UKCruiseJeff

Lovely moving story drron for which you have every right to feel proud of and share. If you can forgive me for being soppy, but that is an extraordinary example of the very finest of DoctoringPlus. 🙏 Jeff

As chicken soup is supposed to be (changed to avoid **) a testosterone enhancer it follows that it is unlikely to prevent pop-ups. Jeff

Yes and my soup doesn't cure it.

Good Afternoon Coolers! Back at base now and of course the first requirement of me was an enormous vat of lovely chicken soup for the next few days. The chicken sinks and the veggies float! The smell is pervading the house. 🙂 Have a great day all. Jeff

Good Afternoon Coolers, Back home from 3 weeks @seaside! Every Brit - and many visitors to Stonehenge will understand the joys of the A303, and today didn’t surprise. A grim 3 hours! Helga was great and didn’t let us down. We even had the odd few yards of a bit of speed. I hope the cameras didn’t get me. Still … back home. As it is so lovely to be back home I’d thought I’d share my favourite Stacey Kent Youtube “Lovely Day”. She did this to cheer people up during Covid. She is extraordinary and a while back she did a concert in my home town. We went and I noticed her in the lobby doing some texting. When she’d done she was happy to say “hello” and it transpired she studied music at Guildhall in London which was just below my bedroom window when I lived at Barbican. I so love her music and this track. Have a great day all. Jeff

That’s lovely. I certainly agree with your thoughts on mocking people with mental health, particularly as I hold the view that mental limitations aren’t as many view them as black or white but various gradations of grey in-between. I also believe therefore that all of us are compromised to greater or lesser degrees. Mental health challenges are inevitably going to increase as we find people unable to cope with the accelerating rate of change. It’s great that we both value thoughtful interactions on the cooler, and it can only be so and indeed both what it is and what it might be if people do engage and share and ask and interact in a spirit of gemütlichkeit - sorry there’s no English exact alternative! Jeff

A stunning and moving story with some sadness. How has all that shaped you .. are you able to work out how? I guess you might have an impetus to seize the day? Jeff

Lovely! I saw what you did there! 😀 Proverb: “A full MUG of wine is better than a GLASS half full” Jeff

I think it is mostly the unexpected consequences of many seemingly rapidly convergence of diverse and seemingly unrelated trends. The most influential factor that has changed over the last few decades is that investors now churn more often and more quickly as a result of both electronic transactions in real time by brokers and then latterly the public managing and churning their own investments directly for themselves. People use to hold the shares for a long time and now most hold it for comparatively short times ….. even often measured in hours and days. This means that whereas the main pressure on CEOs and their boards use to be the building of foundations of long-term value and improvement has been replaced by the need to increase the pressure for short-term gains. Shareholders appoint boards on the basis them needing CEOs who can meet this need. The only real moderating influence are often pension funds etc. The consequences of this is that CEO’s pay and rations are no longer more aligned to long-term progress but tactical “this year” and quarterly value growth. This has caused and coincided with more rapid movement of leaders from job to job. People don’t lead their companies for as long as they use to. Overlaying all of this is the further complications of the way that the increasing speed of sudden external and unexpected forces eg natural disaster (eg covid) and geopolitical influences (eg world unrest) have become so rapid and fast and unexpected. This means that the main imperatives might be simply survival and “getting through” and not get overtaken by these unexpected events. This also enhances the tendencies to be short-term and tactical rather than long term strategists, There’s a very clear and palpable reducing value for creating and sustaining and harvesting of long-term customer loyalty, The topic is now largely a corporate pretence and a component of marketing than actual corporate behaviour but as genuinely loyal customers are reticent to believe this to be so, they become complicit in the deception and simply become compliant and tactically exploitable. The trajectory now is towards buyers being more tactical than brand loyal. The explosion of the internet and social media means that customers can find out and determine who best fits them today and less of who do I want to trust with my loyalty for the next decade or two. It now simply doesn’t seem to matter as much if promises are made and not kept. They want your cash today and with the explosion of people cruising there will be enough replacements to replace the single cruise disappointed defectors for a while. Hence the daft scheme outlined in this thread but not delivered is attractive and is adopted irrespective of the longer term obvious consequences. Life is simply changing and sometimes we take a bit longer to catch up and smell the coffee. Jeff

Lovely to read your story Lola. 🙂 I think what makes the more rounded cheerful optimistic glass half full person might be the person who feels secure, wanted and loved as a child and those that are not will likely not be. Never too early in the day is it. 🙂 😄 Jeff

Great performance drron29. 🙂 My suggested next category of excuses to post a link to a particularly well loved Youtube Video is “My Favourite Youtube Video with a few French Words in it”. I never rated Joe Cocker in his time because I simply did’t get it. The wonderful backing singers of his record “I get buy without a little help from my friends” was Sue and Sunny. No one ever remembers or values backing singers but they are the backbone of so much of the music industry. Sue and Sunny use to go to The Gioconda Coffee Bar in Denmark street when it was genuinely Tin Pan Alley of the UK in the 60’s.and where I spent too much time in the 60’s in the hope that something magical might happen for me. Everyone went to the Gioconda. I was nursing what was then called “frothy coffee” until it was cold and I was receiving glares to vacate when I was once chatting to them about my bewilderment of JC’s success and they said “Jeff you don’t get it - don’t listen to what he sings but listen to the silences and what he doesn’t sing. It’s the gaps that make his style”. I then got it and now appreciate him. This is my favourite of all of his repertoire. “N’oubliez Jamais” with the gorgeous Catherine Deneuve. Sleep tight Coolers. 🙂 Jeff

Luccy, luccy you ….. 🙂 Lucca is gorgeous and it must have been lovely to have that summertime concert. As long as you are at the end of a row ….. 😀 Jeff

You do understand that cruisers buying a Silversea cruise are promised a luxury product not a premium product, do you not?

tfred, The actual core issue is an extremely simple one. It is how you meet the reasonable expectations of those things that are important to your customers. And what is important will vary at the edges. Do you meet - or even better exceed them - or have you been complicit in creating a set of expectations that you have wilfully or negligently failed to meet. One set of customers will be satisfied or delighted, the other set disappointed. It is where you are “on that scale” and how you understand it and manage it that defines which direction your organisation progresses. Jeff

GD, What an amazing story. I’m so pleased I asked my nosey question and you posting your extraordinary story. I’ve read it four times slowly and read to it wifey and we’ve noticed new bits each time. Thanks so much. You are exactly the sort of person who one could listen to on a cruise … or in a bar …. and never be bored. I have often pondered and wondered .. mostly both from personal experience and the observation of others … whether in an obtuse and counter-intuitive way .. that those with the hardest and most challenging of starts have a far more interesting path through life than those with a smoother start. I guess your story to a degree supports my theory. I will sit at the bar rather than dance on it if I hopefully reach 80 … and simply learn to shrug more. Without The Cooler I would never have heard such a fascinating story and heard about such an interesting path and so thanks. 🙂 Jeff