Today I went to Barclays. Nothing new there, I bank there after all. Do you know it takes five days to order a new cheque book? I certainly didn't. A fun filled fact about Barclays:
They've recently (when recently means it's the first time I've noticed) rebranded and they've dotted all over their walls chummy posters that end in parentheses, giving the impression (or trying to) that the last bit of information is a friendly bit of inside knowledge, whispered across the bank branch to make your transaction that bit easier. They're something like:
"This ATM can help you
or
"Chat now to our instore loan advisor
or
"We're open 24 hours a day online
or
"Tried telephone banking?
I had this design a few website versions back that for reason of Internet Explore 5 through 6 necessitated a text footer at the bottom of every significant block of text. With blog posts, this was easy; you'd just go:
"Posted by mark @ timestamp, in the category "not addicted to the internet at all" with x comments"
but when you go to writing more static pages like the about page you'd really start to struggle and end up giving every section needlessly forced punchlines (if you could call them that).
The same thing happens with the new Barclays design (except, it's worse, because you're no longer humouring a young man on the internet who knows no better, you're humouring an international trader of wealth). So when on Jane Smith's badge it reads;
"Jane Smith
Cashier
(I Love Work)"
I think "Not today you don't love (I don't think the word love though, I add it afterwards to make it read better, I'm not a "you alright love?" sort of person)". It's more frustrating when it happens with ATM machines. If you want to make me treat the cash machine as a person then give it the programming to swallow the card of the woman in front of me who just tried three times to take out ten pounds when the machine was clearly telling her twenties only. A little vindictiveness would do a lot of persuasion towards humanity, especially after queuing for five days for a cheque book1.
1 See this punchline? This is what I like to call, a Brysonism. Don't have a punchline to your piece of writing? Don't worry! Just casually reference back to the tangential affair your story starting from and act like this is a witty conclusion. If this fails, insult the foreigners. Of course, if either of these two fail, just copy what a famous, much finer writer than you did and then have the audacity to draw attention to this and then, because you can't actually hit him from behind with a plank, make sarcastic comments about his poor style of writing that you've just stolen.
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edward stobbart
mark walley!!! are you in london??????
I am! I work off tottenham court road. Judging by the fact that you were at chancery lane i presume you are about - we shall meet for a beverage!