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When a man is cool, calm and collected you’d
believe it if he says, “I eat complaints for breakfast.” But
many others crack from the pressures of daily life. You can imagine
them screaming, “Ayoko na, sobra na,” and cupping their ears to
stop what seems a constant pounding on their ears.
Depending on your tolerance
level, each of us handles complaints and stress in various ways. You
can be cool and composed when cornered by a loud and aggressive loan
shark, demanding payment for a debt. You can be condescending toward
a persistent friend or relative seeking a big favor. You can show
indignation when somebody complains about your bad breath or body
odor. It’s a matter of style.
How do you handle a nagging wife?
“Easy,” says a macho husband who claims he eats naggings for
breakfast. “You shower the wife with gifts and kisses, if you can.
Or, you go back to bed and pretend to sleep, if you can.”
Of course, it’s not always that
easy. Not all women can be bought with gifts and kisses. A good
number of them are good candidates for the post of Ombudsman. They
are cold, calculating and incorruptible. Try to cross them and they
immediately demand the death penalty. Some of them love to lop off
your organ. “There are precedents,” says a lugubrious lawyer,
who looks like a victim.
Also, you don’t turn off a nag
by pretending to sleep, says another macho husband, who claims his
wife trained him to become the world’s expert on nagging. “You
can go to bed, and you can go to sleep, but you will have to wake
up, and she resumes her nagging. You might as well lie in a coffin,
which is the final solution,” says the expert.
The nagging wife, the debt
collector, the salesman knocking on the door, friends and relatives
seeking favors, the nitpicker, the louse in the office trying to
ruin your day, they are some of the whiners and self-righteous slobs
who make life miserable.
And it’s not just you. A flood
of complaints will give any service-oriented company a hard time.
Some companies create departments to handle complaints and assign
apology officers to address the more problematic ones.
In the United States, an airline
company, Jet Blue Airways, hired an apology officer, Fred Taylor, to
take calls from disappointed customers and to fire off homespun
letters of apology. The strategy was apparently intended not only to
head off more customer complaints; the airlines also hoped it would
quell talk of new consumer protection regulation in Congress.
In one letter of apology, Taylor
said to a passenger who was on a flight to Albuquerque: “Erring on
the side of caution, our captain decided to return to Phoenix rather
than second-guess the smell that was in the cabin. Not toxic, it was
obviously annoying.”
Even on good days airlines have
plenty to be sorry about—a tragicomic mix of broken planes, sick
passengers and scary landings. Recapping a troubled flight from Las
Vegas to San Francisco recently, Taylor said the plane circled back
after taking off because the landing gear would not retract. And
there was more. “During the return, a customer became ill and
‘decorated three rows of seats and a few customers.’”
Airline companies easily get help
to handle complaints. What about individuals? It’s impractical
even for a rich person to hire an apology officer, who will absorb
the complaints, including those from the wife.
Besides, hiring an apology
officer can be dangerous. The following is a possible typical
scenario: The wife demands you account for the hours you went
“missing” after leaving the office and coming home in the wee
hours of the morning. Of course, you toss the difficulty of
explaining to your personal apology officer. “My wife wants to
know where I was last night. She’s mad and she wants her pound of
flesh.”
The apology officer brings his
hands down defensively to his crotch. But the apology officer
quickly regains his composure and says: “No problem, sir. I was
with her the whole time last night.”
If you don’t have the means to
hire an apology officer and want to avoid complaints, it is best
“to walk the straight and narrow line.”
It is easier to deal with
complaints if it does not involve your “pound of flesh.” And you
can gladly say to yourself: “Pour it on, I eat complaints every
day.”
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