Feedback Fatigue–too many requests, useless forms, and grade inflation

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I’m tired of getting email requests to rate products and services, and phone calls asking me to answer a survey.
I looked online and found a name for this: “feedback fatigue”. Seriously, I get emails from doctors and medical facilities, hotels and travel services, HVAC companies and companies that have installed windows for me, companies I have bought stuff from on-line and sometimes in-store, the school system, and sometimes even from the town I live in. If I go to a conference, there’s a form to fill out at the end, and if I sign up for a class with some organization, they want an end-of-class rating. Finally (I hope) strangers occasionally call to ask my opinion on politics, products, or services. I’m getting good at saying, “No, I don’t want to take a survey” before they get too far along in their spiel.
In fact, I’ve basically given up filling out any feedback requests or surveys at all. I don’t respond when a company I’ve bought from eagerly requests a rating, though I realize I use such ratings myself to figure out if they are reliable. I don’t fill out surveys from my doctor’s practice or the hospital, after filling out a few too many and trying to remember details like how long I waited (which appointment was it, again?) before actually seeing the doctor. I tend not to respond to surveys from services I’ve used, either, unless I actually want to rate them. That is, sometimes the service person was so nice I want to say something nice in return, or I thought they were particularly efficient, or else I have a (mild) complaint I’d like to register.
I really hate situations where the person indicates that getting a good rating would help them with their job–that has occasionally happened and I hate feeling pressured. And of course, if I’m supposed to fill out a form in front of them (which happened at least once) the feedback becomes insincere and totally useless. I also hate having to rate a perfectly adequate but unexceptional experience on a five-point scale.
The problem with the five-point scale (or the ten-point scale) is that somehow an adequate experience such as “it arrived on time and was what I ordered–no complaints” is supposed to get a 5, which means that it gets the same rating as “your sales people were so helpful in finding what I needed and shipping it to me even though I didn’t know what it was called–thank you!”. Back in the brief period when I taught, I told my students that I regarded an A as signifying above and beyond the usual, not merely “you didn’t do anything wrong.” Otherwise, how could I single out the really top-notch students with a high grade?
As long as I’m on the subject of grade inflation, by the way, what is it with the applause inflation? I go to a performance of some kind and almost without fail people rise up and stand during the applause. When did a standing ovation go from being a response to a truly amazing performance to being the usual response to a merely good performance? I want to save something for those performances that blow me away, but I feel like a curmudgeon if I remain seated when everyone else is standing.
Anyway, the problem with the feedback requests isn’t just dealing with the five-point scale, or even the sheer number of requests. Often the questions themselves are hard to answer. Sometimes they don’t seem important. I can understand a doctor’s office being concerned about cleanliness, but I’ve seen questions about cleanliness for situations where it didn’t seem that relevant. I don’t want to have to decide if a store was a 4 or a 5 for cleanliness. Just leave me a comment space. If the store rated a 2 in cleanliness, you can be sure I’ll say something.
One of the things I liked about the book The Circle by Dave Eggers was the way it highlighted the problem of feedback requests by twisting and exaggerating them. In the book, the main character’s job required her to request feedback for every transaction and anything below nearly perfect had to be followed up to make everything right, which then necessitated a request for feedback on the follow-up experience … It was crazy. And then there was the guy who took the whole idea much too far by asking for numerical feedback on his performance in his personal life (yes, that performance). Talk about putting someone on the spot. The last thing we need in our personal relationships is numerical ratings.
Getting back to the non-fictional world–I realize that appropriate feedback can help one improve. But how to avoid creating feedback fatigue? For starters, I would like the option to “just click here if things were okay and you have nothing else to say”. I might be willing to give one click to help a deserving business accumulate an adequate rating. There could be an option to fill out a longer form for those who actually have something to say–good or bad—and who want to leave comments.
Even so, the forms need to be better thought out (see the bit about cleanliness questions.) Sometimes in surveys the school sends out, I don’t understand what they are asking about (avoid acronyms!) or else the wording of the question makes any answer misleading. This is especially true of questions that ask about multiple people or events. If two teachers are great, two are okay, and one is dreadful, how do I answer a question asking me to rate my child’s teachers overall on a five point scale? (I think that was a real question.)
Will feedback requests and surveys get better (and shorter) as people respond with increasing irritation? Are we doomed to years of being buried under such requests, just as we are constantly fighting spam and junk telephone calls without an end in sight? Is it part of the human condition?
Am I so fatigued by feedback requests that I’m getting downright silly?
Yes.
Till next post.

Growing Out Violas–a past foray into plant selection

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Back in 2007-2010, I was intrigued by violas, those smaller cousins of the pansy. They come in such a variety of colors and patterns (though not quite as many colors as pansies), and their flowers, though smaller than pansies, are more numerous and less liable to flop over.

They have the additional feature that in this climate, one can plant them in fall and they often survive the winter and bloom again beautifully in spring. (They don’t survive the summer–whether due to heat or the natural limits of their lifespan I’m still not sure.)

If you don’t deadhead them, many will form seedpods after blooming, and for some reason I decided to save seeds with the idea of selecting for interesting flowers in the next generation. I didn’t actually try to cross flowers with each other–that would have required a much greater level of effort. I just picked interesting plants and saved seeds from them in small labeled envelopes.

Trays of viola seedlings just starting to bloom.

Then I planted them out. In 2010 I planted quite a lot of them. (Were all these saved seeds? Did I really get some flowers that were so dark?)

It was fun seeing what colors showed up. The yellow ones, as I recall, tended to produce just yellow offspring, and the one called “Peach Frost” also seemed to produce more like itself.

“Peach Frost”, I think.

Unfortunately, as I look back at what passes for a Garden Log, I discover that I kept terrible notes. No system. What did “5b” mean? Did I just pick some viola, whether something I bought or a random volunteer (I got quite a few volunteers) and give it a number? Or was “5” its parent? Was I just trying to label the picture for the next year’s seed?

The mysterious “5b”.

The other problem was that I really didn’t have anything to aim for. No special color that isn’t already easily available, and as for patterns… as far as I can tell, blue-and-cream combinations depend greatly on time, temperature, or both. A viola that looks fabulous at first can have very boring flowers later in the season and vice versa. A nice-looking bloom can change as it ages, getting more or less interesting as it does. So while I picked flowers that I liked, I had no basis for selecting among their offspring.

An interesting purple-and-white combination–for now.

I did try, briefly, to evaluate the scent of the violas, since I like fragrant flowers. I bought varieties that were supposed to have some fragrance, and checked to see if I liked them. But even when violas have a fragrance, it’s pretty mild. And it’s hard to smell a flower that’s so close to the ground.

To top it off, perceived fragrance varies with the temperature and maybe some other conditions as well. I know this is the case because I choose roses as much by fragrance as by appearance, and I have to keep in mind that some days I can hardly smell anything from even moderately fragrant roses, while other days the scents are much more pronounced. (I think individuals also vary in how well they perceive specific scents. No wonder catalog descriptions are so useless when it comes to fragrance.)

Looking back on my foray into viola selection, I rather miss the excitement of seeing that first flower and comparing it to its parent (the known parent). Maybe I should plant violas from saved seed again, even if I’m only doing it from idle curiosity. But first, I’ll need to save some seeds.

I guess that’s as good a reason as any to buy more plants this fall.

Till next post.

The Dangers of “Updating” Your Décor

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In the newspaper awhile ago, I saw an article titled: “Seven Ways to Update Your Décor”. And I said to myself, “Why on earth would I want to ‘update’ my décor?”
It makes sense to update things like computers and cell phones and smoke detectors—newer models are likely to have improved functioning. The same can’t generally be said for the latest thing in flooring or countertops or furniture. Mushroom-colored walls work about as well as walls that are off-white or hyacinth blue. So why “update” your interior?
The implied contrast is a “dated” look. Think of a room with wood paneling, a burnt-orange shag carpet, macrame plant hangers, … do I need to say more? Dated. But why is it “dated”?  Because at one time—I think it was in the seventies?–everyone had wood paneling and orange shag. This also explains why “dated” is a negative word. Like a song that gets played too many times on the radio (ooh—a dated simile, too!), the sheer overexposure burned people out on it.
Therein lies the problem. If you “update” your old flooring and counters to something that is currently popular, then in ten years (or less), your current choices will look “dated.” They will be “so terribly 2017”. So you’ll feel a need to “update” yet again.
Your décor should please you, the person who has to live with it. Admittedly, as a person living at a certain point in history, what pleases you is likely to have some similarity to what pleases other people at that point in history. Maybe your group is all madly into Dr. Who, or Game of Thrones, or a certain rustic look, or whatever.  Okay, take advantage of the availability of blue time-box prints and heraldic signs if you want. Understand that some of your tastes will change over time, and so will some of the things you surround yourself with. Maybe you really like light gray paint, or ice blue. If so, this may be a good year to get out the brushes.
But don’t change your décor simply because it’s fallen out of fashion. If you’re planning to sell your house in the very near future, that’s another story. Then you aren’t doing it for yourself at all. But otherwise, why step onto the “update” treadmill in the first place?