"chickengate": the new technique companies are using to deal with customer complaints

The world of customer complaints isn't what it used to be.

This story begins last week, when I decided to write to Woolworths supermarkets to document a stoush I had with store management regarding a chicken.  Correspondence follows.

---

Hello

I have a question about your "fresh or free guarantee".

A few months ago I purchased a packaged raw chicken from my local Woolworths.  When I opened the chicken the following evening in order to roast it, my kitchen was suddenly filled with a rank odour.  The chicken, like my dinner plans, was off.

Annoyed at having pre-heated the oven for nothing, I threw the chicken in a plastic bag, tied it shut, and marched the chook outside to the wheelie bin.

Upon my next trip to Woolworths, I enquired at the service counter about how I might get a replacement chicken and/or a refund.  I was told that in order for any of this to occur, I would be required to bring the chicken into the store for inspection.  Simply presenting a receipt, I was told, would not suffice.

I questioned the rationale behind this policy, especially seeing as said chicken had now been in my wheelie bin for three days.  In response, I was told that I needed to present the chicken in order for Woolworths to:

a) ascertain that the chicken actually was off; and if so
b) send the chicken back to the supplier for inspection.

Vainly, I tried to point out the oddness of this approach.  Bringing in the chicken at this stage would not prove the chicken's unfitness for eating at the time of purchase; all that would be proven was that I now had a rancid chicken that had been fermenting inside my wheelie bin for three days.  Even if I had bought the greatest chicken in the world—the legendary "naked neck" bird from France—three days roosting inside a green plastic garbage receptacle in the middle of summer would be enough to turn even a live bird into something resembling the detritus lining King Street in the early hours of Saturday morning.

I furthermore questioned whether Woolworths was actually going to place my chicken into a little box and ship it back to the manufacturer for autopsy.  Yes, was the answer from the unrelenting store detective—the chicken must appear.

"Very well then", I said, "I'll get you your chicken."  By this stage I was more incensed than a Tibetan temple, and strode home muttering promises of revenge under my breath.

After negotiating with several thousand houseflies for the chicken's release, I took a deep breath, removed the bird from the wheelie bin, placed it inside a second plastic bag, and promptly returned to Woolworths.

"Oh...", said the store detective upon my return, wearing really the only facial expression possible when faced with a fetid chicken laying on the customer service counter (in a leaky bag).

I promptly received a refund and a replacement chicken.

Much more recently, I was back in the same store and purchased (for novelty value) a spatchcock, intending to see in how many bites I could eat it.  Alas, upon returning home, I once again discovered an unpleasant odour—the spatchcock was most fowl.  Not wanting a repeat of "chickengate", I sealed up the spatchcock inside another bag, refrigerated it, and brought it back to the store for a refund the following day (however, no replacement spatchcock was offered).

Anyway, my question is: as this poultry exercise is likely to happen again (Woolworths has obviously not put the money saved from squeezing the Australian dairy industry toward adequate refrigeration of chickens), do I need to store the offending bird inside my refrigerator (and risk being charged under federal anti-terrorism legislation with cultivating a biological weapon) until I can get back to Woolworths and return the product, or is proof of purchase enough to receive the full range of remedies available under your "fresh or free guarantee"? 

Regards

Dave

---

Even before I finished my letter, I had become quite excited about the response I might get.

From my perspective, this was a return to my blogging origins.  Winding up companies had served me well in the past: loyal readers of Melbourne Surprise might recall my very first article, in which I questioned Uncle Tobys' claim to have "spinkled" their Oat Crisp cereal with delicious oat clusters, as well as Uncle Tobys' response—a haughty, legalistic reply, in which Uncle Tobys pulled out the old chestnut of being "sorry I felt that way" (and I gave away my secret plans to set up a fraudulent dog-walking business).

There was the infamous spanish onion incident, where an innocent query lodged with Woolworths as to the size and shape of spanish onions was met with a frosty response that suggested that I have no friends.

And, also from the early days of this website, an innocent enquiry regarding Leggo's pasta bake that went entirely unanswered until I pretended to be a suburban housewife.

Recalling that entire blogging fiefdoms have been built off letters of complaint, I had high hopes for "chickengate".  Just as John Lennon returned to his roots by paying homage to his early musical influences on 1975's Rock 'n' Roll, I was rediscovering what first inspired me to plonk myself behind a laptop at odd hours of the day and patter out fortnightly nonsense so that I might add "slash, blogger" to my job title at at social occasions.

Yes, I was assured that "chickengate" would be a story for the ages.  Until I received Woolworths' response.

---

Hi Dave, thanks for getting in touch. Our sincerest apologies for the experiences you encountered.

We are so sorry to hear about the chicken and spatchcock you bought from us - proof of purchase is enough for you to receive a full refund and replacement on these products.

Can you please let us know which store this occurred at so that we can look into it? Thanks.

---

I was stunned!  This was a never-seen-before complaint management technique.  A complete, sincere, "so sorry" apology.

In a way, I had got everything I wanted.  But in another, more vindictive way, I was left horribly empty.  There would be no wit-sodden replies.  There would be no online gloating.  There would be no public shaming; no "look at me I have a blog and I have brought a giant to its knees" self-aggrandisement.  I had received a humane and polite apology.

My thoughts initially turned to a search for error.  What had I done wrong in failing to wind Woolworths up?  Perhaps I should have inserted an angrier tone; flawed logic; and multiple spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes into my letter to ensure that my communication was siphoned away from the Woolworths customer service team that handles mildly educated nitwits with blogs, and instead was directed toward the easily-agitated "the customer is not always right and I am going to tell them why this is so" team. 

Or perhaps (for once) I was actually in the right.

But maybe this response is representative of a greater trend across customer complaints departments in Australia.  Given that [author's note: insert lazy sentence about the empowering effects of social media to make blog appear cutting-edge], I wonder whether companies—tired of public relations scandals such as this, this, this, and this—are simply beginning to see that a quick, earnest apology will shut up even the most vociferous whingers and (in doing so) insure the corporate reputation from future harm.

Has social media killed the Internet's favourite non-cat source of entertainment? Is it now impossible to wind up large companies via letters of complaint?  Am I totally misguided (in life, as well as in blog)?

I would love to hear your opinions on the above in the comments box below.  Melbourne Surprise values each and every one of you; my very, very dear readers.

the 10 best places to sit and relax in Melbourne's CBD (and the stories behind the city): part 2 of 2

Park your rear here, because what follows is the final article in my two-part series on the best places to sit in Melbourne's CBD.

You can read the selection criteria and part one of the series by clicking here.  Otherwise, storytime continues... now.

---

#5 – St. Augustine's Churchyard 

Seating: park benches.

On the western end of Bourke Street between Spencer and King streets lies the small church of St. Augustine's.  Its leafy, secluded front courtyard is ringed with park benches.

The church is named after St. Augustine of Hippo, who died in the year 430.  The patron saint of printers, St. Augustine inspired the creation of the "Canons Regular" religious order, even though Augustine himself was always more of a Hewlett-Packard man (and far from regular).

Built primarily out of bluestone in the Gothic Revival style, St. Augustine's opened on 25 September 1870.  A handsome collection was taken from the capacity crowd during the opening mass, but a debt of £1000 remained owing to the builders.

The church took a very direct route in raising the funds.  On Boxing Day, 26 December 1870, it placed an advertisement in The Argus newspaper as follows:

THIRTY-FOUR THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED and NINETEEN inhabitants of West Melbourne, Hotham, &c, WANTED at CATHOLIC PICNIC, on day commonly called Boxing, to swell the proceeds, which are to be given to liquidate the debt on St Augustine's Church.

Apparently the "Catholic Picnic" was all the rage in the 1870s.  In that same newspaper, I spotted around fifteen advertisements for the Boxing Day Catholic Picnic—you must remember, these were the days before televised cricket.

Where did this Catholic Picnic come from?  A clue might perhaps be found in a South Australian Register article from 30 December 1880, which outlined the history of Adelaide's version of the event:

Some twelve or fourteen years ago the 26th of December was "Boxing Day" in reality. Large numbers of men used to assemble for the purpose of either joining in or witnessing combat in the "wrestling ring"...different nationalities were set antagonistically against each other, and consequently the result of a contest not only caused ill-feeling between the two persons immediately concerned, but over the whole district.

Father Kennedy can take the credit for putting a stop to these brutal practices...the attractions of the wrestling ring being done away with, it was necessary to establish something else, and consequently an annual picnic was resorted to.

 

So, remember when your primary school teacher told you that Boxing Day never had anything to do with boxing?  She should've read this blog.


#4 – The Age front lawn

Seating: concrete benches, concrete steps, grassy knoll.

Published in Melbourne since 1854, The Age newspaper is headquartered on a small rise overlooking Collins and Spencer streets in the western end of Melbourne's CBD.
 

That small rise used to be a lot larger.  The Age sits on part of what used to be Batman's Hill, an 18-metre mound on which Melbourne pioneer John Batman built a house and settled his family.

Batman begun his journey into the history books in June 1835, when he travelled to present-day Northcote to negotiate a "treaty" with the local Wurundjeri aborigines, purchasing most of present-day Melbourne in exchange for 40 pairs of blankets, 42 tomahawks, 130 knives, 62 pairs of scissors, 40 looking glasses, 250 handkerchiefs, 18 shirts, 4 flannel jackets, and 4 suits of clothes.  Given that Batman's treaty was eventually invalidated by the colonial authorities, he would have been better off to keep those items for himself, remain in Northcote until 2013, and open up a vintage clothing and accessories store.

The grassy hill in front of The Age is a great place to stop, sit, and watch the city go by, like John Batman may have done over 170 years ago.  Just make sure you avoid this area on a windy day—or you might be blown off your perch by the breeze funnelling across from Docklands, also known as the "Stalingrad End" of town.

Actually, I'm not being very fair with that description.  Apologies. The city of Stalingrad was immensely popular at certain points in history (most particularly amongst German tourists during the winter of 1943), whereas nobody in their right mind has ever wanted to go to Docklands.


#3 – State Library of Victoria

Seating: concrete steps, park benches, grass.

Considerable debate rages to this day about who was the true founder of Melbourne.  Was it John Batman, who famously declared "this will be the place for a village!" after signing his treaty with the Aborigines?  Or was it cunning Tasmanian businessman John Pascoe Fawkner, who assured John Batman upon hearing about the treaty that he had no intention of settling anywhere near the future site of Melbourne, and then, when Batman wasn't looking, sent an entire ship stocked with settlers, materials and provisions up the Yarra river and built a town, pub, and newspaper?

The answer to this question is truly Melbourne's great social divide; moreso than any allegiance to political party, union, school, suburb, or football team, this is the question that defines us.  Like a country town with only two pubs, Melbourne is split firmly into the Batman camp and the Fawkner camp.

And I would advise visitors to our great city to capitalise on this!  If you wish to make friends with a Melburnian, don't be so foolish as to strike up a conversation about football—rather, simply ask whether he or she believes John Batman or John Pascoe Fawkner to be Melbourne's true founder.  If you get a blank stare in reply, it is likely that your question was not heard.  Ask again, much louder this time.

Perhaps the answer will one day be found in the original diaries of Batman and Fawkner, both of which are held at the State Library of Victoria (initially as collateral after both Batman and Fawkner could not agree on how to share the colony's sole copy of "Do You Have a Flag?": the Travelling Englishman's Guide to Terra Nullius).

Oh yes, and the forecourt of the State Library is exceedingly popular with sitters, especially those wishing to sun themselves like lizards on a clear winter's day.


#2 – Old Melbourne Gaol

Seating: park benches, tables, concrete, artificial grass.

Opened in 1845, Old Melbourne Gaol is best known today as the site at which convicted bushranger Ned Kelly was executed in November 1880.

"It is not that I fear death; I fear it as little as to drink a cup of tea", said Kelly in court as he was sentenced to death by hanging, proving that whilst he was a brave man, he was also lucky enough to always take his tea-water from a kettle, and not one of those god-awful instant "boiling" water taps that pumps out tepid slop at offices across Melbourne.

But as the 20th century dawned, the Gaol was gradually put to other uses. "No finer record could be left by a Government than the emptying of gaols to provide accommodation for educational institutions", said Premier Alexander Peacock in 1914—a noble sentiment indeed, provided one duly ignores the spike in ruffianism that comes from emptying thousands of prisoners onto the streets.

Part of the Gaol was converted into the female-only Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy, which was opened by the future Queen Mother in 1927.  At the opening, the College presented the Queen Mother with an honorary diploma for setting "all Australians an example of home life", which caused sales of sherry to skyrocket throughout Australia on the following day.
 

These days, the Emily McPherson College has been subsumed into RMIT, which occupies most of the land in the area, including several spaces (such as Alumni Courtyard, pictured above) surrounding the old Gaol building that are clean, quiet, and eerily fantastic places for a sit.

The Gaol itself remains as a tourist attraction, claimed to be one of the most haunted sites in Melbourne, although Ned Kelly ghost sightings have drastically dropped off in recent times—strangely enough, ever since RMIT textile/photography double majors were instructed to stop cutting through the Gaol grounds on their way home to Brunswick.

#1 – Gordon Reserve

Seating: park benches, grass.

Located on Spring Street between Parliament House and the Treasury buildings, and replete with newly renovated lawns, benches, and fountain, Gordon Reserve is a sitter's dream—a welcome urban respite for city workers of all sorts, particularly members of government standing committees.

In an ingeniously thrifty maneuver that may soon prove more popular in cities running out of money and space, the reserve achieves maximum commemoration with minimal expenditure by being dedicated to the memory of not one, not two, but three famous Gordons—all connected throughout history!

Gordon #1 is Adam Lindsay Gordon: poet, politician, and jockey.  Once called "Australia's National Poet", he was the first Australian to have his bust placed in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey in London.

During his formative years in England, the teenaged Gordon #1 was a friend and schoolmate of Gordon #2: Charles George Gordon.  This Gordon was a Major-General in the British Army who believed that the Earth was encased in a large hollow sphere in which Satan dwelt somewhere over the south Pacific.
 

After being beheaded by rebels in the Sudan, Gordon #2 inspired a wave of patriotism across the British Empire—including in Australia, where Gordon #3, former Prime Minister of Australia Sir Robert Gordon Menzies was given his middle name in honour of Gordon #2's exploits.

Menzies' connection to Gordon Reserve comes in the form of a small stone plaque on the easternmost edge of the reserve that commemorates the laying of the first Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney coaxial telecommunications cable from 1957 to 1962, a nation-building project over which the Menzies government presided.

Designed to handle an increased volume of telephone traffic, the cable was also built with extra capacity to handle the emerging technology of television (despite TV in Australia being only one year old when planning began).

Thankfully, Menzies did not choose a "faster, cheaper, and more affordable" coaxial cable scheme—where perhaps the cable would have been laid only as far as Shepparton, at which point TV shows would be transcribed by operators and then transmitted onwards to Melbourne via Morse code on the existing telegraph network (even though this would surely have been "more than enough for the average household"—provided that households did not want to watch, say, live coverage of the 1963 federal election).

Did I mention Gordon Reserve is a great place to sit?  The best, in fact.

Thanks for reading.

the 10 best places to sit and relax in Melbourne's CBD (and the stories behind the city): part 1 of 2

Melbourne is a great city for a walk, and no jaunt in the city is complete without a good sit.

The problem is, the majority of outdoor seating in Melbourne's Central Business District (CBD) is reserved for patrons of cafés and restaurants.  And while there are many stunning parks surrounding the fringe of the CBD, these are often out of reach of the average stroller.

Enter: me.  This is the first article in a two-part series detailing some of the best spots within the confines of the CBD to place one's bum, along with a historical story about each location.  Places are assessed by answering a simple question: "would I eat my lunch and read a book there?". 

#10 – City Square

Seating: concrete, limited grass, giant wooden wombat.

This one almost didn’t make the list.  The “seats” in City Square are no more than boxy concrete rectangles, most of which are spattered with seagull shit and arranged at a really odd shin-level height that tricks your brain into saying “I can sit on that” in spite of the severe pelvic damage that may result.

However, City Square is simply too darn historical to not feature on a list of public seatery.  Until the square opened in 1968, Melbourne never actually had a central public square.  Original city surveyor Robert Hoddle planned a square of great handsomeness in the 1840s, but his plans were shelved by colonial authorities who didn't approve of the pesky democratic ideals a civic square might foster.

Nevertheless, Melburnians were quick to make up for lost time after City Square finally opened.  Highlights over the years have included Vietnam war protests, AC/DC music videos, and more recently, in October 2011, the inaugural meeting of the Victoria Police “British Poll Tax Riots Re-Enactment Society”, an event that was unfortunately marred by the inadvertent double-booking of the square with Occupy Melbourne.

#9 – Madam Brussels Lane 

Seating: Wooden tables and benches.

Caroline Hodgson emigrated to Melbourne in June of 1871.  Upon arrival, her husband, Studholme Hodgson (prospective parents take note, here is a name that needs to be revived) promptly joined the police force and was posted to rural Victoria, leaving poor Caroline all alone in Melbourne.

What a shock to the system!  The best contemporaneous accounts of women at the time—the complete works of Charles Dickens—suggest that most ladies in Caroline’s position would have spent their days woefully sobbing beside a conservatory window about what miserable, lonely creatures they were.

Not our Caroline, however.  She promptly changed her name to “Madam Brussels” and opened two brothels bearing her name on Lonsdale Street, in the midst of what was then one of Melbourne’s most multicultural districts.  The proximity of Parliament House ensured that her establishments became extraordinarily popular (to the delight of many a parliamentary member), and Madam Brussels (both house and woman) remained a fixture in the area for over thirty years.

Although the brothels are long gone these days, immigrants still flock to the area for something even more exciting than opium-infused burlesque houses—the Australian Citizenship Test, administered at one of Mme. Brussels’ old addresses, in which prospective Australians demonstrate their commitment to this great country’s ideals by answering questions about the national flower.

Caroline Hodgson’s contribution to turn-of-the-century Melbourne society has been honoured with a small laneway connecting Lonsdale and Little Lonsdale streets: Madam Brussels Lane, which contains some public tables and benches for passers-by to relax upon, netting the laneway a spot at number nine. 

#8 – 360 Collins Street

Seating: park benches, concrete, rocks.

At 360 Collins Street, there is a skyscraper.  It is 142 metres tall—quite tall, but not tall enough to make the prestigious Wikipedia list of the top 27 tallest buildings in Melbourne.  If this skyscraper were to move to Adelaide, it would be the tallest building in the city!  But who wants to move to Adelaide?  Certainly not this skyscraper, embedded as it is into the Earth's crust and lacking the sentience to make such a foolish decision.

Ahem.  Out the back of this skyscraper (adjoining Little Collins Street) is a small plaza that could’ve easily been roofed over to form a food court serving sixteen different variations of the noodle and other dull corporate lunch fare.  Thankfully, it’s been left as a wide open space containing ample seating and a bit of greenery.

Collins Street itself takes its name from Colonel David Collins, who arrived in Australia with the first fleet and served in various high-ranking colonial government positions before being tasked with founding the first European settlement in present-day Victoria.

Upon sailing into Port Phillip Bay in October 1803, Collins completely failed to spot the Yarra River and instead attempted to settle at Sullivan Bay, just outside of what is now Sorrento.  Foolishly ignorant of the property boom that would grip the area a mere 209 years later, Collins left after a couple of months, declaring the area “too sandy” for his liking, thus becoming the first and last Englishman who came to Australia to get away from the beach. 

Collins left behind little trace of his settlement—apart from escaped convict William Buckley, who fled into the bush from Sullivan Bay, stole an Aboriginal grave marker, and inadvertently convinced the local tribe that he was (despite being a white, 6'6" bricklayer from Cheshire) the reincarnated spirit of the deceased.  As a result, he went on to live happily amongst the local Aborigines for 30 years.  His incredible story of survival and adaptation against all odds is said to have inspired the popular expression "Buckley's chance".

Perhaps feeling nostalgic for the people that sentenced him to 14 years of transportation for possessing a stolen roll of cloth, William Buckley returned to colonial society and died falling off a horse and cart.  He was described after death as "unintelligent and untrustworthy".

#7 – Federation Square

Seating: concrete steps, concrete seats, astroturf cubes.

Even in Melbourne's earliest years, the public wished that a world-class landmark might be bestowed upon our fair city:

“After flowing on in silence and solitude for some thousand years, the Yarra has suddenly seen a populous city 'rise like an exhalation' on its banks. Fourteen years have not yet elapsed since Melbourne was founded; yet has it already passed through three stages of progress… Whatever, therefore, is done NOW must give it impress to the FUTURE...

Every year that the work is postponed the sacrifice demanded will augment, while its fruits will become less and less... We know not who may be the first Governor of Victoria: but whoever he may be...his vice-royalty may yet be distinguished by such a complete re-modelling of the city, that, when he leaves us, we may inscribe to his memory, in the future Great Square of the City, the proud epitaph of Wren under the cupola of St. Paul's, ‘IF YOU ASK FOR HIS MONUMENT—LOOK AROUND YOU.’”

 – Anonymous, The Australasian, Issue 1, 1850

 

And then, Melbourne finally got its "great square", and the public said:

“What drugs were the designers of this monstrosity on. Please whatever they were make sure no one else on the planet can get any of them.”

 – Ron000001, tripadvisor.com, 21 March 2013

“I lived in Melbourne when this extremely UGLY mismatch of a building was built.
It is truly revolting and not within the street scape…NEVER liked it and never will, biggest mistake ever made in a beautiful city…Hopefully one day it will fall down. YUK!!!!!! I RATE IT A HUGE NEGATIVE ZERO”

– jilly, melbournism.com, 7 March 2011

Look, I quite like Fed Square.  The surrounds are great, there’s sometimes a little campfire in winter, and, with binoculars, you can view the Flinders Street Goths at a safe distance.  Plus, things could have been much, much worse.  In 1979, the "Landmark Competition" was held in an attempt to solicit public designs for the area that is now Federation Square, with a $100,000 prize offered to the winner. 

The competition eventually collapsed into farce as no winner was awarded from a pool of entries that showcased Melbourne's originality and inventiveness, including: a giant M (above), giant cricket stumps, a giant koala, giant capitalist kangaroos, a giant index finger, and most notably, giant tits.  


#6 – Bank Place

Seating: a semicircular park bench.

A good sitting area can't always be measured by the quantity of bums on seats—sometimes it comes down to the quality of seat on the bum.

Connecting Collins Street with Little Collins Street, Bank Place is a tiny, pedestrian-only laneway described by my friends at Wikipedia as "an oasis of heritage pre-war buildings".

It contains a sole public seat—a curved bench that might seat five people comfortably, or eight people uncomfortably, or twenty-two cats at varying levels of comfort.  It's small, quiet, and an excellent place to sit, ponder, and people-watch.

One stalwart of Bank Place is the Mitre Tavern.  Claiming to be the oldest building in Melbourne, this little pub dates back to at least the 1850s, and has been operating as a tavern since 1867.  While the Mitre's modern-day patronage seems rather straight-laced, it was known as somewhat of a bohemian hotbed in times gone by.

For proof of this statement, have a look at this hipster:

This is Harold Desbrowe-Annear, founder of the "T-Square Club" for artists and architects.  Led by Harold, this club formed part of the international "Arts and Crafts Movement"—a design ideology that rejected machine-design and machine-production in favour of more historical, simple and traditional hand-crafted forms that emphasised the methods and the materials used.  In short: the T-Square Club were vintage as.

These days, however, the Mitre is no longer suited to pockets of deep, hip people, as it has been overrun by suited people with deep hip pockets. 

So then—join with me next week for the conclusion of my seat-of-your-pants tour of Melbourne!  Speculation about the top five and arrogant noting of typographical errors are equally welcome in the comments box below.

Update: part 2 now available.  Go.  Go now!

the dark side of the espresso coffee revolution

In Australia, it is a bootable offence to drive into a country town and not stop at the local bakery.

I was out of the city about a week ago and duly pulled in at such a bakery for coffee and treats.  After choosing what was by name a pastry, but was in practice a giant custard repository, I happened to spot an old vintage drip/filter coffee machine perched on one of the benches.

“Does the coffee come from that machine?”, I asked the woman behind the counter.

“No”, came the reply, “that’s just there for show.  We do the fancy, good coffees now.”

She was, of course, referring to the bakery’s espresso machine.  So I ordered a “fancy” coffee.  

And, as expected, it wasn’t very good.  In fact, it was terrible.

Now, we all know that Melbourne has a serious coffee fixation.  We take it as a given that everyone in Melbourne knows that Melbourne is known Melbourne-wide as having the greatest coffee in the world.  We see for ourselves how the local rag uses more column space to fawn over baristas than it does to cover the ongoing conflict in Syria.  We bemuse visiting backpackers who arrive with dreams of sun and sand and instead find black-scarf-and-coat-clad grumpletons sipping macchiatos out of little cups in the drizzling rain.

Yes, Melbourne has embraced coffee—espresso-based coffee in particular—and as a result there are some outstandingly excellent places to get a cup of this magic drink around town.

But herein lies the problem; the very problem I came across at that country bakehouse.

Because of the success of a few establishments, EVERYONE serving coffee now feels obliged to get on the espresso coffee bandwagon—and the results aren't good.

For me, the last straw was seeing espresso machines in petrol stations, installed there in ignorance of the cold fact that an espresso machine is not a magic bullet.  It actually takes a fair amount of specialised skill and training to make a good-to-very-good cup of espresso-based coffee.  And conversely, it is very easy to bugger things up. 

We’ve all seen and tasted the screw-ups: milk so over-steamed it burns both itself and the drinker; last year’s stale beans being fed through the machine; milk not-so-surreptitiously re-poured and re-steamed from jug to jug; a milk-to-coffee ratio of 158:1; cheap and nasty office or café self-service pseudo-espresso machines that produce weak and watery cups of slop.

So what is (or what was, in times gone by) the alternative?  Simple.  A pot of no-nonsense, black, drip/filter coffee, with a jug of milk and some sugar alongside if needed.  Will it blow your mind?  Probably not.  But is it good, dependable, honest, and much harder to bugger up?  Yes.  

Essentially (in my opinion) it is easier to make an average pot of coffee than it is to make an average espresso coffee, and an average pot of coffee will usually be better than an average espresso coffee.

Therefore, places that cannot do espresso properly should not feel pressured or obliged to do it at all.

A venue that switches to espresso coffee simply because "everybody else is doing it" is like the grandparent or older relative who previously sent you lovely hand-written letters—and now sends you emails because that's the "thing" to do.  The former is carefully crafted, warm, and personal.  The latter is (usually) an unmitigated disaster of capital letters, misdirected emails, formatting nightmares, and whole messages written entirely in the subject line.

The last pot of old-school coffee that I've seen was at the Beechworth Bakery in Healesville around 2009.  Does this still exist?  Do you know of any other venues?  Please share if so!

Returning to the problem of countering the side-effects of the espresso revolution, we are left with essentially two solutions:

1. Encourage underperforming establishments to revert to old-fashioned pots of coffee; or 
2. Give underperforming establishments the kick up the ass they so desperately need.

Option 1 speaks for itself… but option 2 is far more interesting. 

In late 2012, local coffee behemoth St Ali opened a new venture.  As the crow flies, it is located in a north-north-easterly direction from the original St Ali, but (for the sake of brevity and reduced sign-printing fees) it has been simply titled St Ali North.

But I feel like St Ali has missed the boat on this one.  Sure, the café will rake in oodles of cash—it is next to a bike shop, a bike path, a park, a tram stop, and is smack bang in the middle of four suburbs that are singlehandedly keeping the unnecessarily large spectacle frame industry in business.  

Still—where’s the challenge in setting up shop in a place like that?  Where’s the bold, adventurous spirit?

You see, if the powers behind St Ali really wanted to shake things up, here is what should have been opened: St Ali Far North.  

The Hume Highway stretches inland out of Melbourne’s northernmost reaches.  It contains several examples of the greatest evil ever visited upon the road traveller—the highway service centre.  Housed in dingy 1970s-era buildings, these roadside stops are the elephant graveyard of human hopes and dreams.  They serve awful food.  And terrible espresso coffee.

Think of the roaring trade and cultural impact a Melbourne-style café like St Ali Far North might have on the Hume Highway!  Knobbish city-types with blogs can get their proper coffee fix while driving to country bakeries!  Truck drivers will acquire tastes in single-origin coffees that will force other coffee-dispensing service centres to shape up or ship out!  Fixed-gear bicycle accidents on the Hume Highway will triple!

What’s not to like?  The rent is cheap, a great challenge beckons, and the rewards will be great.  Sure, there might be problems convincing staff to relocate from Brunswick to Hume Service Road B, but if the mining companies of Australia can fly in their workers via helicopter, then I say: so can our cafés. 

Bring it on.

your mobile phone is making you rude, selfish, and unpunctual

Looking back at some of my writing, I can't help but think that the untrained reader might come on here and take me for some sort of technophobe—which is actually quite far from the truth. I love technology!

As a child, I would tinker around with electronics kits, creating such immensely useful gadgets as a machine that could detect whether something was wet or not. This early childhood ingenuity would later flourish when, aged only 21, I built my own air-conditioner (as pictured below) after finding out that one's first sharehouse rental is much less climate-controlled than the family home.

And just the other day, I marvelled at my friend's magic flip wallet. If you place a loose ten dollar note inside this wallet and close and re-open the device, the note by some unknown process becomes secured within the wallet behind two elastic straps. "Sorcery!!", you cry, to which I respond with a knowing half-grin—technology, my friend, technology.

But I think I often give the wrong impression of my technological leanings because my well-rounded appreciation for human innovation is tempered with prudent scepticism, involving critical thinking about the real effects and drawbacks of technological developments.

Which leads me to today's contention: has the mobile phone has turned us into a nation of unpunctual, selfish dilly-dalliers and do-nothings?

Two weeks ago, I heard that a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft would be conducting a sunset flare drop over Port Phillip Bay. This promised to be an absolutely spectacular occasion. A Hercules performing this manoeuvre creates what are known as "angel flares" (pictured below), which are so named because looking at angel flares make you so happy it is like you have died and ascended into heaven.

As the momentous evening arrived, a like-minded friend and I checked the official flaredrop map and staked our positions on top of Point Ormond, Elwood. We had pizza, ice cream, and a panoramic view of the bay. Low on the horizon, the glowing red sun broke through a line of cloud, sending out a shower of colour across the bay. Everything was perfect.

All of a sudden, about twenty minutes from the scheduled start, a lone fellow rose from his seat. "For everyone that's here waiting for the flaredrop", he cried, "it's been cancelled!" The crowd murmured with indignation. Cancelled? Surely not! The Air Force had been spruiking this event all week!  The conditions were perfect!

Confirmation soon began to flood in from other sources.  There would be no flaredrop.  The crowd's indignation turned to anger. Photographers that had travelled all the way from country Victoria began to vent their frustrations in front of any who would listen. Children began to sob as they were told that taxpayer-funded hellfire would not be unleashed from the skies that night. 

As for me and my friend, we were less than impressed. Only five minutes ago, we were two enterprising young men who had plotted the ideal location to watch as incendiary devices were fired from a military aircraft for our enjoyment. Now, we were just two fellas sitting on a picnic rug licking ice creams in the glow of the setting sun.

When I got home, I pulled up the Air Force's official Twitter feed. Sure enough, the pin had been pulled on the event at short notice—in fact, when the Hercules was already airborne!

I began to think: could the Air Force have pulled off this cancellation without Twitter? 

While the Air Force would later claim that they had "sent someone out" to bring the bad news to the crowds along the foreshore (an unlikely claim, given that the Air Force would have had to transport this person from A to B via mechanical means, a task which they had already demonstrated their ineptitude for), I had a sneaking suspicious that if this were 1954, the year that the first Hercules took to the skies, this flaredrop would have gone ahead even with the plane spewing smoke from two engines and a crateload of escaped snakes on board—because to cancel at such a late stage would've been a practical impossibility!

These days, however, mobile telephony has given us carte blanche to cancel or be late for all manner of events, with little or no consequences attaching to this inherent thoughtlessness. Never before in human history have we had such ability to keep someone else waiting at no cost to ourselves (minus, of course, the cost of a "I'm late, too bad for you!" message).

But back in "the day", the consequences of such lateness were far more severe.  A tale, if I may, from close to home...

In August of 1860, the explorers Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills set out from Melbourne on an expedition to map a route to the north coast of Australia, a return journey of around 6,500 kilometres. The mood upon departure was bullish, with the trip expected to be a great success.  This was despite the expedition's wagon train breaking down at Essendon, 5 kilometres into the journey (or 0.077% of the total planned distance), possibly from the weight of carrying such survival necessities as a solid cedar-and-oak dining table and a Chinese musical gong.

At Cooper Creek, near the Queensland-South Australia border, the expedition split into two. Burke, Wills, and a couple of others decided to take advantage of the searing December heat by carrying on northwards into the desert at an increased pace, while the remaining members of the expedition were ordered to set up a long-term camp and wait four months for Burke and Wills' return.

True to their orders, the men at base camp waited for four months.  Eventually, having waited an additional five days, they gave up Burke and Wills for dead, packed up camp, and departed back for Melbourne on the morning of 21 April 1861.

LATER THAT DAY, starving, exhausted, and close to death, Burke and Wills (now six days late, tsk tsk) returned to the abandoned camp. If this were 2013, a quick text to the rest of the group ("sry, delayed due 2 horribly inhospitable terrain will brb 6 days") would've ensured that base camp sat around and played Angry Birds for a extra day while the heroic explorers returned.

But as it was, Burke and Wills never caught up with the rest of their party.  Lost in the outback, they survived for a couple of months thanks to the aid of some helpful aborigines—helpful, that is, up until the point that Burke attempted to shoot them, at which point the aborigines quickly departed and left Burke and Wills to unceremoniously perish.

You know, part of me secretly longs for the return of those Darwinian times, where survival of the promptest reigned supreme.

"can I ride the tram?": a flowchart explaining melbourne's new myki ticketing system

Some of my favourite childhood memories from the late 1980s and early 1990s were our family trips to Melbourne.  We didn't actually move here until I started high school, and so before that time, every trip down here took on an extra-special aura.

More specifically, I loved riding the clunky old trams.  I'd dash straight up to the seat behind the driver, and kneel on the worn vinyl seat cushions to peer through the wooden-framed front windows, watching as the driver worked his magic with all manner of handles and switches.

Meanwhile, my Mum would be paying our fares by way of a rather quaint system, where she would say "two tickets please!" to a person selling tickets, following which cash would be exchanged for tickets and we would happily travel on to our destination.

However, these glowing childhood recollections have now been ruined by the state government of Victoria, which has spent more than $1,500,000,000 trampling all over my youth by implementing a new ticketing system.

Now, I could have been vindictive and written an article about how this new myki "smart" card is so plagued by bureaucratic incompetence and general nonsense that even Terry Gilliam would struggle to design a more convoluted system.

However, I'm not going to do that.  Instead, I've produced a handy flowchart that you can print out and stick up on your wall (or carry around as a giant scroll) to help you navigate the new system.  The flowchart also includes a comparison as of fifty years ago, in case you happen to travel back in time to 1963 and need to take public transport to get to one of the nation's eighty computers, perhaps to start the world's first blog.

Enjoy (click here for full-size version).

homeless vigilantes: the solution to poor manners on public transport

I have formulated a sure-fire platform that would surely see me elected Lord Mayor at the next mayoral election.

I would employ the city's homeless population to patrol our public transport network.

They would be given an official sash, and a sole task: to confront people who play loud music over headphones at unacceptable volumes.

But first, some history.

In 1972, German-Brazilian book editor Andreas Pavel invented the world's first portable personal stereo: the "Stereobelt". Combining Brazilian lust for life with German know-how, Pavel gushed that his Stereobelt gave its user "the means to multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation"—a very German way of saying that the Stereobelt made grocery shopping twice as fun, and bicycle riding thrice as dangerous.

Unfortunately for Pavel, the sheer joy of listening to Kraftwerk in the cheese aisle distracted him from obtaining patent protection over his invention, and by 1979, Sony had stolen his idea and released the Walkman.

The Walkman would go on to sell over 220 million units and release seven critically acclaimed studio albums, an impressive feat considering the difficulties a portable cassette player has with holding a guitar plectrum or entering into a recording contract.

Fast forward (har har) to the present day, and…

Andreas Pavel is now working on a "hand-held, multimedia, sense-extension device" which he calls a “dreamkit”—an invention which sounds like a very good way to escape the horrible, horrible reality birthed by the Stereobelt and breastfed by the Walkman.

Admittedly, we should have seen this coming; anyone with a basic understanding of human psychology knows that you can lead a man to a device which makes noise, but you cannot expect him to use it responsibly.

Since its inception, the personal stereo has caused its fair share of problems; but nowhere else has Pavel’s creation been more universally despised than amongst the Travelling Public.

I am certain that travel via public transport used to be a pleasurable and leisurely affair. For instance, the opening of the world’s first intercity passenger railway featured only one death, two collisions, a derailment, a riot, four breakdowns, trains travelling after dark without headlights following a six-and-a-half hour delay, a wheelbarrow on the tracks, passengers forced to disembark and walk in the mud beside the train up hills, drunken crowds hurling solid objects at carriages, spectators trapped in a ventilation shaft, and a Prime Minister pelted with fruit. Not bad—but since those halcyon days, things have gotten much, much worse.

The main source of these problems is, as always, people. It seems as if every few years, a new type of asshole is foisted upon the Travelling Public—and it isn't as if the Travelling Public has had a shortage of assholes to contend with over the years.

The Phantom Farter has been plaguing travellers since the days of the enclosed carriage. The Broadsheet Bandit has elbowed countless faces thanks to his insistence on reading the largest newspaper possible in the smallest confined space. The Incredible Bulk is out to steal your leg room, and Little Book-Peep just really, really wants to have a good look at what you’re reading.

And now, thanks to Pavel, a new asshole has emerged to torment the Travelling Public.

Enter: Johnny Doof-Doof and his band of musical outlaws

Last week, I was happily nestled in a train seat with a copy of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Shit had just begun to get real—contrary to all expectations about what I thought was a run-of-the-mill Victorian society comedy (I’ve stopped reading blurbs, you see), Mr Gray had suddenly been imbued with MAGICAL POWERS and was proceeding to give London the greatest rodgering it had ever seen.

But I wasn’t to stay happy for long.

As the train opened its doors at the next station, a familiar character stepped on board. It was well overcast, but he was wearing sunglasses. He was swaggering, but only to the extent that a crowded platform allows one to do so—a sort of stumbling glide, like that of a hungry man at 3am on a Saturday toward a kebab shop. His mouth was slightly ajar in what I am sure was an attempt at a scowl, but in reality resembles that of a fish pulled out of the ocean against its will and hit over the head. He did not so much sit down as plop down, torso slumped and legs splayed into whatever arrangement physics would allow.

Two long thin wires stretched up to his ears. Out of the buds pumped the trebly haze of an electro-bass thump and hi-hat chatter forced through woefully tiny speakers. One by one, heads were turned and raised across the train.

Determined to find out why Dorian Gray was meeting so many men at odd hours of the morning, I struggled to return to my book. But as the tinny beat echoed throughout the otherwise silent carriage, the forces of distraction triumphed.

Johnny Doof-Doof had struck again, just as he does every morning, afternoon and night on public transport across the city. And what does the Travelling Public do in such a situation?

Nothing.

Yes, the odd dirty glance is shot, and now and then a tsk-tsk-tsk may be heard, but these pithy counter-punches all glide off Mr Doof-Doof like good manners off a dick’s back.

More often than not, the only revenge takes place in the mind. Who honestly hasn’t daydreamed of solutions like:

• the “urban ninja”, whereby the hero slides by Mr Doof with a small pair of scissors, and in one deft motion alights the train while cutting the offending headphone cord clean in half;
• the “your own medicine”, whereby the hero sits down next to Mr Doof with a large book and an even larger smile, and politely informs Johnny that since he was kind enough to share his music with the carriage, our hero is now going to read aloud in Johnny’s ear for the rest of the journey; or
• the “matrix”, whereby a portable electro-magnetic pulse is set off in the carriage, disabling all electronic devices (note: this one may have some legal ramifications).

Just as I was choosing one of the above to be my daydream on this particular day, the train pulled into its next stop. The doors opened, and from behind me, I could hear the wah-wah whine of auto-tune floating through the air. I spun my head around. This offender was a woman, wearing a suit and looking otherwise respectable. To my left I heard a familiar croon. I turned back, and saw a dowdy middle-aged man pumping the best of Freddie Mercury at maximum volume through his brand new Christmas headphones. At eight in the morning!

Not only was I surrounded, but I now had evidence that Johnny Doof-Doof had learned the devious art of disguise.

I decided there and then: this menace has grown beyond the control of the Travelling Public to become a problem so intractable that only an organised force of sash-wearing homeless vigilantes can restore peace to our public transport system.

Why the homeless?

Nobody argues with the homeless.

In fact, most people don’t even like to speak to the homeless. Ask a man how to get to the nearest post office and you will most likely get a coherent sentence in reply; ask a man if he has any spare money he would like to give you, and his reply is liable to be either (a) non-existent or (b) a drawn-out babble-mumble that contains about four mispronunciations of the word “no”.

Even the mere presence of a beggar sitting on a city street seems to induce wild variations in the walking paths of most people that would suggest to an alien observer that certain members of our species are unable to find shelter or employment due to immense electro-magnetic fields that make it impossible for other humans to pass close by.

The Solution

Therefore, if elected Lord Mayor, I would place one homeless person on each public transport service in the city (perhaps teams of two on affluent routes with a high level of disposable income), each with the mission of first politely asking Johnny Doof-Doof (disguised or undisguised) to turn his or her music down.

If the first warning fails, the officer may then resort to vulgar abuse and name calling, and if that fails, the officer may then, having placed one hand over the heart on top of his or her official sash, use the other hand to rip the offending headphones off the ears of the perpetrator, and either confiscate them or throw them out the nearest window.

Commissions would be paid upon the completion of each successful mission, and the colour of the official sash would change (as in martial arts) depending on the success level and overall skill of each individual.  The highest-level of sash obtainable would be decorated by children from a local disadvantaged school, who would win the chance to decorate the sash by selling tapas that double as raffle tickets to yuppies.  The grand prize for the raffle would be a box of confiscated headphones.

Yes, please place the election in a bag for me.

how to synchronise channel nine's TV cricket coverage with ABC radio commentary

Like many Australians, I woke up this morning hungover—and therefore ready to watch some cricket.

I was prepared for an enthralling day's play.  Ricky Ponting would soon be due at the crease, and across the land, millions were tuning in to Channel Nine to farewell the former Australian captain in his final test match over an illustrious seventeen-year career.

I made a stovetop coffee and settled into the couch, watching what I hoped would be the first of at least thirty Ricky Ponting highlight packages over the course of the day.

But I was soon shaken from my happy stupor.  Barely had the cricket begun when Channel Nine decided to show off their newest bright idea—a live cross to a magical, touch-screen betting desk where some nitwit in suit and tie (so you can trust him!) yammered on about gambling odds for five minutes. 

This was just not cricket.  "Punter" he may be, but I do not want to hear what the gambling industry thinks of Ricky Ponting's chances of failure.  Where were my highlight packages set to emotional radio hits?

Moreover, I had seen this magic desk before!  Unless my eyes deceived me, Ian Healy sat behind this very same table of sorcery during segments in the Adelaide test, where he would madly poke and swipe at the tabletop in order to convince us that it was actually him bringing statistics and replays up on the TV screen, rather than the editors and production crew that have capably handled this task for the last few decades.

Things grew increasingly insufferable.  As the lunch break drew near, Mark Taylor saw fit to discuss remote-controlled helicopters for the third or fourth time that day, informing us of Bill Lawry's head-scratching belief that a grown man can fit into and pilot one of these devices—much like Mr Burns and his "Spruce Moose" in The Simpsons' casino episode.  I needn't remind anyone that only one of these occurrences was actually amusing.

And as always, the chance of finding pure nonsense behind Ian Healy's "analysis" of the match was roughly identical to the chance of finding chocolate behind an advent calendar.  Luckily, my fortunes were about to change—thanks to some unintended interference from my stomach and my television.

Hungry for snacks, I had gone to the shops during the 40-minute lunch break, and returned to find my TV as mute as a fish.  Having obtained this TV from the side of the road during my local hard rubbish day, it's not surprising that it has several bad habits, this particular one being that it sometimes refuses to provide me with any sound whatsoever. 

Usually a quick on-and-off solves this problem, but today, no amount of button mashing or switch flicking would return the warm sound of willow knocking on leather to my cricket pictures.

I needed a solution, pronto.  I had often heard of people muting Channel Nine and listening to the far-superior ABC radio commentary instead.  I tried this—but the pictures and audio were well out of sync.  This would not do.

So I fixed it.  And here's how.  Tell your friends. 

STEP ONE

Download and install this program: Radiodelay, by DaanSystems.  It's free, small, and very easy to use.

STEP TWO

Find an audio cable with a male jack on each end.  They're pretty cheap to buy if you don't have one.  As pictured below, I used a guitar lead with a 3.5mm adapter attached to each end.

STEP THREE

Mute your TV.  Phew.  Get your radio and tune it to the ABC—alternatively, get your smartphone, tablet, or similar and stream ABC radio online.  Then, use the audio cable to connect the radio to your computer's microphone input.  Don't put the radio too close to the TV; you may get interference with the radio signal.

STEP FOUR

Open up your computer's mixer/audio control.  We'll need to check your microphone settings.

A quick lesson for those who want it: there are two basic ways in which you can affect the level of sound that comes through your microphone jack.  You can change the input of the jack (ie, how loud the computer "hears" what comes through the microphone), and you can change the output of the jack (ie, how loud the computer repeats through its speakers what it "hears").

You should make sure your microphone input is selected and turned up enough so as to "hear" the audio coming in from your radio.  However, you should make sure that your microphone output is either muted or set to its lowest setting.  We don't want your computer repeating the radio audio just yet.

STEP FIVE

Finally, open up the Radiodelay program.  As the ABC commentary will be ahead of the TV pictures, we need to delay the audio coming in through your computer's microphone input. 

Press play in Radiodelay (you should now begin to hear the radio through your computer's speakers) and then experiment with moving the delay slider until your pictures and sound match up.

Personally, using Melbourne ABC 774 as my audio, I set the delay to 4.8 seconds if watching the cricket on Nine, and 4.4 seconds if watching on GEM.  This lines the audio up with the pictures near-perfectly!

Keep in mind that these delay numbers might be very different for you.  For instance, they may change if you are:

• listening to a different ABC station;
• using streaming internet radio rather than broadcast radio;
• watching via your Foxtel box rather than over free-to-air; or
• living in a different place.

And there you have it!  Rather than let your living room suffer the gruesome sounds of gambling tie-ins, vitamin commercials, and head-numbing "memorabilia" spruiking (I'm really not sure why this one hasn't sold out after three years and counting), you can instead indulge your ears in the ABC's delights: descriptive and succinct ball-by-ball commentary, in-depth analysis from a great bunch of cricketing brains, and of course, during breaks in play, the inimitable wit and laughter of Kerry O'Keefe.

Or you could stick with Channel Nine, and listen to Ian Healy continue his one-man rage against phoney Twitter accounts.

Up to you, really.