The cockroach in the pulao

Are you good at being an angry customer?

Last week, I made the mistake of placing a duplicate order with a skincare brand I adore and have a great deal of loyalty for. I tried very hard to cancel my order. I called their phone lines, only to listen to a recorded voice tell me that I ought to call during working hours, never mind the fact that I was doing just that. Then I stood in a 40-person virtual queue for their chat service on-site, where I was told to email customer service. I wrote a detailed email with my order details and a polite request for a refund. No reply. Two packages landed at my doorstep the next day. No reply. A week passed, during which time I said fuck this and ripped both packages open and decided to keep everything. The saga ended yesterday, when I got an email telling me that “as per our records, your package has been delivered”.

I am terrible at being an angry customer. I’m more angry at myself for my inability to be angry customer than I am as an angry customer. Years and years of conditioning to not make a scene and understand that they’re human has ensured that I am incapable of expressing disappointment in a manner that is effective, without being explosive. My parents, for example, are anti-scene, to the point where we feel collective second-hand embarrassment when we do get to witness one. My father is especially anti-scene. Legend says that he once got a baby cockroach in his pulao at a restaurant, but instead of making a scene, he alerted the management, said he’d lost his appetite and even tried to pay the bill. He never went back there again and nobody, except us, even knew. His reasoning: creating a scene would ruin his day more than it would theirs.

Which is fair, but. The unfortunate result of being raised to be quiet and low profile is now my complete incapability to convey anger, even when I want to be angry. It’s pathetic - I mean, I literally just accepted an additional order which I shouldn’t have but I still don’t want to name and shame the brand for its ridiculous customer service! You know what’s more pathetic? It’s that I still love their products way too much and would probably continue shopping with them once I’m done with what I have. But that shouldn’t mean I’ve to put up with this, right? Right?

In my mind, being a disgruntled customer exists only in extremes. There are the silent sufferers, such as myself and then there are the guys who threaten Amazon customer service bots that they’ll be “writing to Jeff” and “making them pay”. My friend, we live in a time and age where “disappointing experience at ____” is an actual genre on YouTube. Angry Instagram stories about broken packages (followed by sharing DMs of others who had poor experiences) is a recipe for virality. Righteous consumer outrage, YAS!

I know some people don’t give a fuck (or at least pretend not to) if it’s below a certain amount. I know some others who will talk about it in detail but go on to say that they don’t give a fuck. Like, I didn’t want to create a scene. Oh my god, I could never.

What is the middle ground here? What does it look like? It bothers me no end that I don’t have the answer to it. At the end of the day, it’s my hard-earned money that’s going out of my pocket. I care deeply about where it goes, the value I receive and it offends me that I am unable to articulate my disappointment in a manner that can be as satisfying as it is constructive. How does one do that?

For now, I have no answers. Only silent suffering.

Thank you for reading,

Lavanya