leave me alone

Sorry, it's that time of the semester/it's that point in the summer heat where I'm just done with it. Done with feeling nagged at by too many people:

1. The whole "Your lab is not in compliance !!!11!!!" mess that we're all having to deal with. Coupled with the fact that places where it would be logical to store stuff, we are told we cannot store stuff.

2. Craftsy. I signed up with them a while back - I don't remember why, now, maybe it was for some contest? But they've been sending me nagging e-mails. I'm going to unsubscribe because of that. "We miss you" No, you don't. You "miss" me spending money with you. If I want a personal relationship with a business, I'll go down to the little quilt/yarn shop here in town, or to the gift shop where I know the owner. I don't need fake personal attention. (I blame the whole Facebook Friends/Like Us On Facebook culture for this)

I really object to some businesses (the one I've mentioned is not the only one) taking on what I look at as the "Needy Boyfriend" (or Girlfriend, depending on your gender and/or orientation) model - where if you don't interact occasionally, they're going to nag the heck out of you until you do. (I think a recent e-mail was "But why didn't you sign up for any classes with us?" Gee, maybe because I'm CRAZY BUSY and also none of the offerings appealed to me at that time.). I don't like being nagged at, and that's how I interpret it. I suppose it's partly the fault of my hyper-responsible nature, and the fact that the average Jane these days tends to be, how do I say it, somewhat lackadaisical? (I can draw parallels with the crazy-making-to-me health stories, where they say things that are the equivalent of "Don't stick a lit sparkler in your eye." OH, YOU DON'T SAY?)

I know, I'm taking this way personally. But I really LOATHE what I interpret as "neediness" in a business - my car dealership does this too, every time you take your car in for any service they call you asking you to take some online survey, and the implication is that if you don't rate everything as "Excellent," they're going to harass you some more to find out what they did so terribly, or something.

(I also have to admit that neediness in a person annoys me as well.)

In my book, "Excellent" is rare - it should go for over-and-above-the-call-of-duty, like them sending someone out to pick me up when my car died in a bad place and I can't raise any of my friends to help me. "Satisfactory" should be the usual. Everything else is grade inflation.

I just don't fill out the surveys my dealership sends me. If I did, I think I'd have to write something like, "I don't believe in grade inflation" on them. And really, it's a similar idea: A grade of C used to be passing. It meant the person had mastered the material, nothing more. B meant they did better than mastery; A was a rare grade, assigned only when the person went over and above  and did more than was expected, and was outstanding in other ways. It used to be that a student started at C and worked their way up; now the expectation on many people's part (not just students these days) is that they start at an A and that they go down from there (usually because the Mean Professor unfairly deducted points from them).

I think also what annoys me about the whole "rate us excellent" pressure is that I work in a career where, if someone isn't actively yelling at you for screwing up, you're to assume you're doing OK. I don't get a lot of positive feedback and I admit I kind of crave it. So it bugs me to be told to give artificially positive feedback to someone.