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Now this part I think is overdramatic. I agree with jrockway. Criticizing a person for stating he would "enjoy meeting" a person is more than a bit pedantic imo

Now this part I think is overdramatic. I agree with jrockway. Criticizing a person for stating he would "enjoy meeting" a person is more than a bit pedantic imo. I'm sorry if she "doesn't care" about what anyone else may "enjoy", but seriously, I don't think it indicates any lack of sympathy. It's not like EJ is bleeding all over her keyboard while people nonchalantly schedule appointments later in the week or something, the crime is over now and it's a reasonable way to request a meeting. What do you want him to say? Really a silly thing to make a fuss over, and fussing over trivial matters just weakens an otherwise strong case.

danso 15y ago
Not disagreeing with you, but just wanted to point out: this is why there are such things as trained spokespeople and customer service reps. I know these jobs aren't looked upon with much respect by those of us in the engineering and development community who would rather say things directly to the customer...but here, an innocent attempt to cut through the redtape and get to the bottom of things may have been misinterpreted by the customer to look much worse than it was... I can totally see how the co-founder had the best of intentions and in his mind, was thinking "She'll be grateful to see me cutting through the layers of BS and giving her a straightforward invitation to meetup". Unfortunately, she saw the terse message and interpreted it in the worst light possible...and then reposted it to the world, with her interpretation. When my car got wrecked by someone else's poor driving, I dreaded making the call to my insurance company to deal with it, even though all I had to do was report it to get my reimbursement. The very first thing the customer rep said to me after I said why I was calling was, "Are you OK? How are you doing?" I was totally fine, and though this is most likely a script that they teach to anyone qualified to answer the phones...even if I were angry, it'd be difficult for me to rip on the customer rep (at that particular point). In the airbnb case, if the co-founder had taken the five seconds to go through the motions of expressing the empathy that he felt, at the very least, this disgruntled customer couldn't claim on her blog that he had expressed no empathy for her situation and just wanted to get to deal making...which was probably quite the opposite of how he felt. But yeah...it is a trivial bit in the big picture. It's a shame it could taint the discussion between her and airbnb regardless.

danso 15y ago

Not disagreeing with you, but just wanted to point out: this is why there are such things as trained spokespeople and customer service reps. I know these jobs aren't looked upon with much respect by those of us in the engineering and development community who would rather say things directly to the customer...but here, an innocent attempt to cut through the redtape and get to the bottom of things may have been misinterpreted by the customer to look much worse than it was... I can totally see how the co-founder had the best of intentions and in his mind, was thinking "She'll be grateful to see me cutting through the layers of BS and giving her a straightforward invitation to meetup". Unfortunately, she saw the terse message and interpreted it in the worst light possible...and then reposted it to the world, with her interpretation. When my car got wrecked by someone else's poor driving, I dreaded making the call to my insurance company to deal with it, even though all I had to do was report it to get my reimbursement. The very first thing the customer rep said to me after I said why I was calling was, "Are you OK? How are you doing?" I was totally fine, and though this is most likely a script that they teach to anyone qualified to answer the phones...even if I were angry, it'd be difficult for me to rip on the customer rep (at that particular point). In the airbnb case, if the co-founder had taken the five seconds to go through the motions of expressing the empathy that he felt, at the very least, this disgruntled customer couldn't claim on her blog that he had expressed no empathy for her situation and just wanted to get to deal making...which was probably quite the opposite of how he felt. But yeah...it is a trivial bit in the big picture. It's a shame it could taint the discussion between her and airbnb regardless.