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I've found that the tone of the message is often an indication of what the sender thinks it will achieve. The all-guns-blazing "How dare you do this to me?!" is

by shabble 15y ago

I've found that the tone of the message is often an indication of what the sender thinks it will achieve. The all-guns-blazing "How dare you do this to me?!" is intended to get an immediate apology and admission of guilt, with the probable end goal being a free or discounted service. People who immediately threaten to "go public" with their experience without first trying to resolve it are kind of banking on that sort of response, IME. It's the internet equivalent to "making a scene" at the customer support desk. It might be just personal experience, but the most foaming-at-the-mouth also seem to be those who maybe realise or suspect they might be personally be at fault, and are writing to reassure themselves as much as blame you. Those who genuinely don't understand will often to go great lengths to indicate that they've tried, sometimes with speculation on what they might have done or where the problem might be. Pretty much everyone will occasionally vent their anger at some public contact point of an organisation they're having problems with though, especially if there's external pressure (bank charges, missing SO's birthday delivery, or whatever) on top. The impersonality of email doesn't really help, although anyone who's worked phones or retail knows that some people will rage anywhere.

saurik 15y ago
That's an interesting strategy (attempting to enrage those whose help you are asking): for my part I can say with utter certainly that I bend over backwards to help people who send me the kind requests, and stick to "no, we do not offer that service" for anyone who skirts the "this is making my day unpleasant, I would rather be doing anything but this e-mail" category. :( However, I am concerned that now in having worded the two responses along the kind/mean access, I have also ruined them as examples of the thing I was actually hoping to demonstrate. I also get perfectly nice requests from people who still believe that I can help them. I got an incredibly kind e-mail today, for example, from someone asking me to remove software they had previously posted to Cydia (as they were now selling something similar somewhere and didn't want the free version to undercut them). This request was all-sorts-of-hedged against things that didn't even matter, such as that they had released it under CC and therefore knew I was not legally required to do so, and that they knew I was busy working on other things they appreciated, and that maybe we simply never removed things at all, etc. etc.. However, the real core of the issue is that I do not host their package at all, nor was I even the person they had originally given the package to: they needed to contact the site they were hosting the package with (as Cydia is pretty much just a web browser of third-party content), a repository I happened to know would honor the request immediately. I was in a similar situation to this recently: I was trying to register my company for physical sales taxes in my county, and figured I needed to contact someone somewhere at the town hall, county center, what-have-you. I went to each of these places, and stated "I am not certain if you are even the person who would be in charge of this, but maybe you will be able to direct me to where I should go" before asking them my question. I personally believe that that difference is important: I knew that I didn't really know whether what I was doing made any sense, and that I was honest with the people whom I was interacting with that I had no clue about anything related to selling physical products. I feel like, once you admit that to yourself it becomes much easier to problem solve and work your way into a state of "knowing": in these cases, maybe asking yourself "is this in fact the person I should contact? why am I choosing to contact this person? will I make that person feel awkward if I assume they are in charge of something they are not? who else might I contact in addition to or instead of them?". I might then go even further and posit that the people who are trying to "reassure themselves" that I or you are to blame are in essence somehow feeling that "not knowing" something makes them powerless somehow, and that they therefore need to be overly confident to "reassure themselves" that they in fact know what is happening. So, interesting: thanks for responding to my comment! I will think about this more (as I continue to drudge through the last week of hate-mail, which I've been doing ever since I woke up). ;P

by shabble 15y ago

saurik 15y ago

That's an interesting strategy (attempting to enrage those whose help you are asking): for my part I can say with utter certainly that I bend over backwards to help people who send me the kind requests, and stick to "no, we do not offer that service" for anyone who skirts the "this is making my day unpleasant, I would rather be doing anything but this e-mail" category. :( However, I am concerned that now in having worded the two responses along the kind/mean access, I have also ruined them as examples of the thing I was actually hoping to demonstrate. I also get perfectly nice requests from people who still believe that I can help them. I got an incredibly kind e-mail today, for example, from someone asking me to remove software they had previously posted to Cydia (as they were now selling something similar somewhere and didn't want the free version to undercut them). This request was all-sorts-of-hedged against things that didn't even matter, such as that they had released it under CC and therefore knew I was not legally required to do so, and that they knew I was busy working on other things they appreciated, and that maybe we simply never removed things at all, etc. etc.. However, the real core of the issue is that I do not host their package at all, nor was I even the person they had originally given the package to: they needed to contact the site they were hosting the package with (as Cydia is pretty much just a web browser of third-party content), a repository I happened to know would honor the request immediately. I was in a similar situation to this recently: I was trying to register my company for physical sales taxes in my county, and figured I needed to contact someone somewhere at the town hall, county center, what-have-you. I went to each of these places, and stated "I am not certain if you are even the person who would be in charge of this, but maybe you will be able to direct me to where I should go" before asking them my question. I personally believe that that difference is important: I knew that I didn't really know whether what I was doing made any sense, and that I was honest with the people whom I was interacting with that I had no clue about anything related to selling physical products. I feel like, once you admit that to yourself it becomes much easier to problem solve and work your way into a state of "knowing": in these cases, maybe asking yourself "is this in fact the person I should contact? why am I choosing to contact this person? will I make that person feel awkward if I assume they are in charge of something they are not? who else might I contact in addition to or instead of them?". I might then go even further and posit that the people who are trying to "reassure themselves" that I or you are to blame are in essence somehow feeling that "not knowing" something makes them powerless somehow, and that they therefore need to be overly confident to "reassure themselves" that they in fact know what is happening. So, interesting: thanks for responding to my comment! I will think about this more (as I continue to drudge through the last week of hate-mail, which I've been doing ever since I woke up). ;P