Retirement – Slip sliding away

The most powerful messages are the unspoken ones. The strictest protocols are the unwritten ones. But they’re being changed online before our eyes and we can’t see for looking.

Changed in almost unnoticed ways. Codes of conduct we grew up with and ways of behaving we took for granted shift sideways.

Take the permission that service providers give themselves to repeat details of our appointments, and even threaten, ever so politely. Reminders labelled “friendly”, sent not once but three or four times.

Reply Y or N but don’t say more, because it’s a robot that’s asking; but remember we will charge you anyway if you don’t turn up. At least they don’t dare to add, “have a nice day”.

Yes, I know, it’s all in order to be efficient, but the message implied is that you’re bound to forget. One local firm said that out loud when I asked why their serviceman didn’t talk to me after he finished the job.

“We do it by email now because people in these parts don’t remember what we tell them.”

I had visions of the whole of Mahurangi fading into a sunset of forgetting.

Decisions we once had to make alone are now taken care of. Netflix tells me what I’d like to watch next.

Their suggestions hardly ever match my tastes.

That might be because I don’t click the feedback icons often enough. Did you like, not like, love what you viewed? Well, none of the above actually. It was a mixed bag, good in parts. But there’s no icon for that. We used to have a term for it, ‘the curate’s egg’, long since disappeared. Who knows what a curate is anymore? Warkworth had one for a while, but she soon became a vicar.

Feedback has become an industry of its own. Even libraries want to know how you rate the mundane experience of visiting their shelves. I struggle to find much to say about borrowing a book.

At least they ask, which is more than the telephone queues I have to wait in. They play me music they think I want to hear, and miscalculate the genre I like by about 30 years. Fifty sometimes. That’s the joy of growing old. No one believes you could enjoy anything so ancient.

But it’s the persistence of demanding feedback that riles me most. My inbox is overloaded with reminders to answer customer experience questions that don’t deserve an answer; that assume I’ve got all the time in the world to reply, and I’m mean if I don’t.

Instead of getting annoyed by being taken for granted, I’m using my retirement to enjoy the luxury of time in this Christmas season to pause, reflect and wait awhile.

I’ll save my feedback for what really impresses or annoys, but everything in between gets the lack of attention it deserves.