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.