On complaining...

I complained about something last night. Not just grumbled a bit to myself and people round me, but went back and complained to the place in question. It was a small but annoying thing; I'd bought two packets of the same cereal (the dreaded special K) on a two-for-£4 deal but I'd been charged separately (£2+) for each of them. I always keep a mental tally whilst shopping and had that niggling feeling whilst I was walking out the store, checked the receipt but kept on going in a 'bloody people I don't want to come here again' sort of way across the carpark. Then stopped. And thought 'I can get annoyed about this, or I can ask someone to fix it. And if they don't fix it, then I can get annoyed, but not til then'.

And that was quite an enlightening moment; the act of complaining moved from seeing myself as a petty pain for complaining to being someone who had a small problem but was making that small problem into a bigger problem (i.e. not wanting to go to the store again) for both myself and someone else (said store). Now Sainsburys will survive without my occasional visits, people will continue to shop, I will continue to buy my groceries and the world will continue on, but there seemed to be something bigger than that going on. I had an emotional response to a problem. But instead of feeding that response, I bundled up my natural shyness and did the one instant thing I could to either abate or justify it. I've always thought of complaining as a rather juvenile activity, but now it seems that the grown-up thing is to acknowledge and address a complaint rather than shelve it with the other niggles of life. Although I doubt whether I'll go the whole American hog of shouting loudly and insisting that I'm the most important person in the place right now right here.

The upshot was that I'd accidentally bought two different sizes of cereal (375g and 500g packets: why bother with such a small difference?), and with no fuss and a fair bit of till effort, it all got sorted out by the day's duty manager. And strangely, I walked away feeling faintly guilty that I had considered not giving the store the chance to fix this problem (especially since it turned out to be my bad after all). And I thought: maybe this applies to the rest of my life as well. Maybe if instead of getting upset and feeling powerless, I give people a chance to fix problems, then the choice is not to walk or not walk away but to be helped or justifiably annoyed. I think I may try this. Starting with work...