Thanks British Airways for my broken window blind

Recently I returned back from California on a British Airways 747-400 which is always a challenging distance to fly overnight.  I normally like to get as much sleep flying over the Atlantic to try to lessen the impact of jet lag.

However, my flight wasn't particularly great.  The blind on the Window next to me was broken in ways that were not easily fixable:

Somehow, the blind fillet that should go behind the blind was in front - somebody probably popped the blind out and wedged it back in the wrong way.   The upshot was that I was unable to close it which made watching the entertainment system rather difficult.   As the evening drew to night, the steward told me to close my blind and I pointed out that it was completely broken and they say "Oh, that's OK then", which it in reality it wasn't was it?

Anyhow, I scraped through on a few hours sleep but it wasn't perfect because of light streaming in early in the morning.   I wrote to British Airways and got a sincere apology but zippo zero in compensation, so I plan to fly Virgin Atlantic next time.  Well done British Airways, keep up the good work and alienate your customers.

How not to run a shop

Today I visited Uckfield in East Sussex and popped into a charity shop to see if I could find any second hand bargains. At the back of the shop was an excellent telescope without a price tag so I enquired and was told it had not been priced up yet. I asked if it could be priced up and was told I would have to wait or come back another day as they were pricing up other goods. When I explained I was just in the town for a short visit and I lived quite a distance away so revisiting the shop wasn't easy for me.

The curious thing was that they seemed really reluctant to sell it at all. It was as if they would rather let a customer down rather than sell an item to somebody who was willing to pay some serious money for it. So both of us lost out - they missed an immediate sale and I didn't purchase a rather excellent telescope.

A little later my wife and I popped into a small pet shop to see if they had any pet rabbits and when I enquired the owner told me that selling baby rabbits was morally wrong when so many are abandoned and need re-homing. I kind of got it in the ear for my apparent moral deficiency in wondering if there were any baby rabbits for sale. So much for making the customer feel welcome. The irony was that the shopkeeper seemed opposed to selling rabbits but was very happy to run a business supporting these critters with pet food and hutches. Seemed rather hypocritical to me.