The Pride And The Fall

It is a truth universally acknowledged that customer service departments are shit at responding to customer complaints, and yet that unexpected day finally arrived - having spent many months trying to get some sort of response out of Ubisoft in relation to a complaint I made about a faulty product, I finally received a reply. Actually, I made a series of complaints (each one as poorly handled as the next) which culminated in a fairly harsh letter sent to HQ in the hope that someone there might actually give a crap. They did. Primarily because I mentioned Trading Standards in the closing paragraph. Anyway, I got a written apology, which for me signified the end of issue. It sounds crazy, but that's all I wanted - recognition of the shit customer service and an apology for it. It stopped being about the faulty product about two months into this indescribably convoluted scenario. In addition to the letter via post, I also received an email from someone in charge of customer services at HQ, reiterating the sentiments of the first apology. Two for one on mea culpa - I wonder if they also deal with car insurance claims.

Anyway, that was the back-story. Now here's the reason I'm writing about it. Perhaps you won't understand the magnitude of the situation unless I point out that in my lengthy letter of complaint I somewhat childishly made a casual reference to the bad grammar of the support team. Immature, I know - but it was two months into this ridiculous process and, to me, those sorts of errors just meant they couldn't be arsed writing a proper response. So imagine my horror when I read back over my own reply to Ubisoft's apology and discovered a typo in the second line. Oh. Holy. Fuck. I feel like an idiot. I sit with this uncomfortable feeling for approximately twenty minutes before I have to correct myself in a follow-up email. Situation averted? No, because then I decided to go back over the reply again, just to be sure I'd addressed the one and only fuck up. Guess what? I hadn't. There was a second typo in the last line. Oh. Holy. Fuck. Multiplied by ten to the power of fuck. Well, I can't really send a third email can I? That would be pedantic. In my heart, I now wish that I hadn't corrected my first mistake because that just showed them that it bothered me. Missing the second one almost certainly left them in no doubt that I felt like a total arsehole. In short - I haven't slept for twelve hours because of this.


So, why did it niggle me so much? Pride. My mistakes had a deeper meaning for me. After the seemingly endless dispute with Ubisoft, I finally felt like I'd won - I rarely complain to manufacturers about anything. I usually just let it go and move on, but I wanted to fight for this and I finally received the apology I deserved. Now I feel like I'm walking away from the dispute in shame, not victory. If I'd just ignored my typos, I would've kept my pride. Sadly, I let it chip away at me and, thus, I am walking away from this whole fiasco with nothing more than a feeling of being laughed at.

This begs the question, what is the difference between a situation that steals your pride, and one that affects you but leaves your pride intact? For me, it is the notion of being perceived as stupid when I know I'm not, and the notion of looking like a fool when I know I'm not. For example, the other day at work, a friend of mine asked if I could scan and email some invoices to him in the London office. He said he'd left them in his inbox. He gave me fairly vague guidance, but guidance nonetheless - "the four invoices I need are all sat together on top of the pile in my inbox". Bullshit - his inbox was like a swirling mass of entropy and only two of the invoices he actually needed were sat on top of it.


Suddenly, I started to get stressed. This is a really simple task, right? And I'm clearly going to look stupid if I can't find them. What if they are on top of the pile and I just can't see them? What if I knocked some off the pile and they fell down the back of the cabinet? Anyway, I 'instant messaged' him to tell him I'd found two of the invoices but the others weren't there. He's a man, so naturally he contested this and implied I was wrong. It doesn't really matter, because I kept searching for them anyway like the people-pleasing dick that I am. Twenty minutes later, I found the third invoice. Where was it? Buried beneath some spreadsheets. By now, I'm getting even more stressed because three people have been to my desk and asked me to do various bits of work, and I'm getting some sideways glances from a senior colleague who is obviously wondering why I'm fucking around with what I eventually concluded might be confidential financial documents. Eventually I get an instant message from my friend saying "forget it, this is too painful" - no shit, Sherlock, but it's more painful to have my foot jammed up your ass so how about you lose the attitude. Forty-five minutes after the whole fiasco started, I found the final invoice. Again, not on top of any sort of pile, unless you count the pile of shit that was my Thursday.


Did he thank me for taking time out of my day to help with something that bore no resemblance to the work I actually ought to be doing? No. Instead, he said: "We have a winner! Seriously, I know I left them in one place" and "look at the invoice...can't you read?" or something similar. I felt my patience starting to fracture. Eventually, it broke. What I meant to say was "a thank you would be nice" but instead I said "sometimes a fucking thank you is good enough - I was doing you a favour. I'm one small girl and I'm being pulled in fifty thousand directions right now. I've got my own work to do so drop the attitude". To be fair, eventually he said thank you, and he bought me a coffee. What can I say? I'm easily pleased. In retrospect, I guess my response was rather over the top considering it was a relatively minor predicament that we solved in the end anyway - the truth is, I hate feeling stupid or incompetent, and I particularly hate feeling like people are having a laugh at my expense, especially when i'm not there to defend myself properly. He wasn't in the office, and I just assumed he was finding it hilarious while I was drowning in a seemingly endless pit of editing and writing.

With the letter to Ubisoft, I wasted my opportunity to leave with the upper hand. First, I corrected myself and revealed my insecurities about making errors and looking stupid. Then, I couldn't bring myself to do it a second time, so the situation transitioned into something that was out of my control. The scenario with my friend was not so bad, mainly because I knew I'd be seeing him the following morning and would have the opportunity to throw out some wise ass remarks to reinstate my self-respect. In other words, I had a whole evening at home to polyfill the cracks of neuroses that had decided to make an appearance throughout the day so that they didn't show up again the following day.

Despite the rather neurotic Thursday, I've noticed that more often than not I let comments that should damage my pride roll right off me. Most days, I couldn't care less what people think of me. Having people laugh at me when I'm referred to as a girl (a relatively common occurrence, I might add) doesn't particularly bother me. Having people tell me I need to get a life instead of spending so much time on the Playstation doesn't particularly bother me - most likely because these comments draw attention to aspects of my personality that I'm proud of. They are things I'm comfortable with people seeing. And that's it - that's the difference between a situation that damages your pride and one that doesn't - a situation that damages your pride does so because it shines a spotlight on a deep-seated, pre-existing insecurity and, in doing so, exacerbates it. Admittedly, I hide my insecurities quite well, or at least I did until I started writing about them on here. So why don't I feel awkward writing about them on here? It has nothing to do with anonymity, rather it is because I am choosing to write about them on here, and that feeling of choice and control supersedes any shame I might otherwise feel. It's about being the person behind the wheel of your shame. It's about being the one steering it and it's about being the one who chooses when to make a joke out of it and how far to take that joke.

I guess what I'm saying is: the situations capable of damaging our pride are often those that threaten to reveal what we try to hide, and these situations tend to have a greater impact when we perceive ourselves to have limited, or no, control over them. I suspect that most of us can probably handle damaged pride as long as we feel it's temporary, and that we can redeem ourselves somewhere down the line. In situations that are devoid of this opportunity to repair the damage, all we can really do is accept the uncomfortable feeling that others may glimpse our insecurities for a short while, and hope that they don't judge us for having a weaker side.

The Great British Acknowledgement

Like most Brits, I find plenty of things to complain about in my daily life and, just like most Brits, I’m nearly always too polite to actually say anything about the things that dissatisfy me. I'm more content to mutter something profane in a barely audible tone, sigh a lot, roll my eyes a couple of times, and leave it at that. Brits seem to feel uncomfortable with conflict and, therefore, often try to sidestep it altogether. This is why most of us have, at some point, handed over a credit card in a restaurant despite receiving nothing more than a savagely undercooked chicken and some overcooked carrots, it's why most of us have sat patiently behind some tit wank on the road who may own a nice car but has forgotten how to drive it, and it's why most of us refuse to return faulty products to manufacturers despite being vocal with our friends about how inexcusable it is to sell such faulty goods. 

Recently, I have been playing a series of games called Assassin’s Creed on my Playstation 3. The first two games in the series were flawless works of programming art. Naturally, I thoroughly enjoyed both of them. The third one, however, was riddled with small glitches, one of which meant that I had to replay an entire level. No big deal – these things happen. To be honest, as long as the gameplay is fun and fast-paced, the odd bit of backtracking and the occasional floating character doesn’t bother me too much. So, I went ahead and bought the fourth game in the series.
Half way through it, and 26 hours of my life later, I hit a problem – a plain white loading screen that didn’t actually lead to the loading of anything. Indeed, it just sat there on my TV like a foggy ‘fuck you’. As it happens, this glitch has been encountered by many gamers, leading to a lot of sorely disappointed geeks and the origin of the term ‘The White Screen of Death’. Apt, if nothing else, considering that this bug kills your game and what's left of your enthusiasm for it. Ok, I know it’s just a game, I know it only cost £8, I know there are more important things in life, but I paid for a product and all I actually have is 48% of it. In the end, I pushed my inner Brit aside and wrote a long message to Ubisoft (producers of the game) and sent it to them via their customer support system which, quite frankly, is a bit of a misnomer considering that there is more support on offer from a tesco value bra. Allow me to explain.

Ubisoft provide an online form for complaints, which ensures that your issue goes straight to the right people – basically, you select your console (PS3) from a drop-down menu, you select your game (Assassin’s Creed) from a drop-down menu, you write your complaint in the free-text box and click ‘send’. Voila!  It should go straight to Mr Assassin’s Creed in the PS3 department. Bullshit. It went straight to George in the PC department who wasted 546 words telling me how to fix the problem on a desktop computer. Fantastic – do I reply, or do I simply draw the logical conclusion that he can’t read and give up now? In the end, I decided to be optimistic and replied very calmly with “this response does not seem to apply to me. I own a PS3, not a PC. Isn’t there a patch I can download?” For anyone who doesn't know, a patch is a piece of software that you can download that is designed to fix certain problems. Patches often become available after a game is released because, although testers can detect and rectify 80% of glitches before it goes on sale, some bugs only become evident following large-scale use e.g. once people around the world start playing in large numbers. Anyway, I digress. So, what was George’s response? Well, I don’t know because I haven’t received it yet. In fact, I waited so long that I wrote a rather aggressive follow-up to the earlier message, only to discover that Ubisoft’s customer support system was ‘undergoing maintenance’. Unsurprising. One can only assume this is due to the large number of complaints emails currently placing unforeseen demand on some shitty little server in the basement of Ubisoft Montreal. To cut a long story short - I have now given up on my futile attempt to receive any sort of customer support from their customer support system.

So why am I writing about this? Well, I believe that we all experience glitches in life – some of them can be patched up or repaired, and some can not. Irrespective of the overall outcome, it is not the situation that counts, but the way it is handled. When I was a barmaid, my boss used to tell me that, even if I was ragingly busy and customers were waiting, it was imperative to acknowledge everyone standing at the bar. He was right. People are a lot more forgiving of imperfect service if they know that you have at least been respectful enough to acknowledge their presence and apologise for the wait. Ignorance, on the other hand, irritates people. Indeed, I wrote to Ubisoft with two aims 1) to make them aware of the problem 2) to investigate a possible solution. I'm not even that bothered about the money I wasted. When I wrote my letter, I felt calm and rational, but the way it was handled pissed me off. I guess what I’m saying is that, in a world where nothing is perfect, we have to learn to expect the odd glitch, but if a problem can be fixed, then we should be brave enough to speak out about it and grab the opportunity to find a solution. If, however, a problem can’t be fixed, then the people who are responsible for it should at least have the decency to acknowledge the situation and pretend to care. 

The Aging Contradiction

I'm going to get straight to the point - I'm terrified of aging. I'm petrified of getting old, scared of dying, and worried that i'll be forgotten once I'm gone. This wasn't really too much of an issue until recently, because I've always looked really young for my age, so I haven't had that daily reminder in the mirror that I'm slowly getting older. Not until recently. I was in the changing rooms at Tesco's and I saw it. A grey hair. Shit, I'm only 28 years old. This isn't fair. I knew Tesco's wouldn't let me put the clothes back on the rack if I peed myself in them, so I took the jeans off and continued to have my own quiet cardiac arrest. Then I saw another one. Two of the fuckers in as many minutes! I stood there for a moment, considering my options and trying to remember the saying about pulling them out and more growing back. Personally, I thought it sounded like a shit theory with no scientific merit, so I pulled the bastards out and ran for the hair dye. Since that fateful day, I have been checking for other signs of aging and, to my surprise, I have discovered many.


For example, lines beneath my eyes. I know they are there a) because I can see them b) because my eyeliner no longer slides down my face as the day progresses but, instead, sits in the lines beneath my eyes. I've also noticed that my skin looks different - it's not as smooth and my skin tone is less even. Some days, when I'm driving in my car and I catch sight of myself in the mirror, the first thing I think is 'god, you look old'. It triggers an intense fear inside of me and usually leads to a thirty minute philosophical debate with myself that includes thoughts such as 'if I died now, my life would have been wasted' and 'what if something happens to someone I love and I've caused them nothing but worry?' and 'what if my life stays like this and I never actually live it?'. Again, most of these questions make me want to crap myself with fear, so I usually start humming Led Zeppelin to calm me down.

A couple of other things I have noticed - my increased jealousy of people who are younger than me, and a reduced tolerance for harmless things in the environment. For example, small children playing in the park across the road now trigger some sort of internal conflict whereby I spend about thirty minutes wondering whether the sight of them frolicking around and screaming at 10 am on a Sunday is sweet and endearing, or just annoying as shit. Aisle-drifters in Sainsbury's also piss me off, as do slow drivers, weaving drivers, lost drivers, bad drivers, bad grammar, bad spelling, childish behaviour in people old enough to know better, and the collective drop in IQ that occurs when groups of teenagers get together with a bottle of cider. I, therefore, find it incredibly ironic that, despite having an adult outlook on so many things (see above list), my own behaviour is undeniably childish.


Indeed, the list above makes me sound old before my time, yet my behaviour on a daily basis is entirely contradictory. Freud called this 'reaction formation', and I've mentioned it in a previous entry. Basically, I find my internal emotions unacceptable, so I counter them by behaving in the opposite way - I find my mature, 'adult', grouchy and intolerant self unacceptable because I see it as a sign that I'm aging, so I counter it by behaving like a child - I make stupid jokes, I get stroppy, I dress 'young' for my age, I go on and on about playing on my Playstation, not wanting kids, being averse to marriage, settling down...and, for some reason, I can't stop putting my needs ahead of everyone else's.

So, where does this leave me? It leaves me at a decision point. I can either continue to regress in response to the signs of aging, or I can embrace getting older and allow my personality to get up to speed on this too, as opposed to keeping it locked up in a child-like state. If Freud is anything to go by, it is my internal emotions that are true and genuine, not my childish actions. It is my grouchy, adult side that truly reflects my attitudes and beliefs, and my actions are just a response to that. However, what if there are shades of grey? What if I really am torn in two? What if I really do have an adult perspective on many things in life, but a childish approach is more congruous with who I am and how I like to behave? Maybe I'm both an adult and a child. Alternatively, maybe I'm neither an adult nor a child. Maybe I'm simply a confused hypocrite.