It’s That Time of Year!
Hi
Well, despite my SatNav taking me to the wrong place to begin with (my fault, I programmed it badly!), I got to my demo at Diss Woodturners in the nick of time last week! All went well, and an enjoyable evening was had by all.
Don’t forget you can see our very own Nathanael Griffiths taking care of the demonstrating duties at Yandles this Saturday when they hold their ‘Masters of the Lathe’ show. Full details >>>HERE<<<.
Tell him Terry sent you!
It’s time for another ‘behind-the-scenes’ Newsletter. Partly because I can’t remember any original questions this week, but also because we’re in April now, which reminded me of an April Fools‘ joke I played many years ago…
We wrote (by which I mean ‘printed and sent by post’!) to all our stockists, telling them of an issue with Friction Polish. I said that we’d been reported to Trading Standards by a busybody who complained that it didn’t, in fact, contain any friction!
(This was around the time that ‘ice cream’ was being criticised for not containing ice or cream, which I alluded to in order to add credibility).
We explained there was nothing wrong with the product itself, but that we had to change its name, and needed to send them replacement labels for the bottles they had in stock.
Could they, we asked, have a quick count and let me know how many labels to send out?
We received various replies, including some indignant essays on how ridiculous this ruling was and how we should fight such crazy bureaucracy. Others simply gave a count of how many labels were needed and asking how quickly we could send them out.
Not everyone fell for it—one response mentioned that they’d checked our End Seal and found that didn’t contain any Ends or Seals either!
Of course, the problem with catching people out like this, is that you have to then let them in on the joke. We didn’t want anyone taking the product off the shelf!
Some had fallen in by the time we rang them, and were quite sheepish about it. The best, though, was a large company (I won’t name them). When I rang, I was put through to the buying department and another contact there answered the phone.
I asked to speak to my main contact.
‘Oh’, said the voice at the other end. ‘You’re calling about the April Fools thing?’.
‘Yes’ I said. ‘But…you mean you knew and didn’t tell him?’
‘Where would be the fun in that?’ came the reply!
I can’t take all the credit for this bit of mischief. The idea came from an encounter at a woodturning show when a visitor genuinely took me to task for our Friction Polish not containing friction!
At first, I thought he was asking if it contained an abrasive of some kind, but no, he really meant ‘friction’!
My protestations that friction isn’t a tangible thing, that the friction created in use helps it work, and that it’s a common term for such things fell on deaf ears.
That definitely wasn’t a good day!
I hope you enjoyed that little story. We do try to have fun here—we take our work seriously, but we never take ourselves too seriously!
I’ll see you back here next week, hopefully with some questions to answer.
All the best
Terry
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