Whining in the Age of Rage
It’s the Age of Rage. I came across that phrase this week and couldn’t help reflecting on how apt it is these days. Due to social media everyone now has an outlet and an audience for the slightest gripe or perceived slight. I had hardly digested the phrase ‘‘age of rage’’ when I came upon the perfect example of such anger in action – a Palmerston North cafe owner being bombarded with negative reviews because he had the audacity to complain about customers leaving dirty nappies on the floor of his toilets, or blocking the pan by trying to flush them away.
Matt McNelis and Freya Thomson, owners of the Barley cafe, were astounded at the amount of online abuse they received when they urged parents to change their kids’ nappies in more suitable premises across the road at a mall.
Some antagonists seemed particularly upset by Matt’s concluding sentence in a notice in the toilet: ‘‘Just remember the people that clean that mess are the same people that serve your food . . .’’ This, I thought, was a particularly pertinent point and one that needed to be brought to the customers’ attention. However, it triggered a flood of bile on Facebook and TripAdvisor, many of the messages posted by people who had never even visited the cafe but perceived the owners to be persecuting parents.
In fact, the owners weren’t picking on mums and dads, they were merely pointing out their toilets were too small for the changing of nappies and did not possess the necessary facilities.
It made me realise how difficult it is for small businesses to counter even one bad review from a disgruntled customer – and it’s worth remembering that it’s claimed 90 per cent of consumers look at online reviews before they visit a business. And, of course, there’s the danger of someone posting a fake review, perhaps on behalf of a business rival.
TripAdvisor has become an all-powerful research tool, used by an estimated 300 million travellers every month. Hoteliers claim even a few bad reviews can make or break their business.
However, there is an upside of the ubiquitous reviews. Some are really priceless. A visitor to a theatre in Scotland complained: ‘‘The actors are all Scottish and very hard to understand.’’ Perhaps they should have gone armed with a phrase book.
Meanwhile, a tourist to Guam raved about the Tumon resort – ‘‘the water was clean and crystal clear and the beach was great but too sandy’’. That’s the thing about beaches – they’re never perfect, either too stony or too sandy.
And a visitor to the Great Wall of China wrote: ‘‘If bricks are your thing, you may or may not enjoy this (I didn’t). If bricks and walls are not your thing, best to avoid, if you can, too big.’’
This left me wondering what this person expected of the Great Wall of China – it’s not known as the Tiny Garden Wall of China for a reason. Maybe they should have visited Trump’s wall on the Mexican border instead – it’s considerably less substantial and blows down in a high wind. Excellent photo opportunities.
The Colosseum in Rome also comes in for its share of disdain. According to one TripAdvisor poster: ‘‘Shoddily maintained and poorly organised . . . apparently Rome has not yet discovered building maintenance.’’
(Perhaps this is why the city has so many tumbledown ruins dating back centuries?)
The poster went on: ‘‘The coloseam (sic) was very run down and did not have any refreshment stands or cleaning crew of any kind.’’
Ah, in the words of the Monty Python characters: What did the Romans ever do for us?