“The longer-than-average wait time you’re experiencing does not reflect our usual high customer service standards.”

Where do I start with this one? Let’s try at the beginning.

Standard Life called me last week about some investments while I was in a meeting. “Victor” left a speedy message (the only thing said at a normal pace was my name) to call Standard Life. Needed to listen three times to get the phone number. Victor was efficient at leaving messages.

So I called. After seven minutes and 21 seconds of pressing buttons to through the robot phone system (yes I was counting), I got the hold-music without some much as one ring first.

Now, so far this is par for the course in the modern world. I may not love it, but I’m not going to rant about robot telephone systems. They’re the way this planet answers the phone at this particular moment in history.

Suddenly, the music stops and something on the other end of the line rustles! Am I going to talk to someone after only waiting for 30 seconds?

No.

A recorded message let down my hopes. Fine. I’ll wait.

But this recorded message didn’t tell me that my call was important like my mobile phone provider does. It didn’t tell me I was next in like like the cable company does. It said:

The longer-than-average wait time you’re experiencing does not reflect our usual high customer service standards.

What. What?

Let’s back up. There are a few Bad Things in this message, so let’s take them one by one.

Bad Thing #1. Making the customer feel unlucky for choosing them.
”The longer-than-average wait time you’re experiencing . . .”
I like to feel special. Call me weak, but I like to think that I get preferential treatment. You may know some people who are the same. Call me naive, but I’d prefer to hear “For you, half price!” than having a robot point out that I’m the unlucky bastard who has to wait longer than most people! Why on Earth would Standard Life point out that, Ziggy-like, I have this black cloud of long wait times hovering over my head and my head alone? Pardon my language, but sheesh!

Bad Thing #2. Putting themselves above the customer.
“. . . our usual high standard of customer service.”:
What do I care about Standard Life’s “high standard of customer service”? I care about me. I’m the customer - I’ve paid for the right to care about me. Being a customer is one of the only times we can feel justifiably selfish. Don’t tell me about you, says I. I’ve bought enough of your services not to care.

Bad Thing #3. Telling, not doing.
“. . . does not reflect our usual high standard of customer service.”
Is Standard Life just telling me they usually have a good customer service? To be quite honest, I don’t believe it. And my “longer-than-average” wait backs me up. If I decided to punch a pedestrian very hard in the jaw, do I get to excuse it be saying, “My fist in your face does not reflect my usual calm and zen-like nature”? I didn’t think so.



I’m not blaming the writer of this message. Not this time. Standard Life is a huge organization. I’ve worked for a huge organization, and I would hazard a guess that upwards of 50 people read and commented on this message before it ever saw a recording studio. The writer of this message probably had strict writing guidelines from Standard Life along the lines of
13. emphasize that long wait times are not common
and
27. stress Standard Life’s high standard of customer service.
It would take a very remarkable message writer to get something good out of those.

What is disheartening is that not one human being who read this message befor eit was recorded put themselves in the position of the customer. The customer who had just gone through nearly seven-and-a-half minutes of robot to return a call. I’m no CEO and maybe that’s why I don’t know why a company would want to alienate the people it wants to satisfy.

Stories

Let me tell you a story.

There’s this woodcutter who wants to clear the land around his cabin. He goes out at dawn the first day and works until sunset. He’s exhausted, but he’s cut down 57 trees! Proud of himself, he goes to bed and sleeps the sleep of the dead. The next day, inspired by his work the day before, he goes out and works twice as hard. However, by nightfall he’s only cut down 41 trees. Disheartened but not beaten, he vows the next day to be back up to 57 – or more. At dawn, he girds himself and heads out. He works even harder than his second day but by dusk he’s only cut down 29 trees. 

            Now despondent, he heads back to his humble cabin to eat his humble meal of gruel, which he can only look at. Where did he go wrong? The more work he puts in, the less he gets done!

            His wife, darling that she is, notices his complete loss of enthusiasm and gently asks what’s up. He tells her the story of the last few days – how every time he puts more effort in to the task, his results diminish.

            “Harold,” she says to him, for ‘twas his name. “Did you take the time to sharpen your axe?”

Now, it would be far more efficient for me simply to tell you that the human adult needs 7-8 hours of sleep per day or that recreation is an important factor in productivity. Efficient, perhaps. But would you remember it as well?

            We tend to forget, especially in a world where we demand our devices (and perhaps our employees) to be as efficient as possible, that efficiency is not the default mode for human beings. Facts are fine, but stories – by far the less efficient method of getting information across – are what we thrive on.

But why take that fact at face value? Let me tell you another story.

I was living  a few thousand kilometres away from the 8.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Sichuan, China in 2008. It was devastating to that area, but barely felt where I was. Still, the heartbreaking stories that came out after the rescue attempt began put everyone in a kind of there-but-for-fortune-go-I mood.

One night, around ten or eleven o’clock, I got a phone call from a young Chinese woman I knew. She was terrified.

           “People in my dorm are saying there’s another earthquake coming and that it’s coming to this city!”

            I was flabbergasted. How could a 21^st-century university student, by now at least partially-versed in how earthquakes work thanks to the 24-hour media coverage of the Sichuan quake, believe A) earthquakes can be predicted and 2) they travel from one place to another?!

            Yes, I could have spouted facts about the nature of tectonic plates and seismic activity to show her that she didn’t have anything to worry about. (And, knowing me, I probably did just that. Well, really, what would you have done?) But would that have changed her mind? No. She’d believe the stories. The stories will always be more real to her – more immediate – than any number of facts.

This is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his seminal work The Black Swan, calls the narrative fallacy. We attach far more import to stories than we do to mere facts. If we’re flying to New York and sitting beside someone who’s telling us about his brother-in-law who was mugged and killed in Central Park, leaving his children fatherless and his wife a shell of a woman, we’re going to think twice about visiting Central Park. No amount crime statistics will shake that niggling feeling at the back of the brain created by that story.

And yet, advertising, an industry that spends hundreds of billions of dollars for the slightest fraction of an edge over a competitor, still (mostly) spouts facts at us. In world where people constantly change and embellish their personal stories in the form of status updates and tweets, advertisers drone on about how so-and-so car is the most fuel efficient in its class or how such-and-such has an improved flavour. Or worse. One car ad takes that preachy, I-know-more-than-you-ever-will tone of stating facts, and takes out any kind of factual information!

“It’s everything fun . . . dialled up.”

What does that say about anything?! Who exactly are you trying to sell to?!

For those of you unfamiliar with the Heritage Minutes in Canada, they were (are) 60-second short films depicting some great (or, more often, not-so-great-but-at-least-notable) moment in Canadian history. They do not list facts. They do not give opinions. They do not tell. They do present a story. And, more importantly, they do cause one to remember them. How many commercials from 20 years ago can you remember? Me, neither. But, I can remember a huge swath of Heritage minutes.

Prairie dogs can list facts. Only humans can tell stories.

I once worked with a woman who called herself a ‘professional storyteller.’ I have no idea what she meant by this (as soon I heard that kind of pretension I tended to avoid her), but how is that any different from what every single one of us does every day? We are all telling our own story – to our friends, our co-workers, our employers and, most importantly, to ourselves. I’m not talking about status updates and tweets this time (although those are related) – I’m talking about the inner monologue we tell ourselves, rewriting our past, shaping our present and creating  our sense of self every single day.

Professional storyteller? Bah! We all are. And those who tell the best stories get remembered.

Facebook dooms us all . . . again

Age. Sex. Height. Weight. 

Birthday. Zodiac sign. Chinese zodiac sign.

Neworks. Relationship status. Children. Body type. Ethnicity. Eye color. Hair color.

Breast size. Bra size. Penis size. Most attractive feature. Glasses or contacts. Shaved. Circumsized. Orientation. Education. Smoking. Drinking. Gambling. Drugs. Languages. Boxers or briefs. Favorite breakfast cereal mascot. Innie or outie. Second toe longer than big toe.

 Profiles – advertising’s answer to the basic human need of social interaction. Let’s describe ourselves in easily-digested, quickly-scannable bite-sized information niblets. It’s like having the nutritional facts about your friends right there on the label. But how much does it really tell anyone?

 I’m not shaking a stern finger and saying ‘human beings can’t reduced to a list’ or anything like that. Most of them can (unless, of course, you’re reading this. Then you’re alright.) I’m not talking about the possibility of people lying on their profiles or about this ‘right to privacy’ I hear so much about. People don’t want privacy – they want to be famous. They want to be known, even if just as a collection of loose facts on a computer screen.

 No, I’m talking about the very desire to reduce oneself – a living, breathing, (somewhat) functioning human organism – to that loose collection of facts.

 I was out a little while ago with a young lady in her mid-20s. Nice girl – smart, caring . . . ah, crap! I’m already reducing her to a list! Anyway, we were having a decent conversation over a few glasses of wine when she furrowed her brow, turned to me and said, “There’s just one thing I don’t understand about you, Jim.”

 Just one thing? One thing?! No, let it go, son. Let’s hear what she has to say.

 “Oh yes? What’s that?”

 “Well . . . I don’t understand what you do for fun.”

 I must have darted a look at my glass on the table as I started to stutter. She quickly added, “No, I mean besides going out for drinks and talking.”

 “Er,” I stalled. “Um . . . sometimes I just . . . um . . . like to . . .” It was a real battle not to just say ‘have sex.’ “Um . . . occasionally I’ll have a nice drink and listen to music alone.” Pause to paint a puzzled look on my face. “Is that what you mean?”

 “No! What do you for fun with other people?” Another quick look at the wine in front of me. “Besides drinking and talking!”

 I was honestly beginning to feel like a fellow of limited mental means here. I was really trying to come with a genuine answer – hell, I was trying to come up with any answer – and was stumped. Did she want me to say ‘have sex’? Is that was this was leading to? What was there to do for fun with another person besides talk and/or screw? Why was this conversation so difficult for me?!

 “I don’t understand what you’re saying!” I finally said, bouncing on my stool.

 “What activities do you do?!”

Well.

That did it. Activities. Understanding broke through and brought in its trail visions of all the Baby Mozart, Focalin, play dates, dance lessons, recitals, child psychologists, Halloweens at community centers, ‘educational’ toys, spelling games, jargon from child-rearing experts and the trips in the SUV to bring her safely through her micro-organized childhood.

 I remember watching it when it was going on. It was the 90s and I thought it was mildly funny that all these parents would take Britney and Courtney and Lindsey and Trevor back and forth to various practices, clubs, trips, secret brotherhoods, covens, and Nuremberg rallies while tumbleweed blew by deserted playgrounds and rusty BMX bikes lay against rotten, abandoned lemonade stands. 

 I’m not so sure it’s so funny now. All that structure has led to . . . well, more structure. Never having the chance to wander freely – figuratively or literally – through childhood, these kids are still demanding structured activities well into their 20s. Group ski weekends. Las Vegas discount package deals. Wednesday-night dodgeball leagues. And, of course, the structure inherent in their Facebook profiles.

 Allow me to illustrate. Earlier that night I asked the same young lady, “What were you like as a child?”

 “Well, I did ballet and volleyball and soccer and Brownies.”

 Yeah, that didn’t actually answer my question, sweetheart. What were you like? I should have clued in then. I didn’t. Sorry. She was pretty.

 But what if the question had been turned on me from her perspective? Would I have been any better at answering it? Or was the translation gap simply too vast?

“So, Jim, what did you do as a child?”

“Mostly I played. Sometimes on a bike, sometimes not. Sometimes with toys, sometimes not. One time I made a temple to the gods in an old pile of dirt by a construction site and started to worry that my friend was using it to worship Satan. He had a history of that kind of thing.”

 “No! What activities?! Why are you being so difficult?”

 “I swear I’m not trying to be difficult! That’s what I did as a child. I played. Honestly, nothing more organized than that.”

 And it wasn’t. It still isn’t. When I say “wanna do something tonight?” to anyone I know, not a single one of them has to ask “what do you want to do?” Not one. Everyone I would spend time with knows fully well that ‘something’ translates here to ‘having a few drinks and talking.’ It’s that simple. If I were being really ambitious, I might organize going somewhere for dinner, but let’s not get crazy. 

Essentially it means: ‘Let’s go out and play.’

And what of these grown children who had every free moment of their young lives scheduled for the maximum potential of educational and recreational ‘impact’?

If they want to come find me after their piano lessons, tell them I’ll be riding my bike. Without a helmet. Or knee pads. In the rain. 

Never mind – don’t tell them. I’ll put it in my profile.

Gusty Winds

Finally! A step forward in the tooth and claw struggle for the existential rights of meteorological events! Too long have the whims of nature been denied the right to be.

Bravo, New Mexico, in your advancement of the weather-right cause. 

The Original Folkstar - Jack Harlan

This is a piece for Jack Harlan's website (jackharlan.com). Jack and I used bum around nondescript Western Canadian cities in that ever-so-simpler time called the early 90s when we were going to change to world with acoustic guitars. Check him out.

Jack Harlan is a folk musician. There. I said it. Unapologetically. ‘Folk.’ But before you fill your heads with visions of impossibly long-haired songstresses swaying rhythmically to ‘Lemon Tree’ with eyes closed and heads turned heavenward breathing in the fumes of a $5 Bed Bath and Beyond candle or bleary-eyed baby-boomers husking out half-countrified versions of ‘Rocky Mountain High’ through greying goatees, put the cliché bag down for a minute and think about that word.  

Folk.

Folk = people.

Folk  music = music for people.  

Hang on, you might say. Isn’t all music made for people? Why make music at all if not for people to listen to and enjoy?  Well . . . I don’t know about you, but in my time I’ve heard music for money and music for manipulation. I’ve heard music to wave a flag to and music to bump uglies to. More than anything, I’ve heard everywhere music to simply drown out the sound of living.  

This is different. Jack Harlan’s music is the sound of living.  

It’s music for people. I’m not talking about ‘The People’ or any Grand Concept like that. Just people. People who will say, “I’m a person” before saying, “I’m a personal fitness guru,” or “I’m a post-punk indie columnist,” or “I’m a hot-bodied, macrobiotic yoga instructor.” Just people. Folks, even.    

But Jack lives in a world the rest of us folks have only glimpsed. You can hear it in his songs. It’s a world of freight train whistles and wandering strangers; of still-noble little guys in a fucked-up world and dangerous women with eyes like the smoke of the night’s last cigarette. It’s a world where candles burn in windows for lost loves and roads just wind around, leading nowhere but the next journey; where the voice in the wilderness is the rule, not the exception. Most of all, it’s a world of truth. Jack’s songs take this greying, dog-eared world you and I live in and hold it up to the light without the fringed window treatments or celebrity spokesmodels. And guess what, folks? It doesn’t look good. Makes you feel downright raw inside.  

Jack can help you with that.  

But if you’re looking to be coddled – if you want someone to pat your head while hand-feeding you mocha swirl cupcakes – you’d better stop now. Go. There’s a cute panda drawing here. Jack can comfort and celebrate that rawness, giving you an insider’s guide to the darker nights of the soul (in songs like ‘Be Not Your Failures’); he could expose the perfect and universal essence of that taken-for-granted lover beside you on the couch (‘She’); he might launch you into a celestial-sized personal transformation with the power of several supernovae (“Burning Star”), but he won’t lie to you.  

So click. Download. Listen. After the confected pop and dried-up, mummified mall music we don’t even realize we’re consuming anymore, we need this. We deserve it.   

Jack Harlan doesn’t make music to clean the house to, make out to, walk the dog to, do Pilates to or flip quarters off your car roof to.  

He makes music to live your life to.