When Waiting Is Optional Please Be Patient
My mother recently embarked on a trip to the National Theatre to see Warhorse by Michael Morpurgo, accompanied by two of her teenage granddaughters – my youngest niece and my daughter. Clearly she is teetering on the verge of insanity to voluntarily be exposed to teenagers. Prior to the trip she did express a moment of uncertainty but resolved to stick to taxis, rather than throw in the complexity of the Tube. I think this was a mistake as on the Tube there would have been a good chance of losing the teenagers. It would take real talent to lose a teenager in a taxi. All went well and we later heard that she had enjoyed a Whopper on Waterloo station which made my father choke on his evening whisky! The play itself was deemed to be a great success and both the girls thought “it was like amazing!” Why was it “like” amazing? If you can get beyond the fact that the horse puppet was driven by three people that resulted in it having ten legs, six arms and four heads, then I could agree it is “amazing” but not “like amazing”. Teenagers: barely awake and massacring the English tongue!
The only slight downside of the day was that I had advised my mother to get any return train to Micheldever, our local station, or failing that, one to Basingstoke where I would pick her up. Unfortunately she did precisely as instructed and got the slow train to nowhere which stops at every station and consequently she took well over an hour on a journey that should take 40 minutes. I picked her up at Basingstoke expecting to see her seething as our family is not renowned for patience. However, when one considers that she spent the day in the company of teens and had chugged along at the speed of a stunned slug, she was remarkably calm. She explained philosophically that once aboard the train there was no point in becoming stressed as she had no choice but to stay on. There was she pointed out no chance to get off. I was most impressed by this new found tolerance and only wish it would be imparted to more of her generation, particularly my father!
The reason I wish her patience was infectious to the point of a pandemic is that HearingDirect’s website now uses Royal Mail Second Class as Standard Shipping, which takes a day or so longer than First Class. Before, you seize your pen to compose your letter of complaint, I would like to point out that we have done it to offer a FREE service to keep our prices as low as possible in these times of spiralling VAT. First Class shipping is still available as is Next Day but both are chargeable.
It is a well known industry statistic that on average people wait seven years from recognising they have a hearing loss until they take positive action. Typically this involves buying a hearing aid. So if we take Mr or Mrs Average, they wake up seven years on from the date of first being in denial over their hearing loss and like any well rounded, sensible individual they decide to search the internet for a solution to the problem which they are at last prepared to face. They type in “Hearing Aids” or any similar search term and before their eyes Google recommends HearingDirect.com They click their mouse and their screen now offers them all the assistance they need at a fraction of the high street costs! Man, that’s a great site!!
So having waited for seven years or 2,555 days, I appeal to our customers to show the patience of my sainted mother and wait those two extra days. Many thanks.