Bibbie And Mr's Warsop

Without explanation the planned turn of 2010 change to our new training supplier didn't happen. I can reveal now that the delay occurred due to Bibbie and Jake! The powers that be could not decide on names for our new training characters and so shelved the changeover while urgent naming committees were initiated and long hours of discussion and debate ensued.

Anyway, now at last the names have been chosen and we are green for go! Hurrah for Jake n' Bibbie. It is believed 'Jake' took the longest to choose as, obviously, Bibbie is so universal.

As you will see from your postcards, and boy haven't we had a lot? Bibbie and Jake are animated avatar type characters....Those of you not in store have missed out on this treat, virtually every morning we get a wish you were here postcard from Bibbie and Jake, I don't know where here is exactly but they love it! The postcards are a series of scenarios played out by Bibbie and Jake whereby one or the other needs help with the new system.

What worries me about all this is, a) they both seem equally confused, one day Bibbie asks Jake a dopey question the next Jake has (apparently) forgotten everything and consults Bibbie! and b) I fear with some considerable dread that when our people go online to train, Bibbie and Jake will be animated characters there to assist them! These could get a little tiresome and I for one don't want to be explaining to new starters why one is called Bibbie!

If they were going for an animated/avatar kind of thing why didn't they get one of those suits that capture live movement by a real person who then gets 'animated' on screen, they could then have used Mr's Warsop and Mike Read as our new training characters. I'd have dialled in to see that alone!

I fully support the idea of an animated Mr's Warsop guiding us to a training utopia and will be utilising a suggestion box should the new web site have one. Just think, if it worked out we could roll with it and have animated store managers on conference calls! Brendan from Bedworth for example is a very physical communicator and this is lost on a conference call, mike o has to keep checking he is awake, with an animated Brendan this would be unnecessary as he would be able to jabber away complete with his usual array of hand movements! (For those of you who don't know Brendan imagine Buzz Lightyear doing Oragami without any actual paper)

Of course animation doesn't come cheap but computer animation is cheaper AND we could do it ourselves, as with anything computer related we'd just pass it to Calum! I'm willing to bet he already has an animated Dawn with which to navigate the Fourways back office system.

( those of you on other territories or departments will have your very own Calum from Fourways)