[News] Open letter from Paul Barber

[Is it PotG?]

I bet the quality and speed of service in the boardroom scran was severely affected too.

 

[ozzygull]

I was surprised to see the email, I didn’t notice any issues in WSU apart from the cold Diet Coke that was actually warm and not cold at all. The football was not great but that was down to Everton being a good organised side and not lack of effort from our players.

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

I bet the quality and speed of service in the boardroom scran was severely affected too.

They all looked to be doing very well Saturday

 

[Wozza]

In the old days they could have had the apprentices helping out. How times change.

To be honest, they were ruddy useless at catering tasks...

 

[Bombardier]

Expecting another open letter from Barber on how the season ticket sharing scheme has been scrapped given the huge swathes of empty seats leading to lack of attendees purchasing items from the kiosks.

 

[zefarelly]

Amazed it’s taken 10 years and a Pandemic to get this apology. The catering and stewarding at The Amex has been consistently shite since day dot.

Peanuts = monkeys

YOu're not going to get rocket scientists doing it even if it does pay well.

 

[Knotty]

What a thoroughly depressing place NSC is.

Populated by miserable, entitled, whingeing adults behaving like selfish, ignorant schoolchildren. I don’t understand why some support BHA, desperate as they are to pounce on anything and everything the club says or does, and criticise endlessly.

Ours must be the worst club in the country because, judging by all the experts on NSC, it gets nothing right.

 

[Horses Arse]

As his staff are being verbally abused by entitled lowlife scum because they have to wait for a pint of Fosters then that's how it should be.

Having repeatedly told people to wear a mask 'inside' what more do you want him to do?

Go round putting masks on people himself?
Eject everyone not wearing a mask?


Once again adults are acting like c***s and somehow it's Barb's fault.

Are they/were they being verbally abused? I wasn't aware of that. I took Paul's comment in his letter as being an example of him never being able to apologise or admit to getting anything wrong without attributing or creating blame.

If people were verbally abusing catering staff that is awful, it's not their fault that the service is so poor. It is the companies that are being allowed to get away with such poor service.

 

[bluenitsuj]

No mention of the shit train service either

 

[Change at Barnham]

What a thoroughly depressing place NSC is.

Populated by miserable, entitled, whingeing adults behaving like selfish, ignorant schoolchildren. I don’t understand why some support BHA, desperate as they are to pounce on anything and everything the club says or does, and criticise endlessly.

Ours must be the worst club in the country because, judging by all the experts on NSC, it gets nothing right.

Calm down Knotty.
It's a small minority making a lot of noise.

The majority recognise that we are lucky to have excellent facilities and that the club attempt to run things as well as possible.
We also have a club that communicates better than most clubs.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Disgraceful! He's completely and contemptuously dissed the majority on NSC. Not one single aknowledgement that Brexit is solely to blame, even though most on NSC all 'know', rightly or wrongly, that it is! Just how far can a CEO get out of touch with his customer base?

Barber out!

Except, if you were any good at reading between the lines, he has.

Barber isn't going to come out and say "it's all down to Brexit" because a) it isn't ALL down to Brexit and b) that's quite a way to alienate a supporter base you're trying to placate with a common message.

However, he does state

In particular, Sodexo’s catering staff numbers are currently over 40% lower than we would like. Unfortunately, filling the gaps we have is proving to be very difficult indeed.

Where do you think those 40% came from and went to? And wasn't Brexit going to provide exactly these sorts of jobs for a British workforce absolutely chomping at the bit to take them?

Hospitality, food processing and logistics are seeing massive staff shortages precisely because their regular workers have left the UK. Ask people in the industry.

Of course, that is down to the perfect storm of a Covid pandemic AND Brexit. Neither on their own would cut an available workforce nearly in half, but it doesn't take a genius to work out that the two things together have. Barber is just far more clever in how he puts it over.

And, by the way Paul, thanks for the email but I'm a little surprised that our fans weren't a bit more prepared as the precise problem talked about in the email was called out in the pre-match brief email. Hence I arrived a good 15 - 20 mins earlier than I normally would and got everything I needed, refreshment wise, in my first visit.

 

[Blue Valkyrie]

In the old days they could have had the apprentices helping out. How times change.

Well I suppose having Hatie Kopkins behind the bar would have made for an entertaining thread in the Bear Pit.

 

[Knotty]

Calm down Knotty.
It's a small minority making a lot of noise.

The majority recognise that we are lucky to have excellent facilities and that the club attempt to run things as well as possible.
We also have a club that communicates better than most clubs.

I’ll try! Thank you.

 

[Is it PotG?]

And, by the way Paul, thanks for the email but I'm a little surprised that our fans weren't a bit more prepared as the precise problem talked about in the email was called out in the pre-match brief email. Hence I arrived a good 15 - 20 mins earlier than I normally would and got everything I needed, refreshment wise, in my first visit.

Surely if everyone got there 15-20 mins earlier, the situation would still be the same due to lack of catering staff? It would just be 15-20 minutes earlier.

 

[Fat Boy Fat]

Calm down Knotty.
It's a small minority making a lot of noise.

The majority recognise that we are lucky to have excellent facilities and that the club attempt to run things as well as possible.
We also have a club that communicates better than most clubs.

This is so true, I have seen this often, even in my limited time on these boards. A VERY vocal minority make it seem like they have the majority view and speak for "us". However whenever a poll is run, the vocal posters are nearly always on the wrong side of the majority view...

 

[timbha]

Calm down Knotty.
It's a small minority making a lot of noise.

The majority recognise that we are lucky to have excellent facilities and that the club attempt to run things as well as possible.
We also have a club that communicates better than most clubs.

Correct. It’s a tiny tiny minority of old farts who still want crumbling terraces and their weekly bovril, and a growing number of self entitled newcomers who have been brought up to challenge everything that doesn’t meet their agenda and belittle those trying to achieve the bigger picture, all for £30 a fortnight.

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

No mention of the shit train service either

I would have hoped he would talk about the transport issues and addressed what is going on with the car parks.

I couldn’t go Saturday, thought I had Covid, thankfully not test was negative, but for the Watford game, I was surprised to see a relatively large number of stewards located at the Bridge Car Park, I couldn’t really see what a lot of them were actually doing to get paid, so maybe this shortage of stewards is a logistical issue rather than actually a shortage of bodies?

They were extremely proactive in the Bridge for the Watford game and yes there was a huge amount of overkill judging by the numbers of stewards around. For the Everton game, they were not directing people into individual spaces thankfully but as I walked towards the bridge itself at around 2pm, there were 4 stewards having a lovely old natter and not paying attention to anything else. Not that there was any need for any of them to do anything at that moment anyway.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Surely if everyone got there 15-20 mins earlier, the situation would still be the same due to lack of catering staff? It would just be 15-20 minutes earlier.

That's not really how crowd flow works and, in any case, I didn't suggest everyone should. Perhaps people should read their pre-match brief before whining that it took an extra five minutes to get a pie though, eh?

 

[Swansman]

No mention of the shit train service either

I see there was some clouds as well.

https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/uk/brighton/historic

Barber out.

 

[BN9 BHA]

What a thoroughly depressing place NSC is.

Populated by miserable, entitled, whingeing adults behaving like selfish, ignorant schoolchildren. I don’t understand why some support BHA, desperate as they are to pounce on anything and everything the club says or does, and criticise endlessly.

Ours must be the worst club in the country because, judging by all the experts on NSC, it gets nothing right.

Are you new here?