This week we revisited a museum we go to a lot;
The National Maritime Museum!
It is a favourite for practical and personal reasons. Practical, because it is close to the home of the children's little cousin (who features in these photos!) and personal because it is just a lovely space, packed with information and things to learn. It has a great "children's gallery" with hands-on games and equipment....
....and other such things scattered throughout the museum, such as this
ship simulator where you can test your sailing skills....
....one of the newest parts is
The Great Map.... a huge map of the world laid out in the largest space in the museum. This time we had a try of the interactive tablets that are aimed to help you explore the map and shipping history itself.
Unfortunately this didn't live up to expectations. We assumed the tablet would interact with the map as you walked around the space but actually you have to roam the map manually on the tablet so actually being in the space is unnecessary. This may not be right though as the staff member who explained the tablet to us didn't appear to have been fully trained in it and we discovered more about how to use it ourselves after she had gone. It didn't help her to be fair that ANOTHER member of staff interrupted her whilst she was with us and sent her away!
This leads me to the real problem with the National Maritime Museum. As I said it is a lovely innovative and inspiring space filled with information, but it is completely let down by the staff. Every time we have been we have experienced the staff as unfriendly, unhelpful and suspicious. They seem more concerned with telling visitors what they can't do than what they can do. I've said here
previously that a staff member told me to keep the children quiet when they actually weren't making any noise. I had hoped this was a one off from one member of staff but unfortunately it seems to be the same attitude across all the staff. On this weeks' visit the staff we saw lurked around unsmiling and occasionally jotting things down in notebooks. They were very quick to admonish people for apparent misdemeanors (touching a ship, sitting down at tables when the cafe was about to close, etc.) and did so in such an unfriendly awful way. I bought something from the shop that was a different price at the counter than on the shelf and the staff were so rude about it in the end I just asked for a refund. Had they explained in a nice way I may well have kept it despite the higher price.
It is such a shame as the museum is lovely. I'm not sure what is happening internally in the museum to lead to such miserable staff who seem suspicious of all visitors, but it won't stop us going along, I just hope it is better next time we go.
