{"id":258,"date":"2009-12-17T13:29:56","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T13:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/12\/how-do-you-complain-gracefully.html"},"modified":"2009-12-17T13:29:56","modified_gmt":"2009-12-17T13:29:56","slug":"how-do-you-complain-gracefully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/12\/how-do-you-complain-gracefully.html","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Complain – Gracefully?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, I’m of the ethos that if you don’t like your meal, you send it back. It’s how I was raised, and I don’t have any sense of shame about that. When you pay for something, you should get your money’s worth. <\/p>\n

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HOWEVER, I also believe there’s a polite way to do it, and a wrong way.<\/p>\n
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Sometimes I don’t manage to do it the polite way.<\/div>\n
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Today I accepted delivery of a piece of furniture, and, guess what? It arrived badly scratched.  I’m afraid I freaked out a little bit. I was standing out in the freezing cold, trying to communicate with the truck driver, who did not speak my language very well, that I was unhappy and that the damage was unacceptable. Turned out, the people I needed to complain to weren’t the delivery guys but the original shippers. But before I figured that out, I was a bit curt with the guys. Not mean, not nasty, but not exactly cordial either. After all, they had wanted to drop the damn thing off a block away and make me drag it home from the curb, which wasn’t exactly what I signed up for. Had I not demanded they do the right thing, they would have left me completely in the lurch. Still, I didn’t like getting all up in their grilles, so to speak.<\/div>\n
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I’d prefer to be a master of decorum and serenity all the time. I want to always treat people with kindness and understanding. But there are times when, in the heat of a moment, I don’t find that easy. I ended up emailing a very strongly worded, yet reasonable letter to the shipper, who promised to rectify matters. Let’s hope he does, because I really hate confrontation, but I’m not afraid to stand up for myself either.<\/div>\n
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How about you? Are you afraid to make a stink, or are you comfortable with confrontation?<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n
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Subscribe to receive updates from Everyday Ethics or <\/strong>follow us on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>!<\/strong><\/div>\n

<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, I’m of the ethos that if you don’t like your meal, you send it back. It’s how I was raised, and I don’t have any sense of shame about that. 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She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}