Gripes of Wrath
Everyone wants to complain, and the internet makes it pretty easy to do.
I’m writing this on my back porch on a summer morning, sipping a cup of coffee in my PJs before the sun comes out and roasts everything in sight. The only hiccup in my current pleasant state is what I believe to be a golden dung fly buzzing around me. Don’t let the “golden” fool you. I get them in my backyard when the “treats” my dogs leave around start to accumulate.
I had a poop scooping company cleaning weekly for a while, but they did a terrible job, so I cancelled my service. I also lied about why, which I know doesn’t help anyone. When I told him I wanted to cancel, he asked if everything was ok. While, yes, I wanted him to be better at his job, even more than that, I did not want to be on the phone, so I lied and said I could no longer afford it.
For me, telling companies that they’re doing a bad job is so awkward. I just panic and bail. I once found a piece of plastic in a taco and just discreetly told the server after I ate around it. I wasn’t mad at her. She didn’t make the taco. For once, I was not eating the tacos so voraciously that I could’ve choked. I was not injured, so I saw no need to make a scene. Maybe preferring to handle things quietly is selfish in that it robs the mistake-maker of fixing their mistake. But I actually think that doing the opposite — ranting online for the world to see — is much worse.
I read a one-star review from a local vet’s office whose author seemed perfectly comfortable complaining. He raged that when his cat was returned to him, its cat carrier was “completely soaked in the most foul-smelling brown liquid” the author had ever smelled. He complained that “before realizing where it was coming from” the hellish substance “soaked into” his car AND home (emphasis mine). He said he had the car professionally detailed four times to no avail. His solution? “Literally having to sell my car and buy all new furniture,” all supposedly because of the vet’s actions.
The only way the cat carrier could have destroyed his furniture is if he had transported the carrier into his house with an Olympian-style shot-put spin technique. Now, granted, there may be some liability on the part of the vet’s office, but within limits. If they crammed a Hershey-squirting cat in a box and slipped it into his back seat without warning the poor bastard, they may owe him a new cat carrier or at least use of their hose to clean out the existing one, should it be salvageable. But the buck stops there.
Any sloshing or staining that may have occurred AFTER he rolled out of the parking lot can only be blamed on his basic lack of cat carrier knowledge. They’re not Tupperware. They have holes in them so air can get in, and yes, liquids can get out.
The moment he chose to bring an open container of the “most foul-smelling brown liquid” across his own threshold, the liability shifted to him. Wherever it landed, it ain’t on the vet. Sofa? That’s on you. Rug? Not my problem. Bed? Why? How?
It’s unfathomable the expectations people have when they complain. Awhile back, a friend of mine served as a city council member in our hometown. It’s not a sprawling metropolis, but it is a real city with actual problems. One such problem ended up in this council member’s inbox. The message was simple, to the point. It read, “What are u going to do about this?” and was accompanied by a single photo of a chicken wing. The wing had a bite taken out of it, and there, between meat and bone, was a spot of red. My advice was to reply, “Dip it in some ranch and woof it.” Instead, the council member politely and professionally asked for clarification on the problem.
“It is raw,” the constituent responded. I’m not a scientist, but I believe I’ve eaten enough wings in my life for an honorary doctorate from Wing Stop. That wing wasn’t raw. But the council member didn’t argue, he simply suggested speaking to a manager. Her reply? “I ALREADY TRIED THAT!” Of course she did.
His advice wasn’t enough. She demanded justice. She wanted her elected official to go down there and do something. If I know anything about my hometown — and I do because I spent 18 years in a row there — the “something” she likely wanted was for him to perform a Stone Cold stunner on the manager in the dining area of this strip mall wing establishment.
People send these messages expecting what? Apologies? Free coupons? The simple satisfaction of having sent something?
The podcast I co-host happened to be the subject of a Twitter complaint a few months ago. The complaining account had 13 followers and tagged two accounts in the offending tweet: us and the smash-hit podcast My Favorite Murder. The complaint about our shows? We chatted too much. On our podcasts. Where all any of us do is chat.
When I told my boyfriend, Paris, he said, “That’s the internet.” But I couldn’t let it go. Instead of ignoring it, I clicked on the tweeter’s profile. It contained no real identifying information. No name. No location. But every single tweet was railing against some target and tagging that target in the tweet.
He asked Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon if they wrote their “same stupid jokes” in the shower together (Do they shower together? Is there some kind of late-night-host dormitory we don’t know about?). He tagged a professional linebacker and called him fat. He told his local Planet Fitness location that the gym needed a stronger WiFi signal, that NO ONE watches the TVs, and that they should turn the large fans down because it was “too chilly!”
He was mad at Popeye’s for being out of chicken sandwiches. He was mad at the NFL for showing Dallas Cowboys legend Michael Irvin on screen because his suits were “too f***ing flamboyant” (asterisks his). He was mad at Sprint and threatened to move his cell phone service to Verizon. He was mad at Dr Pepper for its new magical fairy mascot.
He hated Godzilla (both the character and the movie). He had been wronged by Comcast. He conceded that while “the ladies are amazing athletes,” the WNBA was “BORING!” He complained about the sound of women’s voices in general, specifically calling out Cardi B., Jameela Jamil, Karen Kilgariff and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by name, telling all of them, in various ways, that they should shut up.
With a list that long, I thought Christie and I were in good company.
The problem with Twitter, or any of these places where anyone can post online reviews, is their instantaneous nature. In olden times, pre-social media, before Yelp or Google, this dude would have had three choices: (1) Scream at his TV/spouse/dog/the void; (2) Sit down with a pen or typewriter, write out a letter, find out where to address it, get a stamp, drive it to the mailbox and send it; or (3) Do nothing.
Would this person have been bitter enough to hand write/draw, “Your voice sounds so bad I want to stick [three pencil emojis] in my ear” as he had tweeted to the list of women above? Or was it only typed and tweeted because it was so easy to do?
I was most perplexed by his strange moral code. He would freely call someone fat or ugly or boring or annoying, but he would never curse. All his tweets were either self-censored with asterisks or emojis (e.g., [cow emoji] + [poo emoji] = bullshit). It was confounding.
Reading through months’ worth of tweets, I also got the sense of a person who was simultaneously enraged and impotent. He railed against Comcast and threatened to leave Sprint, but weeks or even months later, he was tweeting at them again, proving that he had taken his business nowhere. The threats he had made turned out to be empty, but they were made and maybe that’s what mattered to him. I imagined the relief he must have felt in typing his asterisk-laden rant, in hitting send, in flexing his “power” to the big players.
And that’s who he was targeting — big players, giants. A media giant like Comcast. Comedy giants like Fallon and Kimmel. Even the NFL, which despite its inability to control Michael Irvin’s suit choices, is a sports giant. My Favorite Murder is by-far the most popular true crime podcast, with millions of listeners per month and millions of dollars of revenue per year.
But then, he also tweeted at us.
I tried to take comfort in the fact that, at least in this dude’s mind, we were on the same level as those titans. To him, we were as worthy of scorn as the WNBA. As rage-inducing as Dr. Pepper. As big as a Popeye’s chicken sandwich. The main difference, of course, is those giants are actually giants. They don’t sit in their PJs and answer their own tweets. Even if it is a human responding, it is an employee, not the sandwich herself, sipping her coffee on her back porch, swatting away flies and feeling like a pretty big deal.
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For more about me or to read additional content, check out my website or listen to Sinisterhood.
