Tag Archives: james ward

CUSTOMER SERVICE

July 2, 2012 By in WORDS Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments

Eagle-eyed readers of this blog will no doubt have realised by now that, regardless of my wishes, my name is James Ward.

I am not the first person to be called James Ward. My dad’s brother was called James Ward. There was an eighteenth century painter of animals called James Ward whose painting of a horse was used on the cover of Bryan Ferry’s 1994 solo album Mamouna. There was a psychologist in the nineteenth century called James Ward who defended a philosophy of personalistic panpsychism based on his research in physiology and psychology which he defined as a “spiritualistic monism”.

There is also a tennis player called James Ward.

A couple of days ago, James Ward the tennis player was playing at Wimbledon. As I have already mentioned, my name is James Ward and James Ward the tennis player is also called James Ward, and so as a sort of joke, some people on Twitter sent me tweets saying “Good luck at Wimbledon!”

What they didn’t realise is that I happen to work in Wimbledon, so I was able to take their messages of goodwill at face value. These people had intended to make a joke, but were actually wishing me well against their will. I didn’t bother to correct them. Instead, I kept their messages of accidental kindness like a sort of positivity thief. A spiritual mugger. A happiness bandit.

As a result of all the people coming to see the tennis, Wimbledon station has been a lot busier than normal for the last week or so.

After leaving work on Friday, I went to the station, but when I got there, I saw several people standing around, each holding a newspaper of some sort:

This is a massively unhelpful photo. It doesn’t really show you anything, but what I’ve found is that if you don’t include some sort of image in a blog post, then people stop reading.

I’ve highlighted the people with the newspapers using green circles below:

The newspapers they were holding were copies of The Watchtower, described on Wikipedia as:

an illustrated religious magazine, published semi-monthly in 195 languages by Jehovah’s Witnesses via the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania and printed in various branch offices around the world.

I don’t really know a great deal about Jehovah’s Witnesses – although I remember that someone I used to work with wasn’t a huge fan, as his wife (who had been raised as a Jehovah’s Witness) had been shunned by her entire family when she decided it wasn’t for her. I wanted to find out more.

But there was a problem.

Even though there were several people standing around holding copies of The Watchtower, they didn’t seem to be making much effort to give them to people. In fact, they were making no effort whatsoever to give them to anyone. I stood less than five feet away from two of them for over fifteen minutes and at no point was I offered a copy of their magazine.

I waited and I waited and I waited.

Nothing.

And it wasn’t just me. During the whole fifteen minutes, they didn’t give a single copy of their magazine to anyone. Not one fucking copy. There were half a dozen of them standing there and they did nothing. They just waved the magazines around like they were a prize on the worst ever episode of Wheel Of Fortune. Perhaps the magazines weren’t free and were for sale, but they still didn’t make any fucking effort.

I tried catching the eye of one of them, that didn’t work. I tried avoiding the eye of one of them, that didn’t work.

The more I stood there, the angrier I got. It felt like bad customer service. It made me think of all the time I’ve spent standing in Topman or Office, holding a size 42 Chelsea boot, waiting for someone to come over and acknowledge me. It reminded me of all the time I’ve spent in Currys or PC World or Dixons, hoping someone would be kind enough to sell me a fucking printer.

According to Wikipedia, The Watchtower is “is the most widely circulated magazine in the world, with an average print run of over 42,000,000 copies per month”.

I suppose I could have gone over and asked for a copy of the Watchtower, but shouldn’t they have been the proactive ones here? They’re meant to be evangelical. I can’t be expected to knock on their door. That’s their job.

TESCO DIRECT

June 16, 2011 By in WORDS Tags: , , , , 4 Comments

I just received the following text message from Tesco Direct:

From Tesco Direct. Your order, 10163572 is now ready for collection in LEYTONSTONE at the Tesco Direct Collection Point. Check desk opening times online.

It seemed a bit odd, as I haven’t placed an order with Tesco for about two years. It’s so long since I ordered anything from Tesco, that I don’t use the same email address anymore. Actually, I don’t even still live at the same address either. I logged into my old account and saw an email from Monday:

Proof of purchase for your Tesco direct order- please keep this email

Dear Mr Ward

Thanks for placing your order 10163572 with Tesco direct on Monday 13 June 2011.

PLEASE KEEP THIS EMAIL – YOU’LL NEED IT TO MAKE A RETURN
This email confirms your order – it’s also your proof of purchase. We won’t send you a separate receipt or invoice. You’ll need this email if you want to return any items in your order – you might want to print a copy.

COLLECTING YOUR ORDER
Please collect your order after 4pm on Wednesday 15 June 2011 from Leytonstone Tesco. The full store address is:
Gainsborough Road,
Leytonstone,
London

To check when the collection desk is open at this store, visit http://www.tesco.com/storelocator

To check when the collection desk is open at this store, visit http://www.tesco.com/storelocator

If you don’t collect your order within 14 days of the initial collection date, we’ll cancel your order and refund your payment.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BRING
If you paid for your order using a payment card, please bring the payment card with you.

If you paid for your order by any other means at a Tesco direct desk, then please bring this printed order confirmation email or till receipt as ID.

If you have lost the order confirmation email or till receipt, then please bring a recognised form of ID with you to collect your goods.There’s a full list of our recognised forms of ID at http://www.tesco.com/helpdirect.

YOUR ORDER SUMMARY:
===========================================
1 x Wham Crystal 110L Underbed storage box with lid, 2 pack blue*
Catalogue No: 901-6922
Our Ref (TPNB): 63837521
£29.00 (1 @ 29.00 each)

===========================================
Subtotal of all items:
£29.00

——————————————–
Delivery included

Total: £29.00
——————————————–

What was going on? Had my account been hacked? And if it had been hacked, why did they only buy a £29 storage box, rather than a laptop or something?1 Even if they didn’t have the ambition of buying a laptop with my money, wouldn’t you at least go for a pair of the Woodbury Under Bed Storage Boxes in antiqued pine for £80 rather than the blue Wham Crystal 110L Underbed storage boxes?

I phoned Tesco Direct. The automated voice gave me a selection of five options. If my call was relating to the iPhone, I should press 0. If my call was about placing a new order, I should press 1. If I was awaiting delivery on an order, I should press 2. If I wanted technical help with the Tesco website, I should press 3. For anything else, I should press 4. I pressed 4.

I was given four more options. If I was enquiring about delivery to non-mainland UK, I should press 0. If my call was about furniture delivery, I should press 1. If my call was about electrical goods, I should press 2. For anything else, I should press 3. I pressed 3.

I spoke to a man with a slight Scottish accent.

“Hallo, I just got a text message saying that my order was ready for collection at Leytonstone” I said.
“OK” he replied.
“I didn’t actually place an order” I said.
“Oh” he replied, “do you have an order number?
“Yes, it’s 10163572″ I said.
“And can I take your surname? he asked.
“Yes, it’s Ward” I replied.

I gave him my postcode and he typed my details into his computer. “There was an order placed on Monday, could it have been placed by your wife, Cheryl?” he asked.
“I don’t know anyone called Cheryl” I replied.
“Ah, can you give me your house number?” he said.

I gave him my house number. “It looks like there’s someone else who lives in the same road, who has the same postcode and the same surname” he said.
“What? Really?” I asked.
“Yes. It looks like they paid cash. The item had to be delivered to the store, and they must have given their name and postcode and it was linked to your account by mistake”.
“What? Really?” I asked. “Can you check when the last order was made from this account?”
“In March” he said.
“March? What was the order for?”
“Storage boxes”
“More storage boxes?”
“Yes” he said.
“What, really?” I asked.
“Like I say, I think it was just a mix up” he said.
“Oh, OK” I replied. I was a bit disappointed. I was hoping for something more exciting. This was just a fairly banal coincidence. Ward is quite a common surname. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that someone with the same name could live in the same street.

Of course, I do still have the proof of purchase email.

If you paid for your order by any other means at a Tesco direct desk, then please bring this printed order confirmation email or till receipt as ID.

If I went to the Leytonstone branch of Tesco with the email and collected the underbed storage boxes, would that count as stealing? I don’t actually want any underbed storage boxes, and if I were going to buy anything from the Wham storage range, I’d probably go for clear rather than blue, but these storage boxes would effectively be free. Should I get them anyway? Surely I should at least be entitled to the Clubcard points.

——
NOTES
1 Actually, on Monday, I wouldn’t have had enough money in my bank account to buy a laptop, so that attempt at fraud would have failed at the first hurdle, although I got paid on Wednesday, so it might be worth a second attempt now.

CHEKHOV

November 11, 2010 By in WORDS Tags: , , , , 3 Comments

I met Anton Chekhov.

This is what I said to him:

JAMES: The thing people don’t get about the Internet is that everything is new, the past is dead, nothing is real, everything’s good, nothing lasts, it’s all changing, there’s no up, there’s no down, no one’s rich, no one’s poor, nothing is better than anything else, yeah? You’ve read the magazines, you’ve read the blogs, they call me a “genius”…

Chekhov – understandably confused, having only recently woken from a hundred year coma – asked me what it is that I actually do, so I explained “I make things happen. I build web presence. I innovate digitally. I think the new media. I design apps”.

I demonstrated the latest app I’d designed:

JAMES: Hit this button and now what have you got? Look, the app starts tagging everything in the picture. See here? Point at my laptop, it’s telling me that this is a MacBook Air, 13″ screen, starting at £1,378, click on that button to be taken to a range of selected stores…

I explained further:

JAMES: …It knows the value of everything. With this app you can buy literally anything you see.
ANTON: I understand.
JAMES: In Web 2.0, seeing isn’t enough. It’s about tags and dialogue and flexibility and interaction and being non-fucking-linear for once in your life and its social networks and it’s now and it’s super-now and it’s having information at your fingertips because what’s money? Information is the new money. You see Wikipedia, I see money. And it works with people too. Point it at me, what does it say?
ANTON: James Ward, Internet guru, futurologist, Genius.

I didn’t actually meet Chekhov. Anton Chekhov died in 1904. But a version of him didn’t die. A version of him simply slipped into a coma and woke up in the twenty-first century. That was the version of Anton Chekhov I met. That was the version of Anton Chekhov which a version of me met at least.

I’d asked people a while ago to fictionalise me, and this version of Anton Chekhov and this version of me both appear in Dan Rebellato’s play Chekhov In Hell.

Actually, the version of me in the play is a bit of a cock, but I don’t take that personally. In fact, it could have been worse, I could have been Jessica who appears a couple of scenes later.

FICTIONAL JAMES WARD SIGHTING

October 13, 2010 By in WORDS Tags: , , , , 4 Comments

A while ago, I mentioned that I wanted people to fictionalise me – to name a character after me in some work of theirs; a novel, a short story, a script, a song, anything.

What I like about this idea, apart from its obvious appeal to my sense of vanity and self-importance, is its slow burn nature. Both Emma Kennedy and Jenny Colgan have said they’ll include James Wards in their books, but book publishing takes quite a long time, so these fictional versions of me won’t come to life until the middle of next year at the earliest. I like that. This is a long, slow process. It will continue long after I have forgotten all about it.

I also like the chaotic nature of the idea. Because this is something I am asking other people to do, I’ll never really be able to monitor it. It happens without any input from me, without my knowledge, and over a timescale I can’t control.

The other day, I got an email from someone called Morgan Seekoo saying they believed a character in a web comic was based on me.

This is where “I” first appear:

“I” am the green voice.

It’s not until a couple of pages later, that “I” am properly introduced:

There were three factors which led Morgan to believe the character was based on me:

  1. The character is called James, which is also my name.
  2. The character mentions writing to the manufacturer of the engine room and complains he only received a form letter in response, which is the sort of thing I do quite often.
  3. The character is part of a secretive order who all wear black suits, blindfolds and a fez. Everyone else in the order wears black ties, but James wears a skinny black tie with white stripes. I am not a member of a secretive order of people who dress in any particular way, but the tie which most accurately represents my entire tie collection is a skinny black tie with white stripes

I wasn’t entirely convinced, but the name of the comic’s creator, Magnus Nørgaard, was familiar. In fact, a couple of weeks earlier, I’d received an email from Magnus which simply said:

Are you familiar with the computer game hero Commander Keen?

I meant to reply at the time, but I found the question so baffling that I didn’t know what to say. I emailed Magnus back to ask if the character was based on me and he replied:

As a matter of fact, he was. Everyone in the initiatic order was based on a real person, most of them on crazy people. You were the normal one. I was going to do a scene where you talk for a long time about your tie collection, but the whole plot thread was unexpectedly terminated.

So there you go, congratulations Morgan for correctly guessing that the James character was based on me, and thank you Magnus for including me in your comic.

DEED POLL PART TWO

August 20, 2010 By in AUDIO, WORDS Tags: , , , 27 Comments

I managed to speak to Claudia in the end. I recorded the call on my phone, but I’m not sure how to transfer the file to upload it on here. It’s probably quite easy (EDIT: now uploaded, see below). In the meantime, this is a transcript of the conversation:

Deed Poll Office receptionist: Hello, Deed Poll Office, how can I help?
James Ward: Hi, can I speak to Claudia please?
Deed Poll Office receptionist: Yes, who’s calling?
James Ward: It’s James Ward
Deed Poll Office receptionist: Bear with me a second.

[PUT ON HOLD]

Claudia: Hello, is that James?
James Ward: Yeah, hello. Hi, is that Claudia?
Claudia: Hello, it’s Claudia speaking. Thank you for returning my call. We received your email…
James Ward: Yeah.
Claudia: …saying that you require a name cha– Am I right in thinking that you want a name change document…
James Ward: Yeah.
Claudia: Although you don’t intend to change your name?
James Ward: Yeah, I want, I want to change, well effectively to change my name from James Michael Ward to James Michael Ward.
Claudia: With exactly the same spelling.
James Ward: Yep.
Claudia: So effectively there’s no change.
James Ward: Erm, well, no.
Claudia: Right. You can’t do that.
James Ward: Can I not?
Claudia: No. Because it’s a name change document… you are… it says in the document that you are relinquishing your previous name, so the fact there is no change whatsoever means you are not doing that.
James Ward: Right. OK. So it’s not possible.
Claudia: No, it’s certainly not possible. To have… I mean, that’s why it’s called “change of name”. You need to have some sort of change.
James Ward: Right.
Claudia: And, it can’t…otherwise, it would just be a certificate of your name, which is what your birth certificate is, effectively.
James Ward: OK. So, I guess if I changed my name to something else and then changed it back…
Claudia: If you changed your name to something else and… why do you want this?
James Ward: Erm.
Claudia: I’m just trying to understand why you…
James Ward: Well, you know, when you’re given your name as a child – a baby…
Claudia: Yeah.
James Ward: You don’t get to have any say in the matter. So now I’m just kind of like… I want my name to be something I’ve chosen rather than something given to me.
Claudia: Right. I understand that…but most people, if they’re a bit affronted by the fact that their parents have chosen their name for them and they want to chose it themselves, they will choose a slightly different name or a completely different name.
James Ward: Yeah.
Claudia: There would be some sort of difference.
James Ward: Yeah.
Claudia: But you’re…
James Ward: I happen to agree with the choice that my parents made…
Claudia: So, you agree with the choice your parents made for you name, but you want to have a certificate saying…
James Ward: Yeah, that I made the choice myself.
Claudia: That you chose it.
James Ward: Yeah.
Claudia: You want a certificate saying that you agree with your parents.
James Ward: Yeah. It’s like if you were baptised, and you have confirmation when you’re sort of thirteen or whatever, it’s the same sort of thing but with a name.
Claudia: I mean, if you… if you wanted, literally, a certificate of your name, the only way to do it would be to… change your name to something different and then do another deed poll changing it from that name…
James Ward: Back.
Claudia: Back to the name you want to be. But you wouldn’t be able to present it to anyone. I mean, it would… you know, because presumably you wouldn’t want to actually go round and apply for a new passport and everything for a name that you don’t actually want and then have to show them the new deed poll going to the name that you want, the name that you are at the moment.
James Ward: No. That would…
Claudia: I mean…
James Ward: That would be a waste of time.
Claudia: Yeah. I mean, really wouldn’t it be cheaper just to go on Photoshop and create yourself a little certificate saying that you’d like…
James Ward: But…
Claudia: I know it sounds daft, but that’s effectively what we’d be doing for you. I mean, it’s not possible, no-one’s going to be able to do it because of the fact you can’t say that you’re relinquishing your name and there certainly, as far as I’m aware, aren’t companies out there which cater for someone saying “I really like my name and I agree, you know, with the choice that my parents have made”.
James Ward: Maybe it’s a service you could offer.
Claudia: To be honest… our company’s been running ten years and we’re the largest issuer of deed polls in the UK and I have never encountered someone like you who doesn’t really want a name change, they just want to say they agree with their parents and they have effectively chosen it for themselves. You’re quite unique, I don’t think we’d be able to market it to many people.
James Ward: I thought there’d be loads… I thought…
Claudia: I mean…
James Ward: Maybe I’ll go on Dragon’s Den.
Claudia: I mean, there… there just really isn’t much we can do. If you don’t want to change…if you were changing one letter of your name we’d be able to do a deed poll, it’s not a problem.
James Ward: Right.
Claudia: Because that is technically a name change then. But, for you to not change your name at all…
James Ward: Yeah…
Claudia: There’s nothing we can do for you.
James Ward: Alright, well thanks for looking into it anyway…
Claudia: No, that’s fine, I mean, just bear with me one second…

[PUT ON HOLD]

Claudia: Hello?
James Ward: Hello.
Claudia: I was just checking, because your…because we were ready to process your application, we have already charged your card but we will issue a refund for it…
James Ward: Right.
Claudia: Later on today. Unless you want to rethink the name change and change it by one letter or something which we can certainly do and issue a deed poll for you, but we can’t issue a document if you’re not changing in the slightest.
James Ward: Yeah. OK. Well, if you just issue the refund and then if I change my mind, I’ll do a new application.
Claudia: That’s not a problem, we’ll do that for you later on today.
James Ward: OK.
Claudia: OK, sorry about that. Thanks for getting in touch though.
James Ward: Thanks.
Claudia: Thank you. Bye.
James Ward: Bye.

I am still, and remain, James Ward. But it is still not legally recognised that this is a name I have chosen for myself. According to Wikipedia, all you need is a piece of paper with the following wording signed and witnessed:

Change of name deed by [former name] of [address]
I have given up my name [former name] and have adopted for all purposes the name [new name].
Signed as a deed on [date] as [former name] and [new name] in the presence of [witness's name, signature and address].

It feels like cheating to do it myself like that though. There needs to be some sort of ritual, some ceremony. Something. Not a document I’ve put together myself in Word and printed out. That’s not enough. I might go to a solicitor and see if they’ll do it for me, it will cost a lot more, but for that reason, they are more likely to agree.

EDIT: I’ve worked out how to upload the sound file, which means that I wasted quite a lot of time typing all that out and you’ve wasted quite a lot of time reading it. Sorry about that.

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