Tentatively Tasmanian

A common complaint is the need for a password for everything online.

Not just government departments, social media accounts and banking which all certainly deserve as much security as computer boffins, firewalls and our brains (“No! Not “Password1!” again!”) can devise. It is the peripheral stuff involving casual browsing online for purveyors of bathers, quilt covers and indestructible dog toys who also now insist on you ‘signing up’ and including a password that includes not just a minimum eight letter word, but one capital letter, one special character and a number.

We are all advised by people much more knowledgeable than ourselves to use different passwords each time, but I suspect we just alter the capital letter or number, especially when shopping on random websites. Why does Nick Scali need me to set up a password protected account to browse side tables I’m never going to have in my home?

Yes, local Italian shop, we ordered three of your pizzas online because my husband and I were really tired and hungry after unpacking and hoped to stuff our faces and have enough leftover for lunch the next day but we will select the ‘order without joining up’ for our meal, if that’s OK with your overlords.

Look, Spotlight, I gave you my phone number because the nice lady at the counter told me it would give me ten percent off my first purchase, but I do not want to receive three emails a week or to create another password to remember to access the additional crazy specials you only offer those incredible humans who can devise a password and input it or recite it at the cash register or have it emblazoned on their foreheads as a bleak barcode. Can I just put these ‘end of line’ balls of wool on my bank card and get the hell out of here please?

The punishment for ‘joining up’ before being permitted to ‘add to cart’ and purchase anything is the constant bombardment with often daily emails from the company that you may never need to buy from ever again. The ‘unsubscribe’ button can sometimes be found at the very bottom of the email in size 1 font and even when you find it and self-congratulate yourself on your spectacular eyesight the company will ask you to provide a reason for unsubscribing. Just clicking ‘unsubscribe’ will sometimes not work unless you write something. I’ve taken to inserting a single full stop (‘period’ for you Americans) and getting out as fast as I can.

The recent ear wax cleaning water blaster mini cannon thingy just delivered to my husband is a good example of all of the above.

To increase the annoyance of having joined up to buy said ear wax cleaner water blaster mini cannon thingy as per their mandatory online purchasing process, the damn item doesn’t charge up properly and therefore does not work as advertised. I have no doubt that an algorithm elsewhere in their Hong Kong headquarters has emailed my husband a survey requesting him to write an essay on the quality of their product, efficiency of delivery and to rate their defective device.

He has instead gone rogue and contacted the company about their faulty product, but seems to have encountered a rare group who could not care less about a customer satisfaction survey and have instead insisted that he submit them a video of him charging up the ear wax cleaner to ensure that he’s doing it correctly. I’d love to see a organisation like Vagisil trying this strategy….

We all know that actuaries can save companies millions by calculating how many disgruntled customers will give up at this stage and forfeit their money. They know too how many will send in the video and give up after not hearing anything back after a month. They next factor in the rapidly declining number of clients who follow up via annoyed email at the lack of contact and the determined – and now extremely angry – ones who find the original packaging, tape it up, queue up at the post office and send it back for a refund. And, last but not least, the 0.00001% who continue to ask about their money and may receive it within the same year of purchase.

But a further gripe is one that is growing even faster: the instant survey. The following are all real surveys from real companies I have dealt with since arriving in Tasmania. The wording may have changed slightly, but my confidence is such that you should read these questions and be nodding to yourself and sobbing, ‘Oh god yes, my in-box is full of these.”

I’ve avoided most surveys that don’t require a single click on a star, but would have loved to have provided these companies with the following answers.

Were you happy with your solar panel installation? What could we do better?
How the hell should I know? Energy is a magical invisible mystery to me, but are they soaking up the sun and doing the sciency electricity stuff I’m hoping for? Did you screw them into the roof so that they don’t fly off like paper plates at a BBQ in these intimidating Tasmanian winds? Do better: whistle while you worked, maybe?

Were you happy with your Matisse poster?
Well, it is a poster. Of a painting I like. By Matisse. And yes, you did receive my order and you did deliver it. But that’s kind of the lowest expectation I should have, isn’t it, to receive exactly what I ordered?

Were you happy with your cheaply made set of five underpants purchased via a dreadful Facebook advertisement?
To be honest, no. No-one who orders undies packaged in fives with a minimum two packs per order is living a thrilling and profitable life. No, I don’t expect their life-expectancy will last beyond Christmas but they appear to fit my arse and that’s all the energy I intend to spend thinking about them.

Were you happy with your home delivery of KOO navy blue flannelette bed sheets?
Ecstatic! No, really! Flannelette sheets were a necessity living in a freezing South Aussie country town in the 1970s with no electric blanket or heating, but to rediscover them again five decades later because my husband is allergic to every filling in every quilt ever manufactured on this planet but these are OK and make our thin, hypoallergenic machine washable blankets so much warmer is truly remarkable. You ROCK, Harris Scarfe’s, and don’t let anyone tell you anything different! All Tasmanians should be using flannelette sheets during their winters. Tell the Premier, Mr, erm, Rockyroad?, to get straight onto it!

Admittedly a survey is OK if you just have to tick a smiley face and can rapidly escape via your iphone or email. The frustrating fact is that they are often found in the physical environment as well.

After the time wasting, frustration and indignity of gulping down your bottle of water during the queueing process, placing your shoes in the plastic bin and still setting off the alarm due to the underwire of your bra at airport security, there are little black stands next to the area full of people tying up their laces and trying to stuff their luggage back into the carry ons with three faces – red (bad), amber (ambivalent) and green (extraordinary), and the stupid question, “How was our security service experience for you today?”

If there was a keyboard instead of three stupid smiley faces, I’d be tempted to miss my flight and type out some truly dark thoughts.

Bodily functions are not left alone either. A couple of hundred metres further along in the same building, the toilet facilities have the happy face rating machines as well. I’d love an actuary to do a study on how many tired travelers who have wheeled their suitcases inside the cubicle, peed and then manoevered themselves out of the cubicle with their suitcases hopefully being pulled with their non-vag-wiping or non-bum-wiping hand towards the handbasins, who then feel like sharing their views on the process.

Will you rate the wifi service we are currently providing you?
Why? It’s invisible magic, known only to the special few. It’s electric glitter air and as long as I can google stuff to prove my husband wrong in arguments on my phone whilst watching Netflix, it does the job. Please don’t ask me to explain how it all works.

How did you find your first visit to our dental practice?
Hilarious. My third root canal since the two I had done a year ago. Positively gagging with joy at the thought of enduring this constant toothache for another three weeks because you don’t have a free afternoon to either repair it, drill further into the one root neglected by the Swiss dentist or decide remove the entire tooth altogether. But sure, it’s only my back tooth so if it does end up in the bin I won’t look like a hillbilly or British member of the public bringing their gear to Antiques Roadshow and the dentist dude seemed nice and the place was clean but try drinking a glass of cold water or forgetting that crunching down on a few almonds makes you see stars…..

You recently went into our city bank branch. Can you tell us about your experience?
Bizarre, to be frank. Tellers seem to exist but seemingly do anything other than hand out cash and there are customer service agents standing around like unaggressive car salesmen, clipboards in hand, offering to walk us over to work a computer perched on what appears to be a high small table usually used for resting beers on.

We don’t particularly care about the telly you bought from us, but how do you rate the company we sub-contracted the delivery of your telly to?
He was on time, he offered me a little ipad thing to sign with my fat pointer finger that in no way resembled my actual signature and he drove off. Therefore, he did exactly what he was supposed to do; no more, no less. There was no spitting in the face, nor raping or pillaging and he also did not hand over a chocolate hamper or massage gift certificate. He must have been a client of my new dentist because he possessed very few teeth yet this did not appear to have affected his television delivery skills. Is that what you want to hear?

Your self-assemble hallway shoe rack was posted from our warehouse and received by you last week. Will you complete a short survey?
This one was done by an amateur, because it had ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on it, and none of the confusing array of links, click throughs, stars, happy faces or rankings from one to ten. I clicked ‘no’ and had a really enjoyable day thinking about my tiniest of victories.