The squeaky wheel gets the grease

I am not the complaining sort. “If you cannot be positive, then at least be quiet,” is a rule I’ve tried to abide to. At the age of five, I was much-influenced by Thumper (Bambi’s best friend) who said so solemnly, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.” I take a dim view of nattering on about problems and concerns. Ever since I was five, it has seemed in bad taste.

However, I’ve had an insight which I hope is life-changing.

Last Sunday Rick and I stepped into our suite for a three-day stay at Port Stephen’s fabulous resort, The Anchorage, for which we’d expended a good chunk of our offspring’s inheritance. My first thought (after an approving glance at the gleaming bathroom and king-size bed with its fine white linen) was that the room seemed a bit dark. And smallish, compared to my expectations. I went to the French doors and stepped out onto the patio. It was tiny, with someone sitting nearby on her (considerably larger) patio, talking enthusiastically on her mobile phone. And the “garden view” I’d been promised on the website was a few unmown dandelions on a small patch of stony pasture. Our room appeared to be wedged into a dark corner from which two wings of the resort swept out. Clearly we’d gotten the last room in the hotel.

Rick, meantime, had whipped his clothes into the closet, tossed his pocket paraphernalia onto the TV shelf, plugged in his iPad and bounced enthusiastically on the bed a few times. “Look, you can just see the harbour if you stick your head ’round the corner of the patio,” he exclaimed, as he joined me outside. “Isn’t this great?!”

One easy-to-please Rick plus one uncomplaining Heather meant that Room 107 at The Anchorage kept us on as its inhabitants.

Sometime later we joined good friends at their suite in the resort. Upon observing its generous glass doors and windows overlooking the colourful marina and manicured gardens, I became even more strongly aware we’d made a mistake in bouncing on the bed before insisting on changing rooms, especially when we’d noticed the half-empty parking lot and any number of unoccupied suites.

At the desk, three days later, I handed the receptionist my feedback form. The first question said, “How likely are you to recommend the Anchorage to others?”, for which I’d ticked 1 out of a possible 10. I explained that I was annoyed we’d been placed in a small room with dodgy gardens, that the renovations going on in the new wing had made life difficult, and that no one at the hotel had addressed any of these problems.

“Oh, goodness,” she said. “You should have said something earlier. We’d have happily found you another room.”

There you have it.

I’d ended up complaining – just three days too late for it to do any good.

I’m pretty sure this attitude is not at all what Thumper had in mind. I’ve just googled “complaining”, knowing that someone else will have captured its true meaning more eloquently than I (or Thumper) could. And sure enough, I found the perfect expression of the Heather approach to complaining: “Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity, and consume your own smoke with an extra draft of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaints.”  ~William Osler. (You might guess that William Osler was a Canadian.)

By the way, I also stumbled across the Rick approach: “Instead of complaining that the rosebush is full of thorns, be happy that the thorn bush has roses.”  (You might guess that this is a German proverb.)

Rick and I discussed the squeaky wheel principal a few days ago. I pointed out that the squeaky wheel has a rather bad reputation. The inference is that it’s a dog-eat-dog world and, although it’s not nice or fair, the people who squeak are the ones who get themselves looked after. They’re grabbing limited resources from the community pool.

Rick thought for a moment, then made the observation that for centuries anyone with heavy loads has been deeply indebted to squeaky wheels. If a wheel didn’t squeak, you’d never know the ball bearing was going, and you wouldn’t know to apply the grease, and the wheel would break down just when you most needed it.

That is, I think, a much more practical – and accurate – way to look at the whole issue of complaining.

So there is a learning in this for those of us who tend toward niceness (spiced up with a dash – the merest soupçon* – of timidity). My new rule is this: from here on, whenever I walk into a hotel room, or to a restaurant table that I’ve been led to, before Rick can bounce on the bed, or shake out his napkin and drink the water, I’m going to check things out quickly and carefully. I will immediately make a complaint if I’m not entirely happy. I will even make a complaint after he’s bounced on the bed, if that’s what it takes.

I am aware there are many of you who are yawning and saying, good grief, what ELSE would you do? – Well, I envy your directness. Keep setting a good example for those of us who sadly and at great personal cost misinterpreted the Thumper Principle.

* Soupçon: A very small amount; a hint; a trace. E.g.:
Add a soupçon of red pepper. Coffee with a soupçon of cognac.
No one is so depraved that a soupçon of goodness cannot be found in him.