Feedback frenzy

I used to enjoy ‘giving feedback’ in the glory years when nobody wanted it. Now, upon completing a routine transaction, the customer is bombarded with breathless demands for response. The neurotic corporate catchphrase is ‘How was it for you?’

The world is now in feedback frenzy. Companies endlessly prod us for our views so they can brandish positive statistics at each other — or sack somebody. A new app, called Impraise, even invites workers to evaluate their own colleagues anonymously. You could spend your whole day just rating every interaction as something between poor and excellent. From Uber drivers to call-centre workers, everybody’s chasing a tick of recorded acclaim.

I miss the old days, when good service was considered normal and feedback was known as complaining. The British often did it apologetically and the habitual complainer was a target for literary sport. The young Joe Orton, from his cramped Islington bedsit, invented a middle-aged character called Edna Wel-thorpe (Mrs), whose reproving letters were deliciously pointless: ‘I shan’t try any more of your pie fillings until the fruit content is considerably higher.