My friend Char works at the Queen Street West branch of Your Good Health, a health food store a couple of blocks away from my house where I’m a regular.
Earlier this week, an irate Boomer woman walked in, pointing at the store’s array of Halogen lights.
“How dare you run all these lights and have the doors open when there’s a power crisis going on?” she said, and launched into a rant.
(Memo to those who want to rail against a business: unless you’re talking to a manager or someone in charge, your rants are likely to have little effect.)
And the end of the polemic, she stormed out the door, stopped, spun on her heel and fired off a parting shot: “If I can’t make my goddamned coffee tomorrow morning, it’ll be your fault!”
This seems to be a week of “You had me, then you lost me.”
Boris came down from Montreal last Thursday to see the Steve Mann talk and ended up in the middle of the biggest blackout in North American history. Here’s his story.
Here we have an amazing example of tight coupling — a system in Ohio fails, knocking out power in Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa and New York City — and I haven’t yet seen any articles on the concept.
I’m just going to have to write it myself, aren’t I? As if I have any spare time.
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From someone that spent over a year dealing with non-stop irates, I can suggest that you will probably get a lot further if you don't go off on a rant. Sure, you might get helped, but it'll be the absolute minimum the person can do to make you go away. If they have the authority to fix whatever your ranting about, they have the authority to do it without being screamed at. And in the grey areas where it's something that the company should do but outside their legal obligation (like dimming lights or honoring a 4-day expired warranty), you're much more likely to get results if you DON'T go off on the person helping you.
~Aaron
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