I’d gone out on my bike for a quick peddle when I called in at “Guns ‘n’ Roses” for a coffee break.  It’s actually called “Spuds ‘n’ Berries” because it’s a farm shop.  I normally avoid these like the plague as they try to charge you a tenner for a jacket spud that’s been “locally grown”.  Persilanny, I don’t care how far away my spuds have been grown as long as they’ve had a ton of good English cowshit flung over them.

Anyroadup, the point is this.  I went into the coffee bar and asked the woman on the counter what a Flat White was.  As it happens, I know fine well what a Flat White should be – a smaller coffee with two shots so it’s nice and strong.  I ask though to make sure as I have had some wishy-washy specimens before that were like mazzy watter.

“I don’t know” say your woman.  “I don’t drink coffee”.

Now if I’d asked her who won the FA Cup in 1949 or the recommended dilution for Roseate weedkiller, I could accept “I don’t know”.  But this was the coffee shop for Pete’s sake!

“A bit of product knowledge wouldn’t go amiss” I thought to myself.

And that reminded me of a mirror incident I experienced when I was Interim HR Manager at BMW’s National Distribution Centre some years ago.

Now, I’m probably showing you how to suck eggs, but an Interim Manager is someone who’s appointed to cover a gap in a company caused by an unforeseen absence, as indeed was my situation covering some glasshouse flower who found the stresses of the role too much for her and had chucked a sickie.  Enter Coops, Career Interim Manager – “Where there’s no sense there’s no feeling”.

So where was I? Ah yes. I’d been there about six months or so when I pointed out some car or other to my boss and asked her what it was.  It turns out it was an X3 or Z4 or somesuch and she then added admonishingly, “A bit of fucking product knowledge wouldn’t go amiss”.

“Sue” I said (for that was her name) “I could be working in a pork pie factory next week.  What do I care what your fucking product’s called?”

We got on just fine, Sue and me.