PureSchmaltz

Rendered Fat Content

Tyranny

28 08, 15 05:31 Filed under: MorningMissive-Mooving
scaleof1to10
“Commerce between master and slave is despotism.” Thomas Jefferson

The Muse thought, since we were moving into a fringe area house with an installed TV Dish® already on the roof, that she would sign up for the satellite TV service. The technician arrived while I directed the movers, who were unloading that last forgotten crate, and he encouraged me to finish that chore while he poked around, climbing onto the roof to check the dish angle and fiddling with wiring along the side of the place. After the movers left, he asked questions and poked around some more, finally coming around to the fatal question. “Do you have the power cord for the TV? I need to check reception on the actual TV before I can call the installation complete.”

Of course I didn’t have the power cable for the TV, and I told him that I had no idea where the cable might be. I found myself in the middle of one of those mornings where I just cannot properly parse the world around me. My judgement had not returned from dreamland the night before and I was barely functioning, but I found my trusty box knife and commenced to opening some boxes in the master bedroom, none of which yielded the sought-after cable. The technician would point at a box, asking, “How about that one?” I mindlessly responded by cutting open that one, then the next, then the next one after that.

I quickly began feeling assaulted, but continued with the absurd dance anyway. I was opening boxes out of any rational sequence, unable to place the contents into any proper context. I was making a mess when I needed some calming tidiness. I finally called a halt.

“I can’t report this install as completed until I finish that check,” the technician reiterated. I told him that I could not help him accomplish that because I didn’t have the power cable. I predicted that it would eventually turn up in the normal process of unpacking. Probably. He looked panicky, explaining that the company holds him personally responsible for following a defined process when installing service. Unanticipated deviations, I gathered, were not tolerated and considered to be the fault of the installer, though this was nobody’s fault and, it seemed to me, a reasonably anticipatable outcome which time and a little patience should resolve.

He offered to come back to finish the process wherever that cable turned up. “I don’t live that far from here,” he insisted. “I can come back anytime.” This is a desperate man coping with a serious threat.

It took more time than I wanted to spend, but I finally nudged him out the door as he explained that I would be receiving a phone call survey from his company. “Be sure and respond to the questions with a nine or a ten because if you rate me less than nine, I’m in trouble,” he counseled. So there’s the threat.

The lust for superior service seems to have encouraged a glut of what I might most charitably label Customer Satisfaction Surveys asking inane questions in the apparent belief that the responses might yield ‘actionable’ information. These ‘surveys’ typically employ the childish ‘on a scale of one to ten’ framework, one that baffled me even as a child. The Muse insists that I’m not all that much in touch with my feelings, so asking me to quantify something I’m not much in touch with never made sense to me. I quite naturally shut down in the face of questions arriving in this fashion. I feel lousy about shutting down because I really, really, really want to please the questioner, but cannot.

Here we find the under-appreciated aspect of the questionnaire. In this culture, it elicits the victim’s empathy toward the tormentor, subtly insisting upon a response. Forced choice dresses up like free will to yield ‘actionable information’? I respond to fend off the guilt I would feel if I didn’t respond. Someone somewhere compiles similarly coerced impressions from other customers to produce an ink blot portrait of excellence. Or not.

When The Muse and I facilitate workshops we counsel the client against distributing what we call Happy Sheets at the end of the experience. These surveys seek to generate immediate feedback on the workshop’s ‘quality’ (whatever that means) by interrogating newly-shell shocked veterans. The client expects an average rating of nine or ten to mean a successful experience but we’ve learned to anticipate bi-polar feedback. We figure that if the workshop has been successful it should have deeply dissatisfied at least half of the participants, if only because it failed to confirm their preconceptions about what they would learn by suggesting that they might have to engage in some extremely discomfiting unlearning. If the purpose of the workshop was about satisfying preconceptions rather than learning, a nine or ten might qualify as reasonable expectation, but the workshop would have to be unnecessary. If it was about learning, about half might love it while the other half reviles it in the moment after it ends. Ask a month later or a year later, after the experience has settled into practice (or not), and, in our experience, those who earlier reported the worst experience later discover the most satisfaction emerging in practice.

If you want to ensure my dissatisfaction, ask me how satisfied I am on a scale of one to ten. I can’t even pretend to grok that question. A scale? Of one to ten? Could you please provide some examples of what each of those points on that scale mean? If I’m feeling suicidal after experiencing your service, do I respond with a one? Does secretly plotting to run away to Vegas with the service provider rate a ten? I do not understand the calibration. I suspect the questioner doesn’t understand the calibration any better than I do. Rating experience seems like something a machine might try to do, not something a sentient human would ever even consider attempting. The very idea reeks of that adolescent urge to understand in a way that could only preserve preconception.

The clearly paranoid Disk® technician exhibited what excellence actually means in today’s thoroughly modern organization. It means that the people live under the thumb of an ignorant and inherently cynical tyranny where coercion produces the excellence they pursue and where any decent employee might be very well advised to counsel their customer in how to put their thumb on the scale to yield the desired result. Excellence requires me to Jinn up a nine or a ten no matter what my experience might have been.

The experience felt crappy, but I cannot hold that hapless technician at fault. I was in the middle of a terribly crappy morning when he appeared. I have a life-long attitude about all things electronic. The Muse wanted the service. I didn’t, but who would I have to be to deny her? I told the technician that for me, the best outcome would be not finding the power cord so the TV would remain a dark mirror. Circumstances beyond anyone’s control forced him to violate the defined installation process and he’s responding as might any innocent with a threatened livelihood. Even I can smell that distinctive aroma of circling Gestapo. I’ve been there.

I think I hold the moral responsibility to refuse to engage in surveying. If someone wants to know how I feel, they’re going to have to help me understand what they mean by that. If they employ a ten point scale, I should conclude that they have deluded themselves into believing that feelings emerge calibrated, a concept not quite worthy of the label Absurd. Furthermore, I do not expect or seek peak experiences when engaging in any commercial relationship. I quite reasonably expect to survive the transaction but I won’t blame anyone but myself if I leave disgruntled. I can own that. If I feel slighted, I won’t return. If I feel moved to provide what’s now popularly over-labeled as feedback, I’ll explain with something more explicit and personal than an easily compiled but eternally indecipherable ten point scale.

©2015 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved










Tags: , ,

blog comments powered by Disqus

Good For A Goose





PureSchmaltz Archive Search


December 2024
November 2024
October 2024
September 2024
August 2024
July 2024
June 2024
May 2024
April 2024
March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
© 2006-2024 by David A. Schmaltz all rights reserved

Made in RapidWeaver