Sometimes I stop at the Coffee Hut before work and get a decaf latte. There are two gents who work there one of whom I usually chat with because we support the same British football team. Here’s the amazing part: there is no follow-up. I do not get an email later in the day asking me to review my experience. What a relief.
Go to the dentist for a teeth cleaning, you can expect to ask them for a review.
Buy a dress shirt online. Wait for it, that request for a review is coming.
Cardiologist.
Sock purchase.
Please rate your experience and write a review.
Enough already.
Worse yet, many businesses will badger you. You don’t rate and review immediately, they follow-up. And follow-up.
Why the desperation? It feels creepy.
Please tell me what you think of me. Assign me a number between one and five. Recommend us. We love you. Don’t you love us?
And if you do review and/or rate they sometimes get personal. How old are you? What’s your ethnicity? What’s your education level? When did you lose your virginity? Do you smoke pot? Ever been to Saskatoon?
Yeah I know, it’s for the marketing department. Well, they can bugger off.
Here’s when and how and what you can get something out of me. Your product or service was absolutely fantastic, far beyond what I expected. You deserve a pat on the back. Well done, lads.
Or. Your product or service was terrible. A total rip off wasting my time and money. Others need be warmed and I need to vent.
Or. All you want is a quick rating one through five and that’s it. Happy to oblige. Now go away.
All the humanity has been stripped from customer service. It’s all about getting ratings and recommendations. Building and solidifying the brand. I learned about this working for a language school that was totally corporate. We’d have in-services that couldn’t have been less about teaching people English and were all about getting good ratings so there’d be more customers (i.e. students). I had a natural distrust of corporate culture and easily developed a real hatred for it. It’s a place where the suits who spend their time in offices staring at their computer or in meetings or flying from one big city to another or looking at the raw data or vying for that opening one rung up or going to seminars or hearing motivational speeches or eating expensive meals that are on the corporate dime or glad-handing or sucking up or being sucked up to, those jerks make well into six figures with bonuses, while the people doing the real work need to tutor on the side to make ends meet.
There was one bigwig who regularly popped by. It was nice in one respect because he would “buy” us lunch for which everyone would dutifully thank him, though come on, everyone knew he didn’t personally spend a dime it came out of an account set aside to mollify the peons. He was that super friendly type who learned all our names and something about us that he could refer to next time. Always asked me about my commute. I once suggested him that teachers who showed their loyalty by staying another year get a token bump in pay, even just one per cent. An incentive for more teachers to stick around. He acted liked I’d just suggested doubling everyone’s salary. Like I was so dumb and naive and I should leave such big decisions to the highly paid brass. Fuck that guy and all those higher-ups who were looking to buy a second home or a yacht or new mistress.
Am I bitter? Not really, there’s no time for that. I’ve got a lot of positivity surrounding me that I need to enjoy in my remaining years. I can’t dwell on the evils of capitalism although I wish I could do something to take it down. If there is a revolution be sure to rate and review.
