Complaints, complaints

A late night/early morning Blip session at least got me back up to date on my own journal but yet again I haven't managed to catch up on all the journals that are so much part of my BlipLife. I was then during the course of the night and day astonished to get so many comments - thanky you dear Blip friends. I will be adding the "Be Excellent" Blip motto to the long list of To Dos on my new years resolution list.

The Motto "“Be excellent" page says:
Blipfoto is for everyone. While we have a few simple rules, we sum them up with be excellent to each other. In other words, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it!

So I guess that means need to be excellent to everyone, Bliper and non-Bliper alike. With that in mind, when the first complaint about my recent Blips rolled in via email (not to me directly) from a non-Bliper but Blip subject, I took immediate action and changed the text to remove the apparent defamation of character. Then later a second complaint, again non-Bliper but loyal and regular (masochistic) reader of my drivel. She took no account of my mental or physical state of mind last night, pointing out a spelling mistake. Regardless of my own difficulties having to cope with a German keyboard and that by only candle and fireplace light, I set about correcting the mistake .... be excellent, I kept repeating to myself.

I mentioned a little bit about one of the German peoples strengths - obedience. Another one is the ability to complain! The two complaints were both from Germans - not a single Anglo-Saxon Bliper even had the slightest hint of a complaint in their comments, simply not the "done thing". And here the Germans are right - if you want to improve things, you must complain.

We Brits tend to nod our heads very slightly, lift the corners of our eyebrows and walk away without saying anything. My father (and I in turn) was a great one for this, he simply wouldn't reuse the service or whatever it was that had done him unwrong.Thats no way to get things better.

There is a third method to complaints, ignore them or delete them. I recently experienced this with a South American River online shop - cancel an order because of miserable service and you simply have no way of transmitting your complaint - order gone, feedback gone. On a serious note we Blipers experienced it with the Polaroid-Blip affair. Critical thoughts were ignored and even some journals deleted.

Certainly "the tone makes the music" but usually there is a point to be made. So I wish the BlipFuture Team all the strength possible to get through the testing times ahead, see the anxieties of the Blip community as part of the Blip passion. They do seem to be doing an excellent job and have my full support.

And when things go well, we must all give out compliments. A British electrical chain (with an Indian speciality dish name) stept in to the breach for my cancelled order, they wrapped up the whole deal from my initial online registration at 9:00am on a Friday, to the product being delivered (in the UK and at standard, free of charge rate) the very next day - Saturday- lunchtime. So I sent them a n extra thank you email outside the standard feedback system and even got a very personal response. A total "Be excellent" experience.

Another day of animals - the patient is just starting to get up on her feet and try to take on some solids. She such a hard nut that I don't know if this is because she wants to or feels she has to.

Dog walk at Erkheim and then to the EVG farm cooperative to get some wheat for chickens and geese. They have been providing excellent service to the local community since 1963 - a bit slow, very old fashioned, a bit dusty with the odd cobweb, usually a bit more expensive but always friendly and helpful, qualities that have their price and rightly so. When things happen to be less than 100%, I don't complain, knowing they are always doing their best and thats the way things are and make them unique.

In my bookshelf, I have a book called "In Search of Excellence" and also a signed copy of the authors (Tom Peters) follow up "Thriving on Chaos". Sadly my Blip usage is neither but rather "Excellent Chaos"........