it at once and keep it about your person at all times, so that should you ever chance to meet the Aussie songstress/goddess you have an opening line other than ‘er….er….er…’

Cheers!

Fuck you S**rbucks, you really don't know me!

In what has to be the worst ever corporate mandate, or simply an astonishingly ham-fisted attempt at analogue data gathering about customers, Starbucks staff now ask you for your name when you buy a coffee.  Presumably this is because ‘Jeff’ is easier to remember than ‘double no-fun skinny latte and give it wings’.

The only plausible reason for a coffee shop drone to ask you your name is if you are the fiftieth person in line to sequentially ask for a latte and they need to differentiate you from all the other folk who can’t think of a more interesting beverage.

I do not like being asked my name in Starbucks, as a corporation famous for ending individuality on the high street by trying to drive independent coffee shops out of business with their mugs, and their staff, and their shots of syrup instead of the traditional stale cup of filter whatever-is-on-special-at Costco blend available in traditional coffee shops, it’s a bit bloody rich that they are trying to introduce individuality by writing the name you choose to give on a mug.  Also, I expect them to then ask for your rank and serial number.

Really, if I wanted personal service, I would have spent my money in the little independent coffee shop next door that Starbucks put out of business years ago.  Of course, if I had done that, it wouldn’t have gone out of business.

Or I would get my morning coffee at the Krispy Kreme Koncession, where they greet me with ‘Good morning sir, latte?’.

Sir!  What’s wrong with Sir?  The Krispy Kreme Krew don’t want to know my name, nor do they care, nor do they pretend that they care.  They just want to know that I am latte guy and that, even if I actually wanted a flat white that morning, I will now have a latte instead.  I can respect that.

Obviously the drill in Starbucks is now to at least give a made up name, or answer ‘Sir’ or ‘Valued Customer’ or ‘Master’.  Or ‘Doctor Claw’ or any of a number of cool names, if you can summon the courage to do that to some poor Starbuckian who has been on shift for eight hours slinging coffee to an ungrateful public, a suspiciously large number of whom seem to be called ‘Gengis Kahn’ or, if you are a Star Trek fan, ‘Kahhhhhhhnnnnnnnnn’.

As it was, I panicked and gave my real name.  And I’ve seen ‘The Great Escape’ loads of times, I should have known what I was doing.

As it was, she not only wrote my name down wrong but she also made the wrong coffee.

Thinking back on it now, it’s just possible I may have picked up the wrong cup.

Professionals

Visiting a different part of the city, it’s increasingly obvious that different areas are home to different tribes.  For instance, in the City itself, you get an awful lot of people and bicycles.  This is not, I suspect, because they can’t afford the bus fare.  Looking at the bikes and the freshness of the lycra that these people sport as they pass in a day-glo swoosh, this is a two-wheeled tribe that have decided that public transport is simply not for them, possibly because they do not wish to become contaminated with poor.

Then there are men who look normal, except on their feet they have trainers in clown-shoe colours with soles of a thickness that would not look out of place in the glam rock era.  That’s right.  Men.  Wearing trainers to work.  What next, lip balm and hair conditioner?

The City is home to Professionals, making their way to work with the same sort of purposeful intent you see insects exhibiting in nature documentaries. 

Traditionally the definition of a professional is somebody who gets paid for what they do but lately I’ve been thinking that there’s more to it than that.  A mini-cab driver is paid for their work, but so is Lewis Hamilton and I know which of the two better defines the term ‘professional driver’.  Of course, this does not mean that you would want Lewis Hamilton as your mini-cab driver, as his habit of stopping for new tyres three times every trip might prove inconvenient, as might his habit of grabbing his fare’s bottle of fizz, shaking it up and spraying it all over the place every time he dropped somebody off at a party.

Roughly, only 3% of people who get paid to do something are expert enough in it to be called ‘professional’ in the true sense of the word.  Normally, the deficiencies of the remaining 97% go unnoticed because they work in HR, or B&Q, or somewhere else with initials instead of a name.

Hence, I propose that the definition for professional be: somebody who earns enough to afford a pool and a hot partner, or can change a fucking till roll unaided.

Lawyers are a good example of multi-tiered professionalism.  For reasons far too dull to go into I’ve been wandering past the Old Bailey on a regular basis recently and, because the only thing I dislike more than huge corporations are bloody protestors trying to tell me where to drink my coffee, I’ve been popping into Starbucks for my java and really, really, enjoying it (secret recipe: full fat milk, one shot of Big Coffee and a pinch of guilt).

Obviously, there is the standard issue Man With A Beard writing something on his Apple Mac but in the Starbucks near the Old Bailey you also get trios of lawyers clustered round those little tables the size of mushrooms.  One has a laptop, one has a file, one has a mobile, all three have worried expressions and no wonder, in twenty minutes they are due in court and this is their prep.  There is evidence of muffin consumption.

Meanwhile, and example of the REAL professional was already standing outside the Court.  She has adopted the ‘pissed off raven’ look that all successful female barristers acquire when they reach the tipping point of assurance in their profession, with wig, gown and black tights it’s a look they lifted from Patricia Hodge in ‘Rumpole’ but have made their own with the simple addition of a fag.  Yes, while the boys and girls are in Starbucks drinking latte and green tea, the real deal is having their breakfast Benson & Hedges without even smirching the slash of red lipstick that proves they can be a successful lawyer and a woman too. 

This then is the lawyer you want if you’re in a tight spot.  The Starbucks Three are not the team you want defending you if you are facing a ten stretch being banged up in a cell with someone they call ‘The Fairy With The Enormous Cock’.  If you’re in trouble, you want your lawyers at the very least to be a) pounding fags and espresso or b) from off telly.

A ringing endorsement

Once, we all knew where we stood with advertising, especially advertising for products that were actively bad for us, instead of products that we simply didn’t need.  We don’t require any encouragement to buy things we don’t need, but things that are actively bad for us require a little thought.  Specifically, fags and booze.

Time was, it was simple.  Shot of a bloke smoking, or having a drink, or both, with a final five second pack shot so that you knew what packet of fags to look for the next time you were in the fresh vegetable aisle (ahh, simpler, happier times).

Then, things got tricky, as new rules were introduced to stop booze being advertised to children and as making you successful with women, and fags being advertised…er, at all really.  Luckily, the new restrictions on advertising came in at the same time as creativity and coke consumption surged in the ad agencies and ad budgets blossomed to ensure that your average TV fag ad had a bigger budget than Bond and more creative talent working on it than ‘Blade Runner’, and booze adverts became funnier than the ITV sitcoms that interrupted them.

Now, there’s no money to buy coke or film big budget ads and the created world can’t compete with the reality, which is that if you go to the pub and nip out into the storm to smoke your fag, your bird will have been pulled by the time you get back by a non-smoker with a gym membership or a sports car (either, but not both, affordable with the money he’s saved on fags), a taste for wine and, probably, a sex dungeon.

Instead, manufacturers have turned to subtler means to influence our buying decisions, such as product placement. 

When James Bond was washed up, in hiding and hopelessly out of condition in ‘Skyfall’ his booze of choice was Heineken.  He may as well have been drinking cider on a park bench.  Once he got himself sorted out it was back on the vodka martinis but the message was clear – drink booze!

So in times when advertising budgets are stretched and audiences are sophisticated to a degree that a pack shot of a horsemeat lasagne with the phrase ‘buy me!’ flashing on the screen twenty times a second is more likely to have people running to post abuse on Twitter than running to the supermarket, manufacturers are working hard to associate their products with success and things that are high profile, or beloved, or both. 

This means that premiership soccer teams have their sponsor’s logo shirts, stadiums are renamed after tile grout or whatever and from 2014 anyone getting a tattoo of their soccer team emblem will be legally obliged to have the name of the sponsor added below.

I’d like to see endorsement and sponsorship developed.  There are, oh I don’t know, bloody hundreds of soccer leagues and thousands of teams, surely if top-tier soccer is supported by global brands then lesser teams should be sponsored by second and third division products, more poundland than premiership.  There must be loads of obscure stuff out there that could benefit from a marketing push; energy drinks imported from North Korea?  Snacks featuring horsemeat, because horsemeat has proved hugely popular, and that was before people knew it WAS horse.  Just re-brand Findus frozen lasagne as ‘Jockey Jerky’ and away you go!  And what about brands that are big in New Zealand or Australia – ‘Kangerpee, the true taste of Brisbane’.

Apple are famous for their product placement, in films maverick computer geniuses rarely save the world using anything other than a powerbook.  What’s noteworthy is that Apple have taken product placement to a new level by product placing in real life, making a deal ensuring that every Starbucks coffee shop must have at least one person in it using a powerbook.  Early tests where that person was a bloke with a beard working on the script for his documentary which he hopes will be filmed in black and white have been so successful that later this year Apple will role out its upgrade – ‘hot girl using laptop while wearing huge headphones over a knitted cap.’