Can't complain, won't complain: Why is complaining so alien to us Irish?

If you raise a customer service gripe then you're engaging in a feedback activity that's at least as old as 1750BC so pick up that phone, write to that councillor, email that public service provider and get things sorted to your satisfaction, says Simon Tierney

Moaning is self-indulgent whinging, but making a complaint is a conscious attempt to make a bad situation better. If no one complains, then nothing will change

A bus that’s being waited for never arrives, just as a watched kettle never boils. I waited an hour for a delayed bus recently.

As an enthusiastic complainer, I was ready to vent once it arrived. But I withheld my frustrations momentarily. I waited to board until last, observing my fellow passengers to see if any of them would complain to the bus driver before me. None of them did.

At first I was taken aback. Why was everyone trudging onto the bus like this was normal? Is this what our brave ancestors fought for — a republic with bad buses?

When I reflected on it, I came to realise that this behaviour is a lot more typical than you might imagine. I have no doubt that my fellow passengers were privately irked, muttering their frustrations to themselves and each other. We Irish are excellent moaners, but we’re not good complainers.

There is a key difference between moaning and complaining. When someone moans about something, they are teasing their exasperation out, yet it isn’t directed at the object of their wrath. When moaning is converted into action it becomes a complaint. Moaning is a sort of communication foreplay, while complaining is getting down to business.

In Ireland, we love to moan about the government, the weather, self-service tills at the supermarket, our neighbours, and people who don’t hold the door open. Moaning is self-indulgent whinging, but making a complaint is a conscious attempt to make a bad situation better.

After making my complaint politely to the bus driver, she assured me that she would let headquarters know. My logic is simple: if no one complains, then nothing will change. But we Irish are too often constipated by our own social inhibitions when it comes to communicating awkward criticisms.

I have a theory about this. We are a young nation, just over 100 years old, long subjugated by our foreign overlords. Do we still lack self-confidence as a people?

We are helplessly self-deprecating. While this is endearing in most circumstances, it doesn’t make the best complainers.

Simon Tierney: 'Making a complaint is a conscious attempt to make a bad situation better.'

Conversely, look at the confidence of a British, French or American when it comes to customer experience. Is our threshold for confrontation and potential embarrassment low because we don’t yet have a winner’s mentality?

I understand the reluctance people have when it comes to complaining in a restaurant or hotel. No one wants to come across as arrogant or fussy. Yet herein lies the problem. Too often we make a false equivalence between complaining and being an arse. Whisper it: it’s okay to complain and be polite at the same time.

By denying ourselves a complaint, are we stifling an innate instinct?

American psychotherapist William Berry argues that complaining is a very natural human behaviour. “The human brain, geared for survival, focuses on negatives (as they appear more threatening to survival) than on positives,” he says.

“As the brain perceives negatives at an approximated ratio of five to one, there is simply more to complain about than there is to be grateful for.”

I have always been a complainer. I went through a phase of sending complaint letters to companies as a child. When I was 11, I sent an outraged letter to Tayto. Using disproportionately dramatic hyperbole, I expressed my “horror” that I had found one particular bag containing too much “crisp dust” due to their squashed transport to the shop. They sent me a letter of contrition and a voucher for a pound. Don’t laugh…this could get you seven bags in the early 1990s.

Emboldened, I then sent a letter to a pharmaceutical company complaining that my mother was struggling to open their impenetrable bottles of children’s vitamin supplement. They posted me a special opener, much to the bemusement of my mother.

The very first time I was published in a newspaper was when I wrote a letter of complaint to the Nenagh Guardian back in 1996. 

A letter of complaint Simon Tierney had published in his local newspaper, the Nenagh Guardian, in 1996

I complained that the carpark of our local beauty spot was getting destroyed by litter. I, a mere child, had been forced to get down on my hands and knees and clear the place up.

When my parents saw the letter during their weekly perusal of our local paper, they asked me what sort of litter I was picking up.

“Mostly plastic wrappers…something called Durex,” I explained. Then the horror was theirs.

Complaining is as old as time. In fact, the oldest customer service complaint on record comes from Mesopotamia in modern day Iraq. The British Museum has this extraordinary cuneiform tablet in its possession, dating from 1750 BC. The scribe delivers a diatribe against his supplier, complaining that the quality of his recent delivery of copper material is below par.

“What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt?” he writes.

Old Babylonian era clay tablet; letter from Nanni to Ea-nasir complaining that the wrong grade of copper ore has been delivered after a gulf voyage and about misdirection and delay of a further delivery; slightly damaged. 1750BC © The Trustees of the British Museum 

The language used in this ancient tablet gets to the heart of how and why we complain today, just as we did thousands of years ago. We feel an injustice has been committed against us. When you obstruct your instinct to communicate this dissatisfaction you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. You are allowing a personal grievance to fester and multiply. It becomes personal and our sensitivities are pinched.

So, why didn’t any of my fellow passengers complain about the bus?

Apathy, perhaps. The fear of public rejection or ridicule is very real for people too. But it’s worth remembering that there are different ways to complain… an email, a letter, a message to your local councillor or even a website review are all available options.

Now, where’s that bus?