As readers know from the excellent article this week by Will Jones, the current Chairman of the John Lewis partnership, Dame Sharon White, will be stepping down. This makes her five-year term (by the time she leaves) the shortest in John Lewis’s history with her predecessors each serving between 13 and 26 years.
I sensed that all was not well when, in June, I purchased a mattress from its central London store. Today, five months later, I am still awaiting delivery and the story is every bit as telling as Tracy Emin’s iconic bed, shortlisted for the Tate Modern prize in 1998 – an emblem of Bridget Jones-style singlehood, with stained sheets in disarray, empty vodka bottles, cigarette packets and condoms on the ground.
So, why the delay in the delivery of the mattress?
A brief foray into the world of mattresses. The John Lewis mattress is available in two tensions, one regular and one firm and is displayed as part of a double mattress, with only the labels distinguishing the two tensions of ‘regular’ and ‘firm’. When I made a return visit to the store to affirm the correctness of my purchase (the mattress was far more expensive than previous ones I’d had but was intended to support a rickety back) it made sense to check the correctness of the labels. The shop floor was quick to assert that they were ‘correct’ but there was no attempt to check this with reference to the feel of the bed. So, I had no way of knowing if the labelling was correct or not.
One salesperson suggested that I visit another store that stocked the same mattress and so I travelled across London to check it out. It felt exactly the same as the other one and yet the labels were presented in the reverse order. I reported back to the first store and asked which of the two sets of labels were correct. I would say that asking this question was by no means easy since it is impossible to contact departments by telephone, and all contact is through a call centre in Tunisia. I had explained the story five times to the person at the other end of the phone but gave up when I realised that the issues were conceptually or linguistically (I don’t know which) beyond her comprehension.
It was chance that led the salesperson from the shop floor to phone me so that I could communicate the discrepancy in labelling between the two beds. I said that I hoped an investigation could be made to sort out which was correct. When the weeks rolled by, I reached out to the manufacturer who eventually sent experts out to the two stores, confirming that there was a labelling error in one. This conclusion left the door open to my arranging a date for the delivery of the long-awaited mattress, all done by email with the team leader of the beds department.
On the appointed day, handyman by my side (to move out the old mattress), I awaited the John Lewis van. It never turned up. Why? I later learned that the contents of my email had been opened by a colleague of the addressee who forgot to reveal its contents to the team leader.
This degree of chaos is unusual and so I was interested when a friendly Customer Services operative did not answer my question: “Is leadership at John Lewis good?” I was intrigued when a salesman in the central London branch told me that even the call centre operative earned more than he did. And my worst suspicions were confirmed when the handyman told me that a former John Lewis manager in my road had told him that things in the group were “the pits”.
The rest is history. In 2022, the John Lewis Partnership suffered a loss of £234m and in March this year it scrapped the annual staff bonus for the second time in three years. Dame Sharon blamed inflation and the shift towards online shopping but a competitor, Marks and Spencer, bounced back with results beyond expectations in May this year.
It seems that the current Chairman made the fatal mistake committed by M&S CEO Sir Richard Greenbury in the late 1990s when he encouraged the departure of experienced staff in order, so he thought, to boost profits. Yes, these reached a peak of £1 billion in 1998 but nose-dived in 2001 to £0.14 billion. Dame Sharon made a commitment to customer service but with a background in economics, she may not have realised that delivering a premium product depends on the loyalty and skill of staff.
There are lessons to be learned and maybe the mattress at John Lewis could be a contender for the next Tate Modern prize. Its title? Perhaps: ‘The power to think beyond the label.’ All suggestions on a postcard please.
Gloria Moss PhD FCIPD is an experienced HR professional who has served as Head of Training in a number of blue chip companies and as a Professor of Management and Marketing. She is the author of around 80 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and her eight books include Inclusive Leadership. She can be contacted by email.
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Who the hell are the satisfied 29%??
People whose in-laws recently sadlydied in NHS care?
The SuddenlyDied™ and the SadlyDied™…
And the 100%SafeAndEffectives™ …
The lazy, overpaid gits who work in it.
The satisfied are the Doctors.
I work in the NHS and, for the few (mainly Doctors), it’s a licence to print money.
They’ll pay lip service to the state of the NHS but behind closed doors they’re rubbing their hands in glee.
There’s only one reason for the present crisis and that’s the GP’s are in a sulk because they’re now expected to see and treat patients after their extended paid leave during Covid and it’s not going down well. In retaliation for being expected to work they’ve taken to diverting the patients to A&E, preferably in an expensive Ambulance. No one questions them and so the A&E car park is rammed with Ambulances, filled with trivial ailments that the GP’s refuse to deal with.
Their Doctor colleagues in A&E gladly accept them and keep their mouths shut so that they can all keep their snouts in the trough.
You’d think they’d have some shame after slaughtering tens of thousands during Covid but they know they’re teflon with the general public so can basically do whatever they please.
Whilst I was abroad a little while back, my wife had an accident. She snapped the ball off one her femurs bones. My neighbour Whatapped me to tell me my wife had had an accident, I could hear her whining like a beaten dog in the background.
Luckily I have for some great neighbours who stayed all of the 12 hours it took for the ambulance to arrive. The hospital was only 4 miles away from my house.
Although it was unsettling to hear my wife crying like that the thing that really scared me was if she moved and dislodged a bone fragment which could possible pierce her femoral artery and she would bleed in.
Speaking of unhappiness, here is an issue the NHS have been rubbish at tackling these last couple of years; loneliness.
Useless NHS!
https://rumble.com/vsgwlc-unvaccinated-man-feeling-left-out-as-all-his-vaccinated-friends-have-covid.html
And the solution is: Coronascrabble! Everytime you get a boring old cold, keeping testing until you finally hit the jackpot. Once you’ve managed to get a positive test, you may swap the old and boring L in C-O-L-D for a fresh and exciting V-I to make C-O-V-I-D and then, you belong again!
Masks not included.
You may have hit on something! “L” in Roman numerals is 50. “VI” is 6. The ratio is roughly 8.3. As a bit of a mystic meg, I wonder if between 8 and 9 “cases” of covid are actually colds?
Not quite. Roman numbers always proceed from large to small. If a small number is placed in front of a larger one, it’s meant to be subtracted from it. Hence LD = 500 – 50 = 450 and VID is probably a swapped DIV which is 504.
Assuming the 450 was placed in a cyclic, decimal shift register and rotated one place to the left, the outcome would be 504. Which gets me back to my original point: COVID is that The Science[tm] makes out of COLD with Fancy Computer Tech[tm]. Among afficionados, COVID is thus also informally known as Smart Cold, a disease globally deployed in numerous variants since 2020 and originally supposed to enable ModeRNA to finally come to market with some product based on their innovative As Dangerous As Useless[tm] (patent pending) mRNA technology. The codename for this was Operation Daft Sweep.
Conspiracy Theory Thursday: Why the mad drive to inject more and more people with covaxxes despite they’re not the least bit at a risk from COVID?
Answer: If everybody – or almost everybody – is vaccinated, especially a lot of younger people who are generally more robust wrt infections than members of the so-called vulnerable groups, then, nobody will notice that we have a real killer product here, at least for some time.
How many of the people who got the first round injections in Dec 2020/ Jan 2021 because they were deemed especially vulnerable are still alive?
Interestingly in the early 2000s research into coronaviruses used a PCR test to identify ~396 base pairs. The same tests are being used to identify ‘covid’…. How many of of those positive tests have found something which is similar?
A basic this is the science behind the process, so how the hell can what is claimed to be found be true?
Well, this is a real ‘No Shit Sherlock’ story isn’t it?
One assumes it’s quite challenging for most of the staff to remain motivated and cheerful as they come to terms with their blind cooperation in this grotesquely horrific medical holo-caust.
Does anybody know if there’s an increase in ambulance call outs in the UK ( or wherever you are ) still? Here’s Dr Bridle observing the significant increase in such calls in a part of Canada, way higher than when there was a deadly virus on the loose and no ”highly effective” pseudo-vaccines to protect folk;
”Notably, this increase correlates with increases in all-cause mortality around the world. Would it be worth considering the ‘elephant in the room’; i.e., the possibility that the COVID-19 shots might have a role to play here? Any experts who definitively say ‘“no” better have some solid data to prove it.
It would be great if we could get paramedic service data from all across Canada and other countries. Specifically, it would be helpful to know what call volumes looked like in 2020 (no shots but a ‘deadly virus that overwhelmed the medical system’), 2021 and 2022 (‘COVID-19 ‘vaccine’ rollout), and pre-pandemic (baseline).”
https://viralimmunologist.substack.com/p/call-volume-for-paramedics-went-down
I popped into my local hospital to find that you must wear a mask again. It’s mandatory! This is insane as not only do they do nothing in relation to any airborne virus but they are single use plastic. How much money has been spent on masks and who has the contract to supply them? In addition there was a poster saying something about ZeroCovid!!!! For **** sake, has nothing been learned in 3 years? Why is anyone pushing the insane idea that you can completely eliminate Covid and now? I now have a visceral dislike of any intent that involves the word ‘zero’. There is nothing good in it.
Mandatory only in some administrator’s warped view of the world with no knowledge of the lawful position on consent to a medical intervention – masking is a medical intervention – the simplest thing to do is to say that you’re exempt.
Also, the taxpayer will pay for these and probably for the management of procuring them as well as disposal. we paid for the ‘vaccines’ and we will pay for damages caused by the ‘vaccines’.
Well if doctors and nurses are still seeing fit to bump off old folk with their midazolam/morphine death cocktail then they won’t think anything of continuing to fly in the face of an Everest-sized mountain of contradictory evidence and keep dehumanizing patients in the face-nappy dept too. Because that’s basically how they see most patients, as subhuman, or so it would seem anyway. Here’s a documentary, for anyone who hasn’t yet seen it, on the whole morphine/midazolam thing. As much as I despise Handcockup, the buck stops with the doctors who prescribe this death sentence and the nurses who administer it.
https://odysee.com/@Belfasteye.com:9/aGoodDeath:1
Agreed, Net Zero the same. Did this start with Pol Pot and his Year Zero, which also sounds similar to a ‘Great Reset’?
Just refuse. Firstly as BB says these are a medical intervention and secondly ask to see written confirmation that they are mandatory and under whose authority because it is not government.
Of course the structural issues within the NHS were already there but the following piece of excellent journalism shows who was responsible for driving all the terrible decisions that have pushed many of our institutions into untenable positions. Perhaps there was intent in all this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FPQJD-fQQI&t=0s
Amazing True Story: The Actual Origins of Lockdown ‘Science’ !
Here is a Short from this video showing a very key person – Bruce Aylward.
https://youtu.be/lbe1ISGHS4k
Here is Bruce Aylward being asked why Taiwan is not recognized by the WHO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM
I hope the connection is clear?
let’s hope the public soon wake up to the real reason for the inadequacy of the NHS like all the public sector, is nothing to do with a lack of money.
More people, more money is the cry of those unable to think critically. The NHS already consumes 1 in every £10 of the tax take and employs 1 in 25 working age adults. How much more can we give it..?
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” – Thomas Sowell
The NHS will never get fixed. Politically, Labour make out that it is a national treasure and the envy of the world and that “The Evil Tories” want to destroy; however, when they get in power they are clueless and fearful of reform (and upsetting the Public Sector unions). The Conservatives are so frightened of the media outcry if they even attempt reform that they just pump more money into it and continue the status quo.
It’ll take war or the government facing bankrupcy before real reform takes place.
What a wonderful job lockdown did protecting the NHS.
/s
Wonder how many would be outside every week banging their pots and pans nowadays…
Doesn’t pot-banging bring on ‘Sudden Death Syndrome’ or Sadly Died Syndrome first identified by The Science ™ in 1977 as a silent killer? (along with happiness)
Senator Babet is one to watch down under. He’s the same on other issues such as trans ideology and climate twaddle. Good man! But 97.5% Aussies over 16yrs have been jabbed though??
https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1638885872769679360?cxt=HHwWgIC-nZSBv74tAAAA
You have to wonder how much money would be enough for the 50% who think it doesn’t get enough.
The administrative bureaucracy of the management layer is now so dense no increase in funding money could ever reach the front line
Let’s hope people don’t think the problem is under funding.
Monday 3rd April 11am to 12pm
Yellow Freedom Boards
Junction Broad Lane &
A3095/A322 Bagshot Road
Bracknell RG12 9RA
They do! There seem to be an awful lot of people who won’t be happy until 100% of our tax take is funding ‘our’ NHS.
Remember the psyop. Clap for the NHS. I thought it was daft then. It looks insane now! I honestly believe (and hope) that the NHS is finished. We need a new system that promotes healthy living and that is not beholden to big pharma.
I thought we were clapping the TikTok videos
Echoing Miss Dolly’s comment, whenever I mention the NHS and how difficult it is to see a GP (I havent seen one face to face for 4 years!!!!), my friends living in the countryside would say how wonderful their local NHS is! From GP appointments to hospitalisation, they are thrilled and satisfied. So, my question is, is it the London based NHS service that is failing us? But not the countryside? If so, why are the city hospitals and GP’s so incompetent?
“Majority of Public Unhappy with NHS for First Time…”
Just woke up have they?
Just shows what a nations of nitwits Britain is. They deserve all they get – or in the case of the NHS, don’t get.
Amazingly high level of support considering they have spent the last 2 years peddling a lethal injection for us. Wait till the majority understand the full implications of this crime….
Meanwhile staff TikTok routines are going from strength to strength
Very very depressing. Yesterday I “enjoyed” the company of friends from my old workplace . Without going into too much detail I had lunch with one lot and dinner with a different set. To a man and woman they were fully engaged with government policy over covid. All had been fully “vaccinated” and boosted and proud of it. The final coup de grace came when one proudly announced he has just bought an electric car!
Naturally, because of my views I was passed off as a conspiracy theorist and told I had “gone down too many ‘worm’ holes”!
Thank God for you lot!