Is it just me, or are we living in a world of reviews? Since you have no way of responding, I am going to assume that you agree with me, because otherwise this could be a very short column.
We have stacks of on-line reviews, movie reviews, restaurant reviews – and we are even constantly asked to do reviews ourselves. I have recently done some travelling – all of which, in case the ATO is reading this, was for the dominant purpose of work. I assure you I got a great deal of ethical insight from seeing Sunset Boulevard at the Sydney Opera House, and the fact that I am writing about it here is clear proof of the fact that it was a work-related research trip.
The point is that every service I used during my travel, from the hotels I stayed in to the buskers at Circular Quay, wanted a review (‘How was my sign? On a scale of one to five, how likely are you to recommend that a friend drop money in my hat?). It is weird that businesses value reviews so much, given that they are usually pointless and rarely honest, because most people don’t like confrontation.
For example, my wife – who is the nicest person in the world – would give a restaurant four out of five stars even if they dropped her food on the floor, scooped it back up on the plate, and turned out to have in any event given her the wrong meal. (‘Do you have any other comments?’ ‘Yes, the carpet fibres and dust gave the poached entrails extra body’).
Professional reviewers are even worse, of course, because they are scared of being sued, so they provide reviews that use lots of words and say nothing. They are forever writing sentences like, “I found this big, bold, and full of promise; it starts well but tails off towards the end – a credible but ultimately unsatisfying effort.” That could be referring to wine, a racehorse or my legal career.
The point is it is of no value to you, the potential consumer, but at least nobody can be sued over it. If I were reviewer, I’d produce reviews that were a little more ‘honest’, or what we in the legal profession call ‘actionable’.
For example, I would love to review the new process a certain airline now has for boarding the plane, which is by numbered groups. This means that, in addition to your ticket having your destination, departure time, gate number, seat number, blood type and favourite Spice Girl, it has a group number on it.
This system has been scientifically designed (probably by AI) to take into account seat location, number of doors on the plane, luggage requirements, aisle length, passenger width and how much each flyer has exceeded the carry-on limit by, to ensure that the plane is loaded with maximum efficiency – by which I mean that no matter what group you get, you board last.
Of course I am just joking there – you will not board last. The person who boards last will be sitting next to you, will insist they booked the window seat and will have brought a piece of carry-on luggage that could comfortably hold a Tesla, or even Elon Musk’s ego. This person will force you to move from the window seat and probably manage to drop their suitcase on your head, since in most cases items that big are lifted by forklifts.
I pause here to note that David Crisafulli has just become our new Premier here in Queensland, and I would like congratulate him. I also suggest that before he gets on with cost-of-living relief and jailing everyone under the age of 26, he passes a law that anyone who brings carry-on luggage to a plane that is large enough to contain a human should have to make room for the luggage by being strapped to the wing.
Anyhow, my point is that I could review this new boarding system with honesty and alacrity thus: ‘The new plane boarding system totally sucks, and the person responsible should be strapped to the wing, in this case the wing of Space-X’s next experimental rocket’.
I could also give a similar review to the City of Sydney’s taxi system, which makes about as much sense as Steven Miles’ concession speech, while being less likely to send you into a coma. Here in Queensland we are used to waiting in a cab rank, and to the cabs taking people in the order that the people have lined up; this does not happen in Sydney.
In Sydney, cabs randomly appear and stop like quantum particles in a vacuum, although you are probably a better chance of catching a ride with the quantum particle. The best way to catch a cab in Sydney is to jump out in front of one and hope for the best1.
My wife and I tried to catch a cab from the Sydney Opera House, foolishly lining up in the line by the cab rank on the presumption that this is where cabs would stop. In Sydney, however, the last thing a cabbie wants is some idiot customer interrupting his important phone use, so they stop in non-standard places such as driveways, footpaths and bus shelters (catching a bus in Sydney is pretty dodgy too).
We finally grabbed a cab when the driver slowed down to read a particularly important text message and we jumped in while he wasn’t looking. In revenge for our unforgiveable act of forcing him to do his job and get money from us, he took a fairly meandering way back to the hotel – at one point, I believe we passed through Launceston – where we paid him enough money to retire and get a place next to Albo.
All in all though, our trip to Sydney was a lot of fun – good food, good wine and, of course, heaps of tax-deductible, work-related, professional development. I highly recommend a trip there – and if you are planning on bringing oversized, carry-on luggage, pack a jumper; it is going to be cold on that wing.
© Shane Budden 2024
Footnotes
1 This is just a joke; please do not jump out in front of Sydney cabs; the driver will be too busy texting to even notice as they run you down.
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