Feedback Frenzy

Posted in Modern life, Writing by carolcooper

My pocket chirrups as I descend the steps from my bank. The text message asks me to rate my recent customer experience. This happens to be one of a hundred or more perfectly routine transactions I’ve made at that bank.

Irritated, I delete the text.

At school, there was a girl who was forever checking what people thought of her. Sadly, the answer was ‘not much’, but this didn’t stop her beaming at everyone and trying to decipher their expressions. When she couldn’t read the emotional temperature, she would ask what we thought. I wince to report that we thought our classmate stupid. Looking back, however, she was well ahead of her time.

These days, Waitrose sends me emails asking how my groceries were. Would I rate and review them?

I get similar requests after almost every commercial interaction of the day. If not during it. A text thanks me for travelling with Addison Lee, and invites me to rate the driver. I get this message before I’ve even reached the destination.

Ditto Moonpig, who want to know how everything went with the card I ordered. It’s not even scheduled to be delivered till next week. Stop asking me!

Now an email thanks me for collecting my parcel from the Spar in Chesterton Road, and asks me how I would ‘rate the service in store’.

The bottom line? It was fine. I got my parcel. Had the guy behind the counter not found it, or handed me a damaged parcel or something entirely different like a Mars Bar or a lottery ticket, you can be sure I’d have let someone know, loud and clear. Feedback can certainly be useful. Book reviews, for instance, help guide the author as well as people looking for their next read – though it’s worth noting that the most useful reviews have actual words in them, not just a star rating.

Evaluations from the students I teach can also be valuable, if they help improve the outcome for the next lot.

For feedback to be most useful to others, it pays to ask the right questions. One pension provider invites me to rate my recent dealings with them. A more pertinent point might be whether I was happy with the return on my investment.

Nowadays, detailed feedback from patients is an integral part of a doctor’s appraisal process. It’s a two-page form that demands a certain level of literacy and attention. That makes it difficult for many patients, especially those who’ve just had bad news or been sent to hospital.

Feedback from colleagues is even harder to come by. In smaller practices, family doctors may resort to asking people they haven’t worked with for years, just to make up the numbers.

Feedback shouldn’t be just about collecting all the data we can, because we can. To have any value, it needs to be more selective, and to ask the right questions at the right time.

***

If you’ve read a book you enjoyed lately, please think of leaving a review on Amazon or your favourite reading site. It doesn’t have to be long, just your overall impression and anything you’d like the author and prospective readers to know.

Here’s more detailed guidance, should you feel like it: How to write critical book reviews – and why I think you should, by Debbie Young.

14Jan2017

The Post-Truth Era

Posted in Modern life, Pills by carolcooper

Everyone’s saying it, so it must be true. We live in a post-truth era, in which unsubstantiated statements are swallowed whole. The less palatable they are, the more easily they slip down.

Post-truth was made word of the year – the Oxford Dictionaries’ International Word of the Year, no less. Post-truth is of course instead of truth, not after it as in, say, post mortem or post-Apocalyptic.

As you see, even the term post-truth is lying through its teeth. But what does it matter?

Post-truth got some massive boosts this year with Brexit and the US Presidential Election. While Michael Gove didn’t actually start it, he did famously say that people in this country had “had enough of experts”.

Experts are now superfluous and fact-checkers obsolete. These days momentous decisions are made without anyone bothering with evidence.

That doesn’t just make me worried. It makes me deeply suspicious not just of politicians but of pretty much everything, cute animal videos included. What if I’m not watching an Alsatian licking a kitten clean, but just a cleverly doctored video of a dog preparing his lunch?

I can see how we got to post-truth. Everyone has an opinion, and now it has just as much value as anyone else’s. Social media provide an echo chamber where anyone can have their say, as well as share hatred and intolerance.

Twitter wasn’t big in Lao Tzu’s day, but I think he nailed it with “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”

As a doctor, I’ve lived with post-truth beliefs for some time. One patient with appendicitis, who, on being advised surgery was needed, declared that it wasn’t for him. An operation might be our way of doing things, but not his. Thus he belted out of Accident & Emergency into the night. Saddest of all in my view is the mother who, after lengthy discussions, still refused immunizations for her baby. “I’m doing what I think is right,” she told me. “After all, that’s the most important thing.”

The most important thing? God help her child.

It’s clear how we got to the age of unreason, but it’s less clear how we’ll climb out of it. Trump’s inauguration is scheduled for next Friday, and we are where we are. Though there is a well-known story about a tourist in Ireland. Lost, he asks one of the locals for directions to Balbriggan. The Irishman replies “Well, sor. If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”

5Sep2013

MY FABULOUS LIFE ON TV

Posted in Modern life by carolcooper

Being on TV is the ultimate in glamour, as the late David Frost knew so well. That’s pretty much how it is for me too. First off, I get chauffeured to the studio. This driver collects vintage sweet wrappers, judging by his floor. I can see them even though it’s 5am and still dark. On our way, he relates all the symptoms he and his family have ever had. I hope we arrive before he gets around to his Farmers.

Getting inside the studio is the next hurdle. I’ve been to this one many times, yet each time the security guard peers at me as if I might be wearing a suicide vest. On my way out, he may be asking for my autograph, but getting in means a ritual interrogation.

The Green Room (which is blue rather than green – whose idea was that?) is swarming with guests ranging from newspaper reviewers to a family with 7 children who live on E numbers. In a corner two politicians from opposing parties are swapping dirty jokes. In here they’re like bosom buddies, though on air they’ll be punching the verbal daylights out of each other.

The newspaper reviewers have covered every surface with newspapers. The kids have eaten all but one of the biscuits in the box on the table, and I saw the youngest lick that one.

A runner asks if I’d like tea or coffee. In hindsight, I should choose water. It’s more likely to arrive before I go on air.

In make-up, the artists are busy working on presenters and guests while chatting about boyfriends and clothes. Two artists become free at the same time. I’m standing in the doorway as they eyeball each other. “OK, I’ll do her” says one of them finally. “I like a challenge.”

Foundation goes on ¼” thick. It gives me an orange glow, as if I’ve been on holiday. In a Doritos factory. “Ever considered permanent makeup?” asks the artist who is now applying thick ribbons of black eyeliner.

My tip: ask to look like the artist who’s doing your panel-beating and respray. Everyone likes a compliment, and it saves time because they’ve always got that look down to a fine art.

My artist sighs as she inspects my hair and asks how I’d like it. With about twice as much volume is my answer, but that’s not possible. What I get is a headful of Velcro rollers followed by a vicious backcombing that threatens to yank my earrings off.

Sometimes there’s no time for hair and makeup, and I have to go on camera without it. The message is more important than the messenger.

Presenters are invariably charming and can conduct three conversations at once: with the co-presenter, the guest, and, via an earpiece, the producer in the gallery. The interviewee only has to manage one dialogue.

It’s over quickly, but I always know that lots of people are watching, in other words the producer and my mother (actually my mother doesn’t bother so much these days). On the plus side, I manage to get across most of my points on MRSA. And someone finally hands me that coffee when I get out.

My driver is the same one. On our way back he merrily clips the wing mirror of a parked BMW, and deposits me 100 yards from my home. He can’t get any further because a refuse cart is blocking the road.

“Thanks” I say as I get out, feeling a bit rubbish.

12Aug2013

Life is like a new bathroom

Posted in Modern life by carolcooper

I had a dream.

No, not that one. I dreamed of a nice new bathroom, one where the tiles weren’t lifting off the wall, the toilet didn’t run all night, and the taps could be turned on (and, just as crucially, off again).

I found a good plumber and it was all planned out. What could possibly go wrong?

On the first day, the supplier slightly screws up the order. We drink tea and shake our heads over a shipment of the wrong tiles and twice as many toilet seats as ordered. But hey, they might be handy when I’m older and incontinent (it’s always sooner than one thinks).

The water supply can’t be turned off and the plumber can’t access the pump. A lot more tea. Another day gone.

The old tiles won’t budge. So yer man tiles over them. That makes four layers of tiles. In truth, the wrong tiles look great, but the room is going to be much smaller than we thought.

‘Size isn’t everything’ points out the plumber.

I make him a tiny cup of tea.

Towards the end of the first week, it dawns on me. Bathroom renovation is a microcosm of life. Timing is up the spout, everything costs twice as much as planned, and it doesn’t look as intended. Because of drainage issues, the tub has to be raised. A frame is made for it. This takes more time. Fingers crossed the work is done before I get too old to climb into the tub. Now I’m not sure about white grout on the floor. In fact I’m no longer sure about anything. Maybe white grout doesn’t matter. Really, what does?

By this time there are lots more people in my life. For a start, I’ve got remarried and acquired three more offspring. There’s also a new trio of builders. Gary, Barry and Harry are on a break again, slurping strong tea as they pore over a copy of the Daily Star. Barry adjusts his Chelsea hat and says ‘Cor, look at the jugs on that one’.

The shelves won’t fit by the raised tub. I forget now why we wanted them. Oh. For hair products. Well, soon won’t have any hair left.

As time passes, I agonise over details like taps and mirrors. The mirror is not a magnifying mirror. So I will probably emerge thinking I look OK, and friends will wonder why I’ve put eyeliner on my ears.

The soil pipe isn’t quite where it should be and we can’t get a seal. Now I’m obsessing over waste matter. Call it a rehearsal for the twilight years.

At 3am I realise that we’re running out of Yorkshire tea, the fuel that keeps the plumber going.

The next day the plumber arrives with an apprentice. She wears hot pants and fiddles with her iPhone like any 19-year old. Petite and from the Far East, she turns out to be stronger and more willing than any number of male oiks from South London. The only downside is that she believes she was a singer in a previous life. I’ve heard her. She really wasn’t.

Her voice comes through loud and clear since the bathroom door was taken off. After a few weeks, I’m wondering: why bother putting it back? If people had beaded fly curtains instead, then kids wouldn’t get locked in the bathroom. And you’d know right away when your other half passes out in the tub and needs CPR.

Progress is slow but Rome wasn’t built, etc. I survey the scene. It doesn’t look like Rome. It doesn’t even look like a bathroom. With boxes of stuff and stacks of newspaper, all it needs is a beaded curtain and it could be a corner shop.

Last week the builder brought his dog, but said it would be OK in the van.

This horrified me. So in came Buster for a bowl of water. He saw the cat and chased it round the house, scattering tiles and papers everywhere. Buster had to go back to the van, leaving the cat with a tail like a toilet brush.

I still don’t have a bathroom door or a tub that can actually take in water. The cat litter tray is still in the bedroom, and I’ve no idea where to put all the half-used tubes of toothpaste. So I throw them out, along with the bottles of nail polish. It’s not like I have any nails left.

On the plus side, I have a lot of new friends, some of whom have two legs.

Pills & Pillow-Talk

Carol Cooper – trained to observe, born to write.

Category Archives: Modern life

Feedback Frenzy

The Post-Truth Era

MY FABULOUS LIFE ON TV

Life is like a new bathroom