A Critical Ethnography of Social Media: That’s the Sound of One Hand (Trustpilot) Washing the Other (Labyrinth Books)

 

It is always fascinating to look behind the corporate curtain to see how digital age capitalism actually works. I had this pleasure recently when I tried to review a recent encounter I had with Labyrinth Books online on the Danish owned review site Trustpilot.

I tried to post this review of Labyrinth Books on Trustpilot:                "I ordered some books from Labyrinth Books. I had enough to get free shipping which was critical in my ordering the books. When I got the books two were missing. When I contacted Labyrinth and asked them for a revised bill which they never sent before I asked for it (bad form) I discovered I was charged for shipping because they did not have the two books I ordered and which, with the other books, gave me free shipping. CatchLabyrinth22.                                                                   I contacted Labyrinth about this, about not informing me that they did not have two books I ordered and that this meant I had to pay almost $9 dollars in shipping now. They wrote back telling me sorry, boy, you are shite out of luck and that if I wanted to send the books back I had to pay shipping. Apparently, Labyrinth’s policy is screw the customer...twice if you can. My response was what it should be: cancel my account, delete my account, I will never order from you again, and I will be filing a complaint about you with the attorney general of the state of New York. Have a good day.”

I dutifully created an account (I had posted before but by invitation of Thriftbooks previously when no account was required), signed in, and posted this review. A day or two letter, however, I got a since disappeared missive from the digital courtiers of the dukes and barons at Trustpilot telling me they could not post my review. Whether this corporation  has stupid bots doing this weeding out of reviews to try to discern fake ones from “real” ones is immaterial given that bots are written by humans and humans are known not only for their stupidity and moronicity but also their technology as utopia hubris.  Nor does it relieve them of responsibility for washing their hands of such censorship though I am sure they hope and think it does.

So regardless of the reason for deep sixing my review it amounts to censorship, of one hand, the muddied of Trustpilot, washing away empirical criticism of another dirty hand, Labyrinth Books. And that is the world of Big Brother Corporation ladies and gentlemen, a world which snake oil salesmen and con men predominate everywhere including online.

Addendum: When I contacted Trustpilot via Facebook message—they have disabled any other option—I felt like I had wondered into Green Acres and The Twilight Zone. When the operative who I was communicating with could not,  presumably, hopefully, after reading the above, could not discern the two paragraphs of my review in the body of the post which, presumably, a bot fuhrered and disallowed, I copied and pasted the review so they could read it. I then asked them why the post was disallowed. They couldn’t even give me a straight answer as to why it was placed in the brave new digital world rubbish bin. If this is Big Brother it is Big Brother as post-baby boom attention deficit disorder farce. Realising that I had gone down the rabbit hole where I had run into Lisa Douglas I departed as quickly as I could for saner shores.

Life as Crisis Management: The Labyrinth Books Kiada

 

I used to like Labyrinth Books, the Princeton, New Jersey shop that sells books both in their brick and mortar store and online. In fact, when I was in the City, which I was quite in the late nineties and early 2000s staying in a flat in Chelsea, I used to wonder up to their store near Columbia University. Then I got to know this firm. Familiarity, as the Chills note, sometimes definitely breeds, under the right empirical circumstances, contempt.

And right empirical circumstances there have been. I have bought books online from Labyrinth on a couple of occasions. It went fine. Recently, however, I learned that if one bought over $100 dollars worth of books from them one received free shipping. So I dutifully put books in my shopping queue and eventually had enough books at the right cost to get the free shipping. So I ordered the items.

I got a communique from Labyrinth telling me the books had shipped. There was no indication that there was any change to my order so I rationally and reasonably assumed they were the books I ordered. When I got the books, however, the box was missing two items I had ordered and I quickly discovered that I had been charged around $9 dollars in shipping because, in a kind of capitalist catch-22, two of the items I ordered were out of stock. 

I contacted Labyrinth and asked why I was not contacted about this change in my order. They essentially implied that why should we? I responded with the logical riposte: because the order changed and as a consequence there was a change in the charges. Other bookstores, I noted, such as Midtown Scholar, a far superior bookshop to Labyrinth, for example, contacted me, as they should have, to note that a book described as “very good” was actually “good” and did I still want it at a discount? Given this, I responded by saying well then I will ship the books back and could they send me a pre-paid mailing label since it was their fault that the items were not in stock and their responsibility to let me know that the order had changed? They essentially told me tough luck kid. We don’t do that sort of thing here at King Labyrinth Books. They essentially, in doing this, told me that we are going to screw you not only once by by not telling you that there had been a change in the order and do you still want the books, twice by adding a shipping fee, and yet a third time by not paying themselves for a return of items I would never had chosen to receive if I knew a shipping charge would be added. Caveat emptor to the third power.

Since then I have asked them to refund me the shipping charge. It was their fault I was sent an order I no longer wanted, after all. They deigned not even to respond to such a plebeian request which, I presumed, meant a refusal even to consider such a thing. I then asked to delete my account. It took me three emails to finally get them to do this. Next, I asked them to take me off their mailing list. It took only one email to get them to do this. They also told me never to contact them again, which may have been due, in part, to the fact that I accurately described their firm as a skanky and slaggy con-corporation run by snake oil salesmen. The truth sometimes hurts, I guess, doesn’t it.

The Books of My Life: Wisdom’s Workshop

I have long had an interest in higher education. I am interested in academia as a bureaucracy, a bureaucracy that has changed just as broader society has changed over the years. I am interested in the economic aspects of institutions of higher education and the role economic interests have played and continue to play in colleges and universities in the core nation world and particularly in the British settler society world. I am interested in the politics of universities both internally and externally and the impact political bureaucracies have on academic bureaucracies and vice versa. I am interested in the demographics of universities and how these have changed over the years. I am interested in the historical and cultural geography of universities and the ideologies associated with notions of how colleges and universities should look. I am interested in the culture and subcultures and countercultures of universities, a culture and cultures that mirror while the broader world while, at the same time, wanting to change the world for the better (there is a lot of utopianism among university faculty, some of them old bohemians gone bourgeois, though only those in the applied sciences generally manage to change the world if not for the better).

James Axtell’s Wisdom’s Workshop: The Rise of the Modern University (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016) explores the economic, political, demographic, geographic, and cultural history of the university from the Mediaeval era to the modern American research university or multiversity. and megaversity era. Along the way Axtell briefly, for example, explores the the Mediaeval, Tudor and Stuart (Oxbridge) and 19th century German precedents for the American research university, the historical genealogies of academic bureaucracies, the role faculties play in universities and the cultures associated with university faculties, tensions between the administrative bureaucracy and faculty guilds in universities, the built environment of universities, student life at universities, tensions between universities and the broader society including powerful economic interests particularly over the curriculum, the increasing use of part-time or contingent faculty in American universities (something paralleled in Canadian research universities as well), and the increasing ties between the university, government, and private corporations in his synthetic history of the modern university. Axtell ends his book by noting that American research university are overrepresented among the top universities globally in all the guides which rate universities around the worlds.

As a comparative history Axtell’s book is far too selective. Axtell largely ignores higher education developments Germany and Great Britain in the 20th and 21st century, somewhat surprisingly since the new post-World War II in Britain generally mimicked the post-war American research universities. He ignores Canadian universities like the University of Toronto, which, like the universities he does focus on, is a member of the elite Association of American Universities, the pan-bureaucratic arm of the elite American research university. And while these points may or may not be relevant—Axtell’s focus was on the rise of the American elite research university after all—something else he ignores, namely the fact that the size and wealth of the American economy, itself a product of geography, demography, and culture, is very relevant for why US research universities show up in large numbers in the lists of the top three hundred universities in the world. Sometimes size does matter and the US with its almost 400 million people (2018 estimate) gives it an economic and technological edge over smaller Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and Germany. He also fails to explore the fact that there is great regional variation in the “quality” of US research universities with most of them being found in the US Northeast, Midwest, and Far West and far fewer in the South, the Northern Plains, and the Intermountain West where, again, size matters as does cultural history, particularly the culture of evangelical and secular anti-intellectualism.

 

Life as Crisis Management: The Community Care Physicians Kiada

 

I should have known that it would not get better. Sisyphus, thou aren’t omnipotent and apparently omniscient too. In fact, I should have know it would have gotten worse. Murphy’s Law, thou too are all powerful and all present in modern America. So what is it (with all apologies to Faith No More). It is bureaucracy. It is human incompetence. It is corporate skankiness.

Let me explain. I got up late this morning around 9:00 am. It was later than I wanted to get up because I had an appointment for an OTM, an Osteopathic adjustment, at Community Care Physicians (CCP) at 391 Myrtle Avenue in Albany, in the heart of the busy Albany Medical Centre complex and it was busy to say the least, and I had thought about going to the Co-op before my doctor’s appointment. I had also wanted to take a shower before I went because taking a shower at my four flat complex is akin to trying to figure out a Rubik’s Cube when you have no idea how it works. If I don’t get in the shower between 8:30 and 8:30 am my shower is interrupted by someone else engaged in water use leading to my shower going cold. It is only then safe to get in the shower sometime between 6 pm and 8 pm. So off I rushed to get ready after turning on my phone and my computer to see if I had any messages from CCP. I did not. So off I drove at 9:15 am for my appointment at 9:40 am.

When I got there I was met not only by the check in artist but by her supervisor The supervisor informed me that they, perhaps even she, had tried to call me to tell me the appointment had been cancelled because—and here I am not clear—the doctor was not in or they had double booked once again. This double booking had happened the second time I went to get an adjustment, this one from a doctor I had not seen before because mine is on pregnancy leave as I type. I had to wait an hour to get the adjustment. Apparently I was lucky in this because one was available. By the way, the second adjustment I went for was a half hour late. Today no other appointment was possible so I was told I was shite out of luck. 

The supervisor did tell me they tried to call and they did at 9:34 am, so my phone tells me, six minutes before my appointment. Since I was in the car and I don’t carry my phone around with me as if it were a shot of heroin to which I am thoroughly addicted (apologies to Layne Staley and a host of others), I was already in the car driving the few miles to CCP Myrtle Avenue.

Let me end this immoral tale by stating the obvious again. Bureaucracies are not fully efficient though the mythology about them claims otherwise even in a world where that myth is clearly and indisputably false. Human incompetence is omnipresent and has simply been made more tangible and visible by digital toys. And Sisyphus and Murphy’s Law are omnipresent and all powerful and have been made worse thanks to the toys of the brave new digital age. Bah humbug.

And oh, by the way, my shower, which I took when I got home from my no longer existent appointment with a CCP doctor, was indeed disrupted by someone else using the water. Thank you CCP for not calling me forty minutes before my appointment to tell me it was kaput, no more, gone with the wind.

Life as Crisis Management: The Grocery Store Again

 

It never ceases to amaze me how life is just one Sisypehan crisis after another. Take today...

Today I got up early to go to the grocery store, the Hannaford grocery store to be more precise. I did this because Hannaford had Impossible ground on sale beginning today and while I prefer Beyond ground sale prices matter particularly since Beyond costs over $5 dollars at Walmart now, when they have it which is not very often these days, up almost $2 dollars from before the New Year, and costs over $11 dollars at the Honest Weight Food Coop. I wanted it because I cook Beyond or Impossible burgers with chips for Danish hygge on Friday night for me and my friend.

I should have known, and I actually thought about this, before I went to the grocery at 7:30, that they would not have the item I sought, an item that was, to add insult to injury, to be the foundation of a coupon I had for $10 dollars off of $60 dollars. Nor did they have the Noosa Strawberry and Rhubarb yoghurt I sought or the Brown Cow large Maple Yoghurt I sought. And this was Sunday, the day items went on sale and one of the busiest days for grocery shopping during the week.

I asked the meat stock person if they had the Impossible ground. She said no and that the item had been out of stock for a couple of weeks at, one assumes, the distributors. I then asked why have a sale on the item in the first place if it is unavailable. She rightly said to contact Hannaford headquarters.

Annoyed, not angry as the cash person assumed but then most humans can’t work outside of binary modes of coded thought and realise that annoyed it not anger and vice versa, I complained again about the lack of the item and the fact that I could not use my coupon which expires on Tuesday. He contacted the manager and arranged for me to get a rain cheque for the Impossible and for me to use the coupon whenever I can get the Impossible. Quite nice.

Of course, whether I will be able to get the Impossible ground or use the coupon in the future is another matter. Time will, as it always does, tell.

Life as Crisis Management: The Pharmacy Kiada, Again

I hate the US health insurance system. It is easily the worst in the core nation world. I have used the health insurance systems of Canada, England, France, Australia, and even Russia and all of them, including the Russian one, were easier to use than that of the US in my experience.

More than any part of the US health insurance system the prescription part of the health care system is by far the worst. Since the 2000s I have had problems with Walgreens, with CVS, and with CVS Silver Script, the corporation the New York State and Local Retirement System now farms their retiree prescription medication plan out to, and now Lincoln Pharmacy.

I used Lincoln Pharmacy for my prescription needs because it was close and because it is independent. The fact that it is independent, however, is also why it is a problem for me to use Lincoln Pharmacy. First, I had a problem with Wixela, something I was forced to take for my asthma because my prescription plan no longer covered the similar costing Advair. They did not carry it so I had to get it from the mail order service of CVS Caremark (CVS, of course, is trying to run independents out of business). Then it was Cyclobenzaprine, which I take for muscle pain. As I had turned seventy I was cut off by the prescription drug coverage company not because my doctor said I should be but because the prescription company said I should be. Lincoln only told me this fact after I walked through snow and thirty mile per hour wind to go there to pick it up. Today it was Linzess, which I take for bowel issues, that I learned I could not get. When I went up to get it today Lincoln told me they no longer had a contract with MVP, yet another health insurance company who unbeknownst to me covered this for me through my state insurance, until today, because it was not cost effective for them to do so any longer.

So where does all this bureaucratic bullshite leave old, infirm, and always weary me? Well, it leaves me to clean up yet another US health insurance mess and yet another corporate bureaucratic mess. It left me to change all my prescription information in the online account pages for all four medical groups I go to (Community Care Physicians, Albany Med, Trinity for St. Peter’s, and Albany ENT). It left me to ask Lincoln to switch all my prescriptions to yes hated CVS, the CVS in Delmar. It left me to try to get my Linzess before it runs out, a medicine which causes diarrhoea when you start it again. It left me to whinge once again, just like many other Americans with health insurance, about the royal slaginess that is the US health care system. 

Up yours US health care system. You, to put it nicely, suck.

Life as Crisis Management: Hello Sisyphus, Remember Me?

It never stops, it being fuckups in the digital age. Today I was gifted a lingload of them.

Fuckup number one: I put in an order early this morning for two prescription renewals by phone. I was told they would be ready by 10:30 this morning. They weren’t. So I had to wait five or so minutes for them when I arrived at around 11:25 am.

Fuckup number two: When I went to pay for my prescriptions my credit card was declined. This was news to me since I just paid off my credit card bill on 30 December. Thankfully I had emergency cash, something I have learned is essential in the digital fuckup age.

Fuckup number three: I chatted with my credit card company. They said my card was fine and should not have been declined. They said the problem was probably on the merchant’s end of the equation.

Fuckup number four: When I contacted my credit card company I not only went into my account and hit chat I also called them. When I got a call back they wanted my unique password which I have stashed in my computer somewhere because I can’t remember them all (there are a lot of them to remember, too many, in fact). I declined saying that chat had answered my question, that I did not want to spend minutes opening my file, and that I wanted to take a shower after walking to the pharmacy through 30 mile per hour winds and blowing snow only to find that my credit card was declined.

Fuckup number five: I ordered some books from Labyrinth Books. I had enough to get free shipping which was critical in my ordering the books. When I got the books two were missing. When I contacted Labyrinth and asked them for a revised bill which they never sent before I asked for it (bad form) I discovered I was charged for shipping because they did not have the two books I ordered and which, with the other books, gave me free shipping. CatchLabyrinth22. 

I contacted Labyrinth about this, about not informing me that they did not have two books I ordered and that this meant I had to pay almost $9 dollars in shipping now. They wrote back telling me sorry, boy, you are shite out of luck and that if I wanted to send the books back I had to pay shipping. Apparently, Labyrinth’s policy is screw the customer...twice if you can. My response was what it should be: cancel my account, delete my account, I will never order from you again, and I will be filing a complaint about you with the attorney general of the state of New York. Have a good day.