I sometimes get the feeling we have been brainwashed over the past couple of years into accepting unacceptably poor service.

If you’ve tried to get through to a bank or utility company in recent months you will know what I mean.

I could understand it at the height of the pandemic when call centre staff were working from home as well as having to deal with staff shortages because of Covid illness but according to the government, the pandemic is over and everything should be back to normal (spoiler alert: the pandemic isn’t over and things aren’t back to pre-pandemic normal).

I speak from personal experience here. Earlier this year, I needed to speak to my energy supplier (I won’t name the company to spare its blushes).

I was coming to the end of a fixed-rate deal and it appeared to be offering me a new deal which was way more expensive than I had been paying but was likely to work out better once the price cap started to soar.

But it seemed too good to be true and I just wanted to speak to someone before I took them up on the offer.

So I phoned them and was put on hold (no surprise there). Apparently, my call ‘was important’ to them, but not so important that someone answered me. I was on hold for two hours, yes a full 120 minutes. And then I was cut off.

So what was I to do? I literally had no option other than phoning back. This time I was on hold for an hour and 45 minutes but at least I got through this time. The ridiculous thing is I was actually grateful that someone had deigned to take my call.

And then we have the problems of those industries that are struggling to recruit staff.

The airport and airline industry has well-documented issues and we all saw the problems at Manchester Airport during the peak summer season with queues stretching from the terminal buildings back to the car parks.

Call me naïve but I really thought I would be fine having a little September getaway to pick up some late Spanish sun.

Surely, I thought, with the summer rush over and with Manchester Airport having had plenty of time to staff up after pandemic restrictions were lifted I thought I was pretty much guaranteed to have a smooth passage through the airport, especially as I was travelling mid-week.

Well my optimism was comprehensively misplaced. To try to speed things up, I’d bought so called fast track tickets for security.

Yay, a separate, special, shorter queue to a dedicated security section that I had paid to use. What could go wrong?

Not enough staff and too many customers in the fast track queue, that’s what could go wrong (just to be clear, the airport’s website says the number of fast track tickets is limited, presumably to avoid the problems I suffered).

To relieve the pressure on the fast track staff, we and dozens of others, were siphoned out of the fast track queue and into the ‘ordinary’ security queue. That’s 30 minutes or so of my time I will never get back.

And as for coming back into the country, it wasn’t much of a welcome to the UK with a 20-minute queue to use the passport control e-gates because there only appeared to be one Border Force officer on duty to do manual passport checks.

I know Manchester Airport can be chaotic at the best of times but to be honest, both going and coming back were such unpleasant experiences it makes me want to never use that airport ever again.

But I will probably have to at some point in the future so maybe I’ve been brainwashed into accepting terrible customer service as well.

On another subject, I am a great admirer of the work done by the Rotary Clubs in our part of the world and I was saddened to see that Winsford and Middlewich Rotary Club is now desperately short of members after being in existence for 74 years.

Planning is currently under way for this year’s Santa’s sleigh festive visits round the streets of Winsford but because of the shortage of members, there are fears it could be the last.

The group has already decided it is no longer able to stage Winsford's firework display witgh Rotarians saying they simply have not got enough people to run the annual event.

The group has raised more than £110,000 has been raised in the past 15 years and this has been donated to hospices, hospitals, support groups, voluntary organisations and young people.

Rotary welcomes men and women aged over 18 and I would heartily recommend giving them a go.