I love advice. Friendly advice is like a genuinely funny greeting card: gratifying to give, pleasurable to get — and you can either throw it away, or you can keep it if it means something special. Today I want to ask for your opinion.
Here goes: If you have a rotten experience at a place of business, such as a restaurant or a store, is it better to tell the proprietors (and risk having squirrel eyeballs placed in your soup — or new shoes — the next time you choose to visit their premises) or is it preferable to shut up (and risk carving months off your life from sheer frustration at having been treated like a sucker)?
I can’t decide which would be better. No — and I am sorry about this — I can’t supply any details (too tricky). Situational ethics aren’t applicable here, I’m afraid, so I’ll need to hear a simple “yes” or “no,” with maybe a line or two about how you handled a similar problem.
And just to let you know, I do in fact make it a habit to write letters of PRAISE when somebody does an especially terrific job, whether that person works for an airline (ticket-counter people have been exceptionally nice to me when I arrive at the airport, sniveling in fear, to check my bags) or at a department store’s perfume counter (one woman happily supplied me with tiny samples of cologne, those most precious and elusive of objects, and not only was I deeply shocked, I immediately wrote to her supervisor suggesting that she be made Queen For Life of the entire mall).
So it’s not like I spend my life complaining about service without ever offering a compliment. I’ve met those people and I am not one of them.
I need to establish this before go any further because I wouldn’t want you to hear my need for advice as the whining cry of one who criticizes constantly. I encountered a whole herd of constant critics in 1975. During the summer between high school and college, I worked at a store we might as well call “Fumingpails”for the purpose of our discussion. Fumingpails would have been a nice enough place — if it hadn’t been for the customers. “Don’t ever call them customers or shoppers,” we were told on the first day of training. We had to refer to them as the “clientele.” It took me about a week decide that “clientele” was French for “Malicious rich lady.” I worked in a boutique area (French for “small space filled with ridiculous clothing”) and dealt primarily with older, intensely wealthy women.
I nearly became a Marxist that summer (and not, as my friend Fred would say, a “Neiman Marxist”). Working for low wages, selling overpriced clothes to fiendishly critical people, making just enough money in an hour to buy myself lunch from a vendor’s cart parked on a side street, would have made even Ariana Huffington see Red.
One lady (I use the term loosely) didn’t like the fact that I spoke to another woman while I was ringing up her purchase. She wrote a letter to the management about my “surly” disposition and lack of professionalism. I was called into carpeted offices and asked about the accusation. I said that if I had indeed BEEN a professional, it might have been easier to act like one. The manager laughed and I didn’t lose my job. But I lost patience for those self-important boors who have nothing better to do than register complaints.
You see why I’m worried?
Is it better to say “What’s the big deal? So you were disappointed—so what? Nothing you say will change the past. Perhaps someone’s job will be jeopardized by your ungracious grumbling. Let it go,” or is it better to say “If your patrons don’t let you know when you screw up, who will? I’d like to come back here without feeling like I’m a schnook and so I’m telling you something important.”
Obviously a request for advice is not a promise to follow it so, like a teenager, I’ll listen carefully and then go do what I think will be best. Unlike a teenager, however, I’ll tell you about it.
(Image from Photobucket.com)
