My Farewell Letter To Yahoo Mail

Dear Yahoo Mail,

I remember it well, I was sat in an internet cafe in Bournemouth in 1998 when I signed up for my Yahoo Mail account.  It was an exciting time, the geeks had already ventured onto the world wide web and word spread fast about this new tool that was going to be the future of communication.  The business world was catching on quickly and if any self-respecting businessman didn't jump aboard then he was going to be left behind. 

I remember getting some new business cards printed up just so I could put my email address on them and join the ranks of the super up-to-date business elite.  This year was also the time that I decided to leave my post as Staff Trainer at Virgin and venture out on my own, it was also the time that my wife fell pregnant with out first child.  A defining year for me and, Yahoo Mail, you were part of that.

You've always been there, I've engaged with you every day since we first met.  As a kid, I was a vociferous letter writer and I would fire off fanmail and enquiry letters and wait eagerly for responses.  Every morning I would get a buzz when I heard the letterbox rattle and raced down to see what had arrived.  I used to get the same little buzz everyday when I logged into you, Yahoo Mail. 

My inbox has been the place I have learned about friends' good news - job promotions, engagements, babies, charity endeavours, exam results and holiday snaps.  The content often had me smiling and punching the air in front of my screen.  Conversely, it's also been a source of bad news where I have found out about plummeting stock prices, national disasters, friends' illnesses and colleagues' deaths, the information that you have brought me has reduced me to tears.   So these extremes of emotion in front of your logo and interface have conditioned me to think of you as a trusted friend.  A friend I can rely on and confide in, a solid and reliable partner who is always there.  Which makes the recent changes harder to take.

On your 16th birthday, like an unpredictable adolescent, you changed overnight.  I woke up and logged in to find a very different beast.  Without warning, I was confronted with an unfamiliar interface, nothing was where it was supposed to be, I was fumbling around with you like we were on a first date.  It was confusing and disorientating.  I could no longer do the things that made me choose you and stick with you over all the other available email providers.  I became discouraged but I persisted as I thought some of the old you must still be in there somewhere.  But it wasn't.  You'd changed, Yahoo Mail, and not for the better.

I went through a period of uncertainty, what should I do?  I felt comfort in the fact that other people were going through a similar upheaval, complaints were made, petitions were signed, noise was created but it was all one-way.  There was no official statement or reaction from Yahoo HQ.  This made me feel sad.  Even if someone said 'Bear with us, give it a go and we'll see if we can restore a couple of the old features that you all miss so much.'  Anything really, just to make me feel that the last 15 years wasn't a totally one-sided relationship.  But nothing…

So, I've done what any self-respecting gentleman would do, I've broken off the relationship.  It didn't come easy and I did hang around to try and make things work but I got nothing back.  Today, I met a new email interface and although it's early days, it does feel that one day we might have the relationship I once had with you.  So, it is with deep regret that I say farewell to you, Yahoo Mail, we've been through so much together and it's with a heavy heart but I feel it is time to move on.

It's not me, it's you.

Mr Brian Story

P.S I'm currently downloading the archive of our 15-year relationship onto a hard drive and I'm going to send it to your CEO Marissa Mayer so she can bury it in her newly-purchased funeral home. 

RIP Brian Story + Yahoo Mail 1998-2013

One Day The Internet Will Be Called Google

Fifteen months ago, when Marissa Mayer landed at Yahoo as its new CEO, she created a system to handle all of its employees' grievances, the things she felt were holding her workforce back from being super-productive.  In little over a year she has transformed the culture at Yahoo not by changing it but by making it 'the best version of itself'.  The success of this is seen as one of the key factors in Yahoo's stock price doubling.  Kudos.

It's incredibly positive and reassuring to know that the CEO of a company with 12,000 employees worldwide is actively observing and listening to them, they must feel valued.  Which makes it a surprise and a shame that Mayer doesn't hold the same level of respect for the 100 million+ people that actively use Yahoo Mail.

I am one of those users and recently I have been annoyed by the abrupt and total redesign of the Yahoo Mail interface.  There was no warning, I simply logged in as I have done every day for the last fifteen years, and was presented with a completely different mail set-up.  Through my early morning pre-caffeine state, it looked like this.

With all successful brands you expect a few tweaks along the way, it's what keeps a company current, and it wasn't unusual for Yahoo to have the occasional facelift or streamlining, all of which were easy to opt out of if you found them confusing or you could go back to the original settings that you were comfortable with via a couple of quick clicks but for some reason this current change came with no notice and no possible reversal. 

Thousands of Yahoo users have voiced their disapproval.  Even Change.org, usually the domain of global human rights outrages, has a petition decrying our very First World problem.  The major complaint is that it has become a clone of Google's email format, Gmail.  More than half the people up in arms are saying that if they wanted a Gmail account, they simply could have signed up for one, the fact they are using YahooMail is because they prefer its functionality so to be forced into using a Gmail clone is extremely annoying. 

The arrogance of this overhaul is inexplicable.  Why would you change something with a huge worldwide userbase without any beta testing or gradual roll-out to gauge customer reaction?  The Yahoo help pages are full of complaints and Yahoo-related webpages are saturated with protestations. 

The reality is, with over 100 million users, if a million people complain that's still less than one per cent of their customers so they may not feel pressure to act.  They also know as most people have been faithful to Yahoo they have years of email history saved on the Yahoo servers - are enough people going to go to the trouble of migrating to other email accounts for Yahoo to have to worry?  Won't most of them just 'shut up and put up' until they become painfully familiar with the new interface?

The similarity to Gmail is no coincidence.  Mayer came to Yahoo from Google.  As I said, integrating some of Google's ethics into the workplace have done wonders for the company's performance but actually turning some of their brands into Google clones may be her first mistake.  After all, we already have Google, we don't need another one.  Or is it all part of a bigger plan?  Is Mayer a double agent, still working for Google and slowly adapting the internet to fit in with their uniform?  You know how we all call a vacuum cleaner, a hoover?  Any photo manipulation is Photoshopping, any sticky-notes are Post-Its and, good grief, we never say we are going to look up something on an internet search engine, we say we are going to Google it!  They are already halfway there!  We are just a few short years away from referring to the whole of the internet as Google.  Complain about your Yahoo Mail account NOW.  You have been warned, it's Google's Earth, we just live in it.

Who Do You Trust? The Shop Girl or Head Office?

All of my tech is Apple - iPhone, iPad, iPod, Shuffle, MacBook Air - I'm a willing brand devotee and have always been satisfied with the hardware and the standard of customer support but something happened recently which has thrown my brand loyalty into turmoil.

I recently tried to download some new apps and it said my operating system was incompatible.  Ok, I get how this works, technology moves along swiftly and sometimes I get left behind.  It's an analogy for life that most people over 40 can appreciate.  This can be easily resolved (in technological terms, at least) by downloading the latest operating system.  No big shakes.  But it turns out my MacBook Air isn't compatible with the latest software, it has officially reached its sell-by date.  Apple were putting it out to pasture and effectively forcing me to buy a new laptop.  This is annoying as I only bought a new hard drive for it six months ago.  When the Apple Store in Regent Street took my money and installed the hard drive they were severely limiting its shelf life. They never gave me the option to have a newer hard drive installed.  So, my MacBook Air is limping towards retirement and I have no choice but to buy a new unit. 

To be honest, I got over this quite quickly as I like spending money, especially on technology and it gave me an opportunity to buy a MacBook Pro.  Exciting.

Before I gave Apple even more of my money, I did some research but it just confirmed what I already knew - A MacBook Pro is a solid purchase.  I made a special trip to Brent Cross Shopping Centre *shudder* to visit the Apple Store and buy my MacBook Pro.  I'd already made my mind up, it was just a case of walking in and paying for it.  When I got to the store a display model caught my eye so I went over for a quick feel.  I was soon approached by a member of the sales team.  I like Apple staff, they know their stuff and I always feel confident with their advice and this young woman was confident in her approach to me.  I announced that I'd like to buy the MacBook Pro.  She asked me…

'Why?'

Hmmm… wasn't expecting that…  I'd already closed the sale for her…

I told her that I was going to use it for business, designing, etc and she said that I would be better off with a MacBook Air as the MacBook Pro was on the way out.  Alarm bells started ringing, she made me doubt my decision.  She said there hadn't been an update on the MacBook Pro for well over a year which is 'never a good sign' so I should go for a MacBook Air as it had been recently updated, it was much quicker and had a much better battery life.  I explained that I had a MacBook Air and she insisted that I should buy a newer one.  This really threw me.  I wanted a MacBook Pro.  She said that the MacBook Pro had moving parts in it, it had a CD drive - how retro!  It was heavy and hot and was basically signed off for the big Apple junkyard, she said it was going 'the way of the old white laptop'.  Damn.

I'd been side-blinded.  I'd already been stung by my MacBook Air becoming obsolete so quickly after the repair and now I had visions of my shiny new MacBook Pro becoming irrelevant in the same amount of time.  I still wanted it though.  I said to her...

'I still want to buy the MacBook Pro.' 

She said, 'Don't.  Trust me, don't'...

This was weird, I checked her Store ID to make sure she wasn't some nutter from Sony trying to put me off a sale.  She was so authoritative in her advice that she made me feel like a fool for even considering buying a MacBook Pro.  I walked out of the Apple Store dazed and confused.  Fifteen minutes earlier, I had gone in with the absolute decision to buy a MacBook Pro and here I was leaving with nothing.  Did that just happen?  It should have been the easiest sale in the world.

Three days later and I'm wondering if she was right?  Why would she say all that for the fun of it?  I contacted Apple Inc to air my confusion and they assured me that the MacBook Pro was still very relevant and they had no plans to retire it any time soon.  Just to be on the safe side, I contacted them again for a second opinion.  I received the same response and they shared my confusion with regards to the anti-sales technique in their Brent Cross store.  I thanked them for their help but then became paranoid.  

 

Some of what the shopgirl was saying is now making sense.  Who needs a laptop with a disc drive?  When was the last time you put a CD into your computer?  Everything is downloaded now.  Physical media is rapidly dying, DVDs and CDs are mainly traded at car boot sales these days so it stands to reason that the CD drive in your laptop is going to be as useless as a Floppy Disk within 12 months.  Yet Apple Inc are allaying my fears, they tell me I can purchase with confidence and why wouldn't they?  They presumably have an aircraft hangar full of MacBook Pros they need to keep selling.  So the big question is: Who would you trust?  The shopgirl or head office?  


Update:  Seriously, if there are any tech-heads out there, I would truly appreciate any advice.

You Are Immediately Judged By Your Job Title.

When I was a kid, one of our Saturday Night family treats was watching baffling yet entertaining quiz show 3-2-1.  One time, when the host Ted Rogers was introducing the contestants, a man said he was a 'refuse collection operative'.  A bemused look fell across Ted's face, so the man 'fessed up to the fact that he was a binman.  Cue shrieks of laughter from the audience and indeed my mum and dad as that little working class chap came up trumps in his 15 minutes.  In a heavy dose of irony he actually ended up winning the show's coveted booby prize, Dusty Bin.

Of course, this was all in the realms of Saturday Night Entertainment, a chance to poke a bit of fun at yourself.  Although, the world of political correctness and self-aggrandisement has resulted in some people proudly announcing the most ridiculous job titles today.
One that initially bothered me was Barista.  How did the simple task of pouring overpriced coffee warrant such an appealing job title?  It's used extensively now so I don't even think of the failed actor who serves me my double espresso as a Coffee Monkey anymore, he's my Barista.  I just assumed that he earned his title through months of intense coffee training yet his inability to even remember my order five seconds after I've told him renders this unlikely.  He's a Coffee Monkey.  And Barista is the Italian word for bartender.  Go figure.

Talking of bartenders, I was in Trader Dick's with a client last week and on the cocktail menu it said 'If you would like something that isn't on this list, please ask our Mixologist to make it for you.'  Yes, I'll tell you what isn't on this list, the name of the university your 'Mixologist' got his degree from.  Was it the London School of Blagonomics?

What does the title Lifeguard say to you?  It's a sexy, heroic vocation that conjurs up images of the babes and beefcakes of Baywatch running in slow motion on the beach.  Who wouldn't be proud of being called a Lifeguard?  Well, if you work for Shropshire County Council, you're a Wet Leisure Assistant.  I kid you not, job application below. 

A Casual Wet Leisure Assistant!  How can you be casual and wet?  I'd love to know the job title of the people who are making up the job titles.  Can you think of a good one?  Answers on a tweet to the usual address.

Shropshire aren't the only offenders, nearly every County Council has a Teenage Pregnancy Co-ordinator - they're not really thinking these through, are they?   My sister once applied for the job of Family Protection Consultant which turned out to be insurance telesales and my friend who works at a Pharma Giant informs me that they have a Head of Infectious Diseases.  Most people prefer to do meetings with him over the phone.

Which brings us neatly to the corporate world.  In the last few years the job titles in the city have become increasingly ridiculous.  If you give me your business card and your job title is nearly hanging over the edge, I immediately judge you.  Why do you need this fancy tag?  If your job role isn't easily identifiable from the first scan of your card, you have failed.  Keep it simple.

Name: John Doe

Job Title: Associate Vice President of Strategic Solutions, Shareholder Networks, Customer Optimisation and Collaborative Applications.

Departments: Small Winkie, Insecure Loser.

This practice has a nametag of its own - Uptitling - and it's now recognised as a way of giving people prestige in place of a payrise.  Obviously, a Senior Business Development Manager would feel more pride in their position than the lowly Salesperson even though it has exactly the same job specification.  These titles are a way of making the staff feel more appreciated and valued without them knowing that the directors had a really good laugh at their expense making them up whilst drinking over-priced cocktails at Trader Dick's.

Yet I can forgive all of these misjudged job titles apart from Guru.  I hear it all the time - Marketing Guru, Technology Guru, New Media Guru.  A Guru is a spiritual teacher, one who imparts initiation and transcendental knowledge, it is NOT someone who sets the alarm for 6am every morning, puts a suit on and takes a crowded train for an hour to get to an office full of other people with overblown job titles, that's just a sad old man who's hit the skids before his 50th and needs to big himself up.  Someone who ironically could benefit from sitting on a mountain in India for a few weeks to find himself.  Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Signing off,

Name: Brian Story

Job Title: BLOGGER 

Look at that! 7 letters and does what it says on the tin!

When Your Worst Employee is the CEO

Number 1 in a fairly long series...

Today we focus on All-American fashion retail brand for the vague and vain, Abercrombie and Fitch.

The brand has come under fire in recent years for their exclusionary tactics in creating an exclusive brand.  Unashamedly admitting to only employing good-looking sales staff and only stocking womens' pants up to a size 10 - so overweight ladies don't ruin their carefully-constructed brand - and all backed-up by a CEO who spits out soundbites that could have been lifted straight from the script of Mean Girls.

And the man in question?  The CEO of this image-driven, over-confident, aspirational fashion brand?  Step forward, Mike Jeffries, the aborted lovechild of Boris Johnson and Jackie Stallone.

Public backlash to Jeffries' comments have seen Abercrombie & Fitch sales plummet by 17% in the first quarter.  Would you buy a pair of stonewashed jeans from this man?  How about the flip-flops?

I'm guessing that the good-looking staff rule is only confined to his stores else I can't see how Mr. Jeffries gets past security at head office every morning.  In his current state, he's more suited to be a Gary Busey look-a-like, but only of the Celebrity Rehab years.

Time for a reshuffle at Abercrombie & Fitch, where the worst employee is the CEO.

Attack of the Killer Bees!

Last night, I was relaxing on the sofa with my partner and a nice glass of Chablis, it had been a long day and it was time to chill with some braindead TV.  We were only ten minutes into My Tattoo Addiction when a blood-curdling scream came from my teenage daughter's bedroom.  What on earth had just happened?  Had Dave Lee Travis popped up on Instant Chat?  I raced in to find Jemima cowering in a corner and pointing goggle-eyed at her bedpost.  I couldn't see anything and she was having trouble relaying her problem to me as she started to hyperventilate.  I looked at the bedpost again.  Then at Jemima.  She was terrified.  

Oh no, has she finally started seeing dead people?  It runs in the family, my nan was well-known for her ability to speak to the other side.  She actually got committed because of it.  Her frequency of chatting to the dead increased tenfold after a few rounds of electric shock therapy.  Did all that ECT open up a gateway into the Land of the Dead or did it just turn her into a proper mental?  It's so hard to tell.  For reference, please see Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost or for a real case, Sally Morgan Star Psychic.

Upon further investigation, it appeared that the source of Jemima's trauma was a spider, she has a severe aversion to them.  I tried to explain that the tiny spider is way more scared of the 50ft apoplectic teenage girl but it's no good, she has a phobia, as simple and scary as that.  I scooped up the monster and put it out the back door.  Her Father, The Hero.

I've always been confident with creepy crawlies, I've even been known to humanely trap mice and set them free down the road in the traffic warden's garden.  Two birds, one stone, but just before I have you thinking that I'm a proper little Doolittle, I should admit to the chink in my armour.  There's one type of minibeast that I don't mix well with and that's the flying, stinging variety.  They're too erratic, bees aren't so bad, they're a bit bumbling and easy to navigate away from but wasps are quick and tenacious.  You're also limited to how you can deal with them, you can't scoop them up and put them out the window as you might receive a nasty sting.  My fear isn't irrational.  When I was 9, me and Jason Kennedy thought it would be a good idea to throw a rock at a wasps' nest.  It wasn't.  I sprinted the half mile home screaming until my mum had swatted all the wasps that had got tangled in my hair.  I got stung.  A lot.  Ever since then, I've broken out in a cold sweat whenever I hear an approaching buzz.  So imagine my horror when I saw this yesterday.

GIANT KILLER HORNETS HAVE KILLED 41 PEOPLE IN CHINA.

I feel ill.  Even though this is happening 5,000 miles away, I am anxious.  Look at the size of those things, they aren't hornets, they're birds!  Killer birds!

Swarms of the monsters have been on the attack in China and 1,600 people have had to receive treatment.  There is some footage of the damage their stings do to the human body but please do not look if you are squeamish, it's the most  distressing thing I've seen since George Galloway role-played a cat for Rula Lenska.  Nasty Hornet Stings

Experts are blaming the prevalence of the swarm on urbanisation.  Of course, us city folk are once again the scourge of Mother Nature.  All these 'experts' are just tree-hugging crusties who are ambling their way through life on antihistamines and organic vegetable gardens when they know they'd much prefer to be sipping Cosmopolitans with us in the city.  Their inability to hold down a professional job usually stems from their inability to wash their clothes and the only people who will spend any other time with them are other hippies and the bees.

Then I got thinking.  Perhaps all this is a conspiracy.  The crusty brigade make no bones about how much they hate us high-achievers, it all stems from jealousy.  Nearly every one of those dreadlocked soap-dodgers comes from a middle-class background, some of them had a much better education than you or I but somewhere along the way, due to too much dope-smoking or parental apathy, they opted out and now it's too late to join the gravy train so they spend their time bitterly trying to spoil our corporate fun through guilt-tripping petitions and protests although it's a futile fight as they constantly bray about how the corporate world has no conscience so how can we ever be tripped into feeling guilty?  A fatal flaw in your plan there, Swampy.

Yesterday I saw an ad on the underground where you could send off for a packet of seeds to grow a bee-friendly garden.  This is a trap.  All of this bee-friendly buzz is coming straight from the Hippy Hive, there is a Hippy Queen B (with hairy armpits) sending out appeals and it's all part of an evil plan to take over the world.  They know they are no match for us corporate types so they are calling on their consorts - the things with stings that can fly.  They are building an army of Giant Hornets and are tricking us into creating an environment for them to thrive.  The Queen B is the The Wicked Witch of the West and the hornets are her Flying Monkeys.  

Corporate comrades, I am calling on you to start a counter-attack.  You must Kill The Bees.  It's simple - when you see a flying, stinging thing - kill it.  Ignorance will allow this to escalate and we may see a repeat of the events in Oz - but remember - Judy Garland is dead and can no longer save us.  You have been warned.  Kill The Bees NOW or you are leaving your future in the hands of second-in-command, Liza Minnelli.  And she's had a double hip replacement.  ACT NOW or we are all doomed!