I’ve always wondered what time the McDonald’s (Seaview, Karachi) near my home closed, so during my visit there this afternoon, I thought I’d have a look at the sign by the door.

It took me 30 seconds to read all of the information you see. Then I read it again, because I thought I read it wrong. Then I read it a third time to make sure that I was actually looking at something completely idiotic.

You’d think that they might want to make their communications as simple as possible, starting with their display of timings. Something like, say, Mon-Sun 11am-2am, or Open Every Day from 11am to 2am.

But no, they have to break it up four ways for us, making sure that we walk away thinking that there must be a mistake, and feel compelled to ask a staff member. No reasonably intelligent person would do something like this on purpose.

And while I’m on this, who the hell calls the inside of a McDonald’s a “lobby” (see larger pic)?

We’re a largely illiterate nation guys. Don’t make it harder for us to figure out when we can come by and order a Big Mac and when we can’t!

Technorati Tags: mcdonalds, design, sign, timings, restaurant, stupidity

We’ve all dealt with a number of different type of clients and once you’ve been engaged by enough of them, you realise that they all fit into some mould or the other.

This helps you figure that category out pretty quickly, and if you can slot them in to one of the bad ones before accepting the job, you’ll have some time to jump ship and save yourself a lot of grief.

If you can’t jump ship, then at least you’ve got a better shot at dealing with them since you’ve sussed them out.

My worst types are:

• The Hands-On Clients because they already know what they want and will end up feeling like they did your work for you. They’ll also resent you for offering your opinion when it’s in contradiction of their own.
• The I’ll-Know-It-When-I-See-It Client because I’m going to end up doing a lot of work just trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing.

Technorati Tags: design, client, category, freelance

I was browsing around Digg earlier today and came across this page. At first, I thought it would be pretty goofy, given how Digg loves goofy lists, but I thought this was pretty funny in a, "That's kinda true" way.

I had never even realised the inference of F0CCED before, but I guarantee you that it's going to get plugged in to Fireworks and I'm now going to find a way to use it, no matter what colour it turns out to be!

On a side note about lists and appearing on Digg, this was an interesting read as well. Ironically, as much as it takes the piss, it's pretty correct — and it got dugg over 5,000 times!

Technorati Tags: design, geek, list, photoshop, typeface, digg, lists

I was talking to a checkout clerk at D-Mart (a chain of large-size supermarkets in Karachi) this afternoon and I asked him why there’s never anyone manning their big and blocked off cigarette counter. He answered with a really dejected look on his face,

Why even have such a big supermarket when you’re not going to hire enough people to run it?

I went on to suggest that they should just remove the counter and make that area self-service, just like the rest of the place, to which he replied,

These people are only interested in making money, so they sell off everything (meaning that the area is sponsored). We can’t remove the counter because it’s got a big logo on it (Marlboro’s logo, incidentally).

He went on to add that their isn’t even any point in forwarding customer complaints to management, because they’ve never done anything about it in the past, so why would they start now.

This guy’s pretty pissed off with his employer!

I’m a pretty regular customer there and I know that not a lot gets done there to improve the customer experience. Sure, it’s a lot more like foreign markets, with it’s wide aisles, air conditioning and bright lighting, but it really stops there. You can’t do your monthly groceries there because they won’t have everything you want. There are always a few things that one needs which are always going to be missing. For example; ziploc-type sandwich bags, aluminum foil, mortein refills, etc.

And to top it off, you’ve got staff so disgruntled that they’ve decide to let customers in on the problems. It feels very much like a “Don’t tell me, I just work here.” vibe. Someone in management has to figure out that their staff are the people shoppers interact with and if they’re not going to be taken seriously, then that indifference is going to be passed on in the staff’s interaction with people like me.

To be honest, I’ll still go there because I’m a supermarket whore — I love the places — and D-Mart’s fun for my kids to roam about in, but I’ve got it in the back of my mind now that this place isn’t well run and its staff aren’t really happy campers.

The chain’s not been around long enough and hasn’t launched any activities build up any real consumer loyalty either, so this really isn’t the best time to have things go astray.

Technorati : d-mart, demoralised, dmart, management, morale, staff

Follow up to: This Bloody Thing Called Worldcall

Well, someone arrived at my home on Saturday at 7pm (who comes to provide tech support at 7 pm anyway?!) and plugged in my modem to a wall socket. No lights turned on. He agreed with my expert technical diagnosis — it was dead. Now they know that I’m not lying!

It was taken away by the tech guy and he said they’d either get it running or issue me a new one by Monday evening, at the latest.

Here we are. It’s Tuesday afternoon and I have no modem.

I called the telephone support a few hours ago and the man read out my job status to me (he was soft-spoken too. I really think it’s a job requirement!). He said that it should get sorted out today, lastest tomorrow, because “these things take time” — they have to requisition a new device and they have to update my MAC address in the database; stuff that’s really time-consuming.

So, I guess I’ll wait while they go in to their store room, unbox a modem, enter some digits and colons into their computer, hop on to a motorcycle and ride over here.

Followed up by Bloody Worldcall’s Been Kicked Out

Technorati Tags: Worldcall, ISP, modem, customer support, joke