On Why The Customer is Not Always Right

Courtesy of deedtheinky.com

Sometime is the late 1870s some chap came up with a one liner that, in my modest opinion, has done more to skew the delicate balance between rights and responsibilities than anything else. Indeed, it is the very statement that has caused me most verbal abuse in my adult life, and has turned ordinarily nice folk into slavering demons. 

Apparently, the customer is always right. 

Pish and pother (if you are in possession of the Cloakean Babel Fish, you will know what I meant to type). 

Yesterday's gospel reading (for those of us who do lectionaries and bibles in church life) was from Mark at the time when two of his followers wanted to be up-close and personal and take up habitation in none less than the armpits of the Lord, one on the right and one on the left. They wanted to be the beloved armpit apostles, closest, snuggly, cherished. Jesus told them to get a life and the other disciples simply sucked air through their first-century dentitions (in a sort of ecclesiastical Ena Sharples sort of way). It was a story about mastership and service, that kind of thing. 

In enlightened 21st century western life, the Almighty Dollar (pound, Euro, frogskin, green, dosh, wonga) seems now to buy you not just products, but rightness. The transaction often falls into the following frame:

drip, drip, drip, oh my word I have a leak, I know nothing about plumbing, let me call a plumber, plumber arrives, oh plumber help me I know not what to do, plumber fixes problem utilising training and experience, you left a mark on my skirting board, I am the customer so I am always right, I will canvass for the plumber to pay me money because I have a smudge on my skirting board, you are wrong and I am right because I paid you thirty quid and made you a mug of sweet tea

You know I speak the truth. You may even have been that limpet who got gusset-rotated about the job you are not gifted in performing, but blessed in the right to judge. Yes, you!

Frankly, the customer is not always right, or indeed often right in my experience (and if they were, the skilled trades would be redundant of course)

The situation is clear to me - that the world seems to pursue its rights at a rate ten to one over its pursuit of its responsibilities. I think this is part of what Jesus was thinking about or alluding to in Mark's Gospel. Day-time telly is awash with voting-age progeny-producing adults who can drive a fast car to work but who feel compelled to take the wrong ladder for a job and render themselves as road-kill on the tarmac below. Then they sue their employers for damages. Or the neatly presented business women teetering on shoes with shiny soles and who power-walks across a marble floor on a wet day and slips over - more dosh please. Your fault. Not my fault. Never my fault. In the blame-claim world, my brain and ability to make my own value-judgement is long gone. Atrophy. 

Jesus broadly says "if you want it, it'll cost you" and then "and I doubt you really know how much". The church is danger of fuelling this too - talk of leadership that isn't mitigated with healthy amounts of talk of followership becomes much the same as the call of the disciples to sit at the head-table. Equally, how often, in an original act of service do church-goers then go one to take that servitude and make it a weapon to exert power over another. 

It seems to me, as I sit here at vicarly computer in my vicarly study, there the world is fast losing its heart for generosity in many ways. The relationships born of transaction and contract are now fairly devoid of a common graciousness beyond the clauses of the agreement. Too little love. Survival of the fittest? Maybe now it is survival of the person most right or the person with the greatest authority and power. Maybe even the survival of the person who paid the money. In end, I wonder if Jesus is trying to tell is that it is survival of the one who loves most and takes least. No, I don't mean that either. I don't think that Jesus ever thought it was about survival. 

Suffrage and the Church

I haven't been a priest for an awfully long time, and I have only been an incumbent for a very short time - but in the years I have existed within parish structures, I have been convinced of the cause of the gentle degradation of that noble body - the parochial church council.

I wrote a while ago about how, here, we will do things a little differently when the next session of the PCC begins. That was not all I believed needed adjustment for the Council to be effective in its work. The other factor, I believe, surrounds the right that the members of the electoral roll possess but rarely ever have a real chance to use - their vote. 

I am not talking of the pack animal arm-in-air type voting. I am referring to a meaningful election where everyone gets a chance to make a difference. The degradation of the valency of the parish council surrounds the following process:

• The PCC is overworked with the minutiae of parish life
• It becomes an unattractive proposition 
• Insufficient people stand for the vacancies at the next session
• To make up numbers arms are twisted
• Just enough people stand for election for the vacancies to be filled
• They get elected en bloc and very much en passant
• No-one remembered who was on the PCC if you ask them after the fact
• The PCC becomes detached from parish life
• ...and a cycle of insufficient nominations for vacancies perpetuates
• Start at the top

My feeling is that an election where, unfortunately, people may lose and not be elected is vital to the health of a PCC and in many ways to the parish. The reasons for this are simple - the people who have the vote are then caused to use it, and become an active part of the process rather than a passive member of the crowd. They get to exercise their responsibilities under that suffrage too. We had an election yesterday here, and yes, people were not elected. I bet that those who were at the meeting will be able to name the new PCC though - and that is a start in itself. 

When I was young (in my teens), the PCC of which I was a member was routinely formed in a contested election. It was, perhaps not by chance, a time of great growth in that parish. Oddly, growth seemed to diminish as the PCC seemed to stop being elected. This may be chance, but there is also a chance that it wasn't. Perhaps winning in an election was an attractive prize (it certainly felt good as a 17 year old), and maybe that sense of satisfaction was enough to get the parish 'heart' pumping - but whatever it was, it seemed to make a very considerable difference. 

Responsible Blogging

During the course of this week, an incident occured that has taught me a great deal about a number of things, among which are the responsibilities that we have as bloggers. When we open these sites and pour our wisdom into them, add pretty pictures, think up a funky title for the post and press 'Publish', they are not an isoloted set of events that touch no-one. Quite the opposite is the case, more especially when the blogger is fortunate enough to attract readers, and readers who choose to comment about the material that has been written by the blogger. 

The behaviour is normally this:

1. Site construction - every blogger has a choice about what and how their blog is made manifest to you the lovely readers. The buttons, gizmos, pictures and all other functionality all rests in the hands of the author. They too come with choices and questions, along the what, why, who and how spectrum. You will discover much about the blogger by how they create their site ... it's fascinating! I urge all readers to read the site as well as the posts - and ask the question 'why did they put that there?' One such function is only apparent at a point when a reader makes a comment - and it is almost an unseen and unnoticed thing: and it is whether the blogger retains the right to moderate their incoming comments. 

2. We bloggers think up something and we write it, normally formulating it as we press the keys themselves. Blogs are organic enterprises and very often, the post is not fully 'written' before it is actually consigned to the screen. However, this seemily haphazard art is not value-free, an accident without mitigation. 

 - Why has the post been written? 

 - What is being said - does it say what it means, or mean what it says? 

 - Who is the post written to (we normally have a nominal audience per post, somewhere in our heads)? 

 - What effect are we trying to cause/precipitate? 

 - What do we hope to recieve by way of comment? 

 - Who do we hope will comment? 

 - What is the commenter's relationship to the blogger? 

 - Is that relationship mutual and reciprocal, or even atypical (some bloggers seem to write purely for the soothing balm of the comments which in those cases are normally and habitually thankful and grateful for the blogger, if not the post)? 

 - Is the post likely to hurt or offend? 

 - Is the post so valent that it is bound to hurt or offend, or divide? 

                      ... and the list goes on.

3. A comment is made. As I have just stated, a blogger (if they are experienced enough to know that they have the choice) will have set the site up in a way that will either allow comments to pass straight to the public-eye on their site, or to retain them and publish them later after moderation. It is on this aspect of blogging that I think some different sort of damage can be done over and above the potential always bound-up with posting in the first place. That moderation brings with it some more questions:

 - Who is commenting? [a friend in real life, a blog follower whose only relationship is only through the blog itself? A colleague? A family member?]

 - How are they commenting? [this will wholly revolve around the nature of the their relationship with the blogger - e.g. my mother's comments are to her son and are written in that way, and it would be odd if a colleague comment in a similar style]

 - What are they saying? [I don't think I know of any blogger who chooses to censor their commenters, but there are times when the content of comments are not worthy of publication]

 - How is one commenter regarded by another? [ e.g. does the blog-only follower know that the other commentator is a friend in the real-world? I have seen it happen where some words that are acceptable between two friends were misconstrued by another commenter, which caused a reaction]

I am a blogger who feels that I must take responsibility for all material that exists on my Site. It is my site and upon it I am to be judged. I have never yet censored a comment but if a one was written that was aimed at hurting someone or offending them, then I likely would. That is my responsbility, to protect my commenters as well as myself if the need arose!

4. Safety in Blogs - the blogger will ensure their own safety when they post because that is normal. We have the last word as well as the first, as well as the 'Delete' button. However, safety in blogs should also be extended to our commenters, those wonderful people who often mitigate the post in the first place. That safety is, in my opinion, managed by the blogger through moderation of comment, and noble platitudes about allowing questionable or hurtful materal on to the site in the interests of editorial openness is naive! People do get hurt on blogs like that - deeply hurt. Safety on a blog is also brought in question when the relationship between blogger and commenter is atypical. 'Mutual Appreciation Societies' will invariable not welcome a challenge to the blogger. Such blogs exist and are to be avoided like the Black Death!

This is a serious post for all those who take to this wonderful passtime. It is meant to be serious because in blogs people can get hurt if you don't set out your stall openly. This is also a word of advice to commenters, upon whom most blogs depend! It is a mine-field and we have all been blown away from time to time. In amongst the mines, it is a joy and one to be commended in the highest terms.