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» 137 Failures in Communication
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Cheezburger Company Blog
Shouldn’t this be in, i don’t know, winblog maybe?
There is no logic to Failblog. They’ve given up.
This man, he speaks the truth.
tru’dat.
Wait, isn’t that a logic Fail? So, by not really fitting in, it fits in perfectly?
….now, where the heck was that beer?
The fail was that the parent should have looked it up and had a discussion with the child rather than getting a stranger to address the question. With that being said, good on the manager for taking the time to provide great service to the community, particularly due to the fact the kid’s parents are too lazy to answer the question by searching on google. This is especially puzzling as it seems they have no reservations about taking the time to take a picture of the response and submit it online when they could actually teach their kid something……
That isn’t what I’d do if it were my kid, Andrew. I’m not sure if you’re on a wind-up here or satirizing failblog; it’s often hard for me to tell if people are joking online. But…
Firstly, looking it up isn’t going to tell you anything except that the person who first named it thought it looked like a tiger.
Secondly, I totally disagree that the parents were lazy. You haven’t really thought that through. It would take far longer and far more effort and patience to help a three-year-old write what’s probably her first letter, than to type “why is tiger bread called tiger bread” into Google.
Thirdly, I hope that if you have children you don’t have this attitude towards their education. By helping the kid to write this letter means her parents have taught her: 1) How to choose an “expert” to approach if you want to know something, rather than sitting on your lazy arse and getting unverified information from Google. 2) How to interact with said expert. 3) How to write a letter, an art which has been dying because many other parents are too lazy to teach their children how to do it. Letters may be outdated in some situations, but in others, they are by no means obsolete. 4) To take the initiative and do things for herself in the future. 5) To type. I bet parents who’d go for the google search option would have typed it in themselves. 6) That parents don’t always have the answers to everything, a very important lesson for a kid of that age. Sometimes a “stranger” is the right person to go to, if they happen to have specialist information.
Google searching would have taught her…er…how to do a Google search. Without interacting with anyone else in the world. A kid who doesn’t learn the above skills isn’t going to develop the initiative to use resources efficiently as well as one who is taught them.
Fourthly, of course the parents had a discussion with the child – how do you think the letter got written? And what do you think they did when the letter arrived? Do you think they just posted it on here without reading it with their kid first?
^this
This is the best nod to lost art of writing, and what I think are lessons being bypassed because it’s easier and faster (for the PARENT) and no longer taught to children. I am even more impressed that is was sent to me by my 22 year old niece who I have been trying to teach (without nagging – I’m walking a fine line there) the importance of writing a letter and communicating by mail and the weight it carries, especially with today’s electronic environment growing by the minute. To suggest that these parents were “lazy” is sooooooo very silly – Google is for lazy parents. When I has a question growing up, my Mom’s first response was go to the expert on the topic, flatter the crap out of the person – honey gets you farther than vinegar another important lesson in there – and Voila! doors are opened and invitations are received – a world of information straight from the top for the asking with a handwritten letter, a phone call, or an in person visit when appropriate. You would be surprised the people and places we have been welcomed with open arms – particularly in the context of a child or student seeking knowledge – over the years in political, community, educational, and social settings I would have never experienced if my parents told me, “Google it” Google has become a verb . . . be afraid. Be very afraid. I applaud the parents of this little girl and for sharing the story and hopefully setting the example for parents sending their children to the computer rather than to the bookshelf for the dictionary, to the mailbox to send off a letter, or to the phone book to locate a number and call the right person, office etc.
Ok – that was MY vent for the day! Thank you to my Jenna B for sending this to me! ; )
I second that good sir
I was educated the other day about this. FAIL Home is like the best of everything else (WIN!, Repairs, Poorly Dressed, etc.) You have to click on the next link, FAIL Nation, for just the fails.
3 F*ing dollars for an epic point. As awesome as the return letter is…wtf.
These were pounds, FYI. There are other countries in the world, not just USA. And it worth about $5.
OMG DON’T YOU REALIZE THIS IS JUST A CORPORATE CONSPIRACY TO MAKE PEOPLE THINK THAT THEY AREN’T EVIL?
AND I WOULD THINK WITH MAKING BILLIONS A YEAR OFF OF SLAVE LABOR IN CHINA THIS GROCERY STORE WOULD BE ABLE TO AFFORD MORE THAN 3 POUNDS. THEY JUST WANT TO EXPLOIT EVERYONE DON’T THEY.
I think you need a new keyboard. Your Caps lock seems to be broken. You’re welcome.
No, he got the “New and Improved!!” Billy Mays model keyboard.
(RIP, Billy!!!)
HI, BILLY MAYS HERE WITH THE BILLY MAYS “LOUD AS CAN BE” KEYBOARD. THE MOST CONVENIENT KEYBOARD WHEN YOUR POINT REALLY NEEDS TO BE DISPLAYED.
Hahahaha. +1
Classic. LOL ::golf cap on that one my friend::
watch out, trolling trolls are trolling in these waters.
actually sainsbury’s in one of the most ethical supermarkets in the UK and prides itself on using as much local produce as possible (that’s english produce, not chinese therefore it’s more expensive but fairtrade). The people that work at the headquarters are all dedicated to their jobs and are only interested in buying into fairtrade products. The company DO NOT make billions a year. They care for their staff very much and give them high wages and bonuses where applicable. Sainsbury’s also spend a lot of their profit investing in recycling ideas to help save the planet. Personally, I think £3 is absolutely enough for a 3 year old girl with an enquiry. The fact that he even replied to her letter shows that they don’t dismiss any letters that are sent to them. Not only has Chris King replied to her letter, he also adapts a childlike tone so she can actually understand. All in all, shut the hell up you know nothing.
Yours sincerely,
Someone who knows their shit.
I love the fact that he put his age after his name.
My 3 year old would love to get a reply like this if she wrote a letter to a corporation. She would be proud as anything to go and use ‘her’ 3 pound voucher. So I agree – great response.
and that he made his age “27 and 1/3″
I think this was sweet and has likely done more for public relations for the cost of a few bucks than any well funded publicity campaign.
Exactly thanks for summing it up.
You must be a LIBRL extremist.
Yes they want to exploit this little girl by making her work for £3 per day in one of Sainsbury’s slave labour camps that they have in China. Or maybe they were just sending her a gift. Who knows.
There are other countries besides the USA that use the dollar. By raging against Americentrism you have proven yourself to be Americentrist. In Australia its about $4.43.
Oh snap.
Yay for being actually knowledgable!
She is THREE YEARS OLD, ffs! If you would even consider giving a three-year-old more than £3 just like that, then you surprise me. She doesn’t even understand the value of money yet.
… pounds bro … three pounds
Pounds of what? Poop?
Gold. Three pounds of gold.
Actually, it was pounds of silver…
Pound coins are not made of silver, just sayin’
They are made of cake!
And pound cake is made from coins!
…right?
Xebi, your post is the first thing to make me laugh all morning. Thanks!
pillock . its £ not lb
Whilst I appreciate being called a pillock because it’s a great word and I was being one, this sort of joke is called a “pun” and perhaps you should look it up if you don’t understand it, candjim.
Incidentally, I am British so I use the £ every day, but to me lbs are just a seriously outdated form of measurement.
Do you use newtons to measure weight? Or are you confused and think that pounds and kilograms are different units for the same measure?
Don’t understand you James, sorry. Either you’ve misinterpreted me, or I’ve misinterpreted you.
Technically newtons ARE used to measure weight and lbs/kg measure mass, not weight. But let’s not get pedantic here. Pounds and kgs are merely two different scales to measure mass. Being British, I measure it in kgs because lbs are considered outdated in the UK.
It was actually a 50 pound gift card for the epic point, minus 48 pounds for lying about being a 3 1/2 year old who can type sentences or for being an adult who cannot, plus 1 pound for the outside chance that the writer is a grammar and typing prodigy or the adult has extra fingers that impede effective typing.
They have algorithms for this kind of thing.
Ha ha, good one!
Haha
1. What the hell is tiger bread?
2. How is this a FAIL? A little kid sends a letter to a supermarket and someone actually takes the time to reply back with a cute letter, and its labeled a fail? More like epic customer service win.
tiger bread is a crusty, unsliced loaf of white bread that’s really popular over here in England
And yes, i totally agree with you, this is definitely a customer service WIN!
I looked it up, and I have to say, it looks a lot more like a giraffe than a zebra.
Comes sliced as well in the Netherlands. It only has the name because of the appearance of the crust, as explained in the reply letter (which Cpt. Obvious apparently failed to comprehend).
http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/sainsburys-price-comparison/Bread/Sainsburys_Tiger_Loaf_400g.html
I made you some, but I eated it.
it does look more like a giraffe !!
if you think it looks like a giraffe then you should get out more
Unless he lives in the Serengeti or something, that wouldn’t help.
They’re talking about the pattern on the crust. Maybe you should get out more.
Dude that’s totally Giraffe lookin bread.
Cool! Let’s complain more pretending that we are 3 year old kids. We can live from the gift cards. Note to Apple: I already got patents on that Idea. No iPretendtobeathreeyearoldtogetfreegiftcards thingy for you. But I’m sure the design would have been so ultracool! Maybe I will let you sell the app… for USD 9,99.
They’ll simply add the phrase “on a smartphone” to the end of it and get a completely new patent.
This is a definite win.
Win! Kudos to the service center there.
I do like it when Customer Services have a positive sense of humour! I think that’ssssssssss some “Win” right there!
@Perdita LOL!!!!!
picard_somuchwin.jpg – we are just so used to automated email responses over and over again … this is awesome in my books
An actual letter conversation = win
Calling this a Fail = epic fail
win
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_bread
My favorite part is where the respondent put his/her age next to their signature.
Ditto. That was my favorite, too.
I ditto your ditto.
Turtle. 42 1/2
I ditto your ditto of the ditto.
I see your dittos and I raise you a ditto of my own!
Minus the annoying auto-crap that got added to my name.
Ddfdetto!
Kids have much more power than we think.
I think this is a great win from sainsbury’s for the cute response to the letter. It gives me a little more faith in the corporate world. Yes it’s 3 pounds which is almost exactly $5. Enough to buy the bread and “some sweeties”. Kudos to sainsbury’s and the responder! PS it is obviously not written by a three year old….her parents are paraphrasing a question she asked them.
Dear Sainsbury’s:
Just shut up and open a damn Sainsbury’s in my town so I can show my appreciation of your great customer service with my cash.
Sincerely,
“Different” Chris
There are four within walking distance of my house so maybe you ought to move
I have a little crush on Chris King, age 27 1/3
I second the motion
Ha, me too.
Yes!!! I thought his response was adorable. What a clever, cute guy!!!!
My daughter wrote a letter to Steve Jackson (SJ Games) when she was 8. He wrote her back, sent her a card to use in Munchkin games, and earned our whole family’s undying loyalty. This manager at Sainsbury deserves a raise and a promotion. He’s a customer service genius. I second Stacey: crushing on CK (27 1/3).
Correct. Customer service at its best.
What is most important to Sainsbury’s? Customer who spend dosh.
What is most important to the customers? Their kids.
What’s most important to kids? Sweets and/or toys.
Chris King aged 27 1/3 knows how to do business.
Why isn’t this a win?
Sorry Haters but this is fabulous
This is awesome! The best part is the customer manager signing his name “Chris King (age 27 & 1/3)”.
I think that is called Dutch Crunch bread in the states. What a sweet thing for that manager to do. A real feel-good story.
Hmm.
3 1/2 year-olds generally can’t either read or write, which means that they can’t type either.
I’m confused. I can well believe that the child wanted to write to the supermarket and ask that question, but I can’t believe that they child typed this themselves. Therefore, an adult had to do it for them. But, the typing is too bad to be an adult’s… so… an adult typed it but made it look child-like on purpose? Unless this is the stupidest attempt at a scam I’ve ever seen.
Also, kid’s right. I thought the same thing myself.
You’re a moron or a troll..don’t care which really.
The adult typed it for the child, but typed it just like the child said it. And just saying I learned how to read at 2 1/2 so it is possible this child knew how to.
How does one pronounce “c\alled”?
There is no way you could read at 2 1/2.
Just call me bullsh*t man, detecting bullsh*t everyday.
I know when I see bullsh*t and that, by golly, is bullsh*t.
That is all.
I have learned to read around this age, too. It took me about two weeks. Just for your information, Bullsh*t Man
I knew my alphabet at 2 1/2 and could identify letters and numbers; I was reading and “writing” with magnetic letters on the fridge at three. Lily here is three and a half, or so it says. To me it’s pretty obvious that the adult told Lily which keys to press on the keyboard. It’s obvious because at first, she didn’t know how long to press each key for (hence the many, many letters in “Sainsbury’s”) and minor slip-ups later. The adult (who gets a WIN in my book) wanted it to be “her” work so didn’t correct the mistakes.
Some learn before two, but it’s rare. One of my cousins learned at three, and her little sister learned at two. So Bullsh*t man it seems you’ve lost this round on account of being a a$$hole.
I bet the adult told the kid what buttons to push.. which would result in that kind of typing.
I’ve helped my little sister write letters before she even knew her alphabet. she would tell me what she wanted to say and I would just draw each word on a separate paper and she’d copy them.
The child asked the question and sat on the parents’ lap as they typed it pushing on the keyboard like a cat trying to play piano. The parent is trying to put as much as the childs’ imput as possible. It’s not a scam.
Dude the parents typed it. The kid signed in blue pen. The parents basically did it for their kid.
I wish I could give Mr. Chris King a hug for such a sweet, sincere response. Gah! This made my night!
I don’t even like kids… and I felt my heart grow at least 3 times reading this letter. And I saw online that bread is only about 70p which I believe means she does have room for bread and “some sweeties.” That’s what I cared about. If that was for 3 dollars, you could get you some wonderbread and maybe a piece of gum… if it was on sale.
For me, this raises more questions then it answers.
Q. How does a Three year old know how to use a compter/printer/obtain the correct postal address?
A. They don’t. At least not without help from thier parents. So, it makes you wonder who is REALLY writing it. Granted, I think it is a great marketing ploy from Sainbury’s point of view to keep as many customers on side (no matter how old they are). I dont mean to be critical and suspicious of the motives here, but we just need some more context/back storey i think
Wow Sam.
The fact that you even have to consider this, makes you an epic fail.
Welcome to failbook mate.
What load of bollocks, if you have three year old then you will understand.
The kid ask her mom why its call a tiger bread?. The mom couldn’t answer that one, so she said, why don’t we write to the Company and ask them that question. Do i need to spell out the rest?
Yep. I mean, my little brothers ask question like that all the time (3 and 6). Hell, kids really do ask good questions sometimes.
Random sharing:
Bro: Do you know about Komodo Dragons?
Me: You mean Comedian Dragons?
Bro: Oh no, it’s not funny, they’ll eat your car.
Question though: What’s with the “c\alled”? Keyboards different than in the US, or is it a weird format change thing, or….?
Is your \ key not below the A and adjacent to the Z? She apparently hit it when trying to type the “a” in “called.”
Nope, it’s all the way over to the right, 3 characters to the right of P.
So now it makes a little more sense.
Ahhh. OK, maybe it’s just British keyboards like the one young Lily would have used.
This should be customer service win.
What a bunch of cynical, old harpies you haters are!
So what if a parent wrote the letter, who cares?
On Sainsbury’s part, they actually took the time to respond and put thought into it instead of just sending out a form letter, which many companies do these days.
The minute I saw this, I wanted to fly to the UK just purchase something from them for being such good sports.
In my (quite limited) experience, if you take the time to write to a company in the UK, you will always get a personalised response and a small coupon/gift card. That’s because the business understands that brand loyalty is worth far more than the amount they are giving you in response.
In my (admittedly also quite limited) experience, you do not. I’ve only had stock, insert-name-here replies telling me there was nothing they could do about it, whatever “it” was.
I thought King was going to change the name from Tiger bread to Giraffe bread for a minute. That would have given the kid’s confidence a boost. But he’s probably too junior to make that kind of call. Suggest the kid goes up the chain over King’s head.
Unless it’s a “store” brand, a retailer doesn’t have the authority to change the names of products they sell. Even if the bread brand is owned by the store, changing the name of a product would cost a lot of money and may create confusion in customers, which is why it’s only done rarely.
ok so.. in the UK it’s a perfectly normal thing to do for children to write to companies. We actually did it in primary school as part of our English class to help us learn to write formally, and to prepare us if we ever needed to write a letter of complaint about anything. I wrote to Cadbury about a dairy milk whole nut bar which only had nuts at one end (stupid I know, but I was 8) and I received a letter of apology and a £1 official Cadbury voucher. I never spent the voucher because it was so pretty, with embossed patterns and holograms, but that’s not the point..
From now on, “Tiger Bread” shall be known as “Giraffe Bread!
How is this a fail?
Win for customer service !
Win for the 3y girl!
fail for the boring, damn, stupid s*ckers here, whon dont want to understand this. my daughter was able to read and type the LETTERS before Kindergarten, short: she knewed the alphabet. when i said: press the *D* in DUMBSUCKERSonFailblog, she pressed the *D*. And Sometimes, she typed some other letters too, cause the fingers glitched …
And the best: the signs / could be a fail in the driver of the printer, codepage and so on. you shoulkd know, there are other people and other countries outside the USA.
So, thats too, the girl got 3 Pounds and not 3 dollars…omg….in germany, she would get 5 €uro ….
Sainsbury’s are now missing out in a marketing genius of an idea, i would suggest they rename tiger bread as giraffe bread and put a copy of Lily’s letter on the packaging…
What is the picture she drew?
It looks like Woodstock and a lion to me…
This is a customer service win in my book
tiger bread really does look like it should be giraffe bread! google it!
This is exactly why the powers-that-try-to-be at Cheezburger should have left the WIN section in!! We see wins in fails now–how is that logical. Or have I proved my own point?
What about the PARENTING WIN here? The parents encouraged their child to think outside the box, and took the time to help her. This gave her positive feedback for not just accepting things as they are but rather questioning them. This little kid could be the next Steve Jobs.
Customer service win!
Should be on WIN! but this is simply adorable!
This is awesome, and really made me smile!
.
Not a fail, a win!
It’s a fail because it’s about 6 months behind the rest of the internet (okay, Twitter) who were cooing over it last summer.
THIS, gentlemen, is an EPIC response from an EPIC Person !
Looks like cheetah bread to me
This is clearly a win.
OK we’re obviously suffering a post-xmas glurge crash. Quick! Somebody, call Lassie, then toss Timmy down an empty well shaft.
Well done child! (Yes, it is entirely possible to read/write and comprehend at the age of 3. It’s about input. Garbage in, garbage out.)
Total Sainsbury’s WIN
This is a total Yotsuba Moment.
this should be a win! its so cute! ~3~
I can’t help but wonder if Lily is related to Lazlo Toth.
(No, I’m not suggesting it’s fake, it’s just the sort of letter Lazlo would write.)
This is clearly NOT a fail. Its a win. Kid wrote a letter and parents got free stuff. How is that fail?
It is now called Giraffe bread!
But Chris King has left the company to be a primary school teacher.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16812545