Cycling Very Slowly Away from Volcanoes

Exactly how difficult do some ferry companies wish to make people’s lives?

Ferries don’t strike me as a firmly-established industry with a stranglehold on their customer base, untroubled by competition. And yet that’s how they behaved. This was their chance to help, to do what they do best and to make us rethink their collective worth. After all, everyone’s a potential future customer.

Instead, we’re left with an image of a grown man forced to pedal precariously up a gangway on a child’s bike. Similarly, you have airports apparently showing very little support for stranded customers, and hotels hiking up prices. 

It betrays an astonishing lack of imagination in terms of medium-term opportunity (as opposed to short-term gain). People don’t easily forget being let down. A chance to develop new customer relationships has been badly missed. 

Still, what do I know? Perhaps we at the CIPD can learn from such a strategy. Perhaps customers should be made to jump through a succession of infuriating hoops before they receive the services they’ve paid for.

So, from 1 April, we will insist all our conference delegates juggle jelly trifles for at least thirty minutes before being allowed into sessions. Students of our qualifications will be required to ballroom-dance throughout the exams and only those of sufficient elegance will be let loose upon UK plc.

Readers of our blogs will not escape either, believe you me. All readers of this blog will now be required to read the entire thing backwards whilst simultaneously playing a banjo of the CIPD’s choice.

As for me, every time I travel abroad from now on I will of course be packing a small child’s bicycle. You can’t be too careful. After all, volcanoes are like unimaginative businesses. If you get burned, you tend to cycle round them next time.