site fast company Article published This page explains the Complaint Suppression Project, an initiative that aims to eliminate negative comments and live a positive life. That’s a great goal. Most of us have an inordinate love for wallowing in misery, a human trait amplified a thousand times by the internet, but complaining rarely improves the situation. As in Buddha’s “second arrow” parable, our complaints can make our suffering doubly painful. As in the parable of the “poison arrow,” it can lead to postponing or substituting constructive actions needed to cure or improve the condition.
But it would be a mistake to think that grumbling is somehow a recent phenomenon, even though the voices of grumbling may be heard every day, all the time, in every part of the globe. As it turns out, the Buddhist arrow story is at least several thousand years old. Lamentations constitute more or less their own genre in Biblical literature.
Even older than these religious sources are the first documented customer service complaints, a particular type of complaint that may be forgivable primarily associated with the modern era of consumerism, and one of the few types of complaints that can produce positive outcomes.
In this case, consumers in ancient Babylonia wrote their complaints on clay tablets because there was no Yelp app. Currently housed in the British Museum– circa 1750 B.C. Here Nanni, an enraged purchaser, had written to a man named Air Nasir, and after an annoying delay he received the low-grade copper ore in a damaged condition. Translations below by Assyriologists A. Leo OppenheimNanni spits out his spleen.
Tell Air Nasir: Nanni sends the following message:
When you came, you said to me: “When Gimil Singh comes, I will give you a good copper ingot.” You left then, but you did not do what you had promised me. You placed a bad ingot before my messenger (Sit Sing) and said, “If you want to take it, take it; if you don’t want to take it, leave!”
Who do you think I am, to have such contempt for someone like me? I have sent messengers of gentlemen like ourselves to retrieve the bag containing my money (which was entrusted to you), but you have repeatedly sent them back to me empty-handed and treated me with contempt, even through enemy territory. Did any of the merchants who do business with Thermun treat me like this? You are the only one who despises my messenger! Because of the (trivial) one mina of silver that I owe you (?), and you are free to speak in such a manner, I have presented the palace on your behalf with 1,080 pounds of copper, and Umi Abum has likewise presented 1,080 pounds of copper. Except what we both wrote on a sealed tablet that we keep in the temple of Samas.
How did you treat me about that copper? You did not take my bag of money from me in enemy territory. It’s up to you to return (my money) to me in full.
Please note that (from now on) we will no longer receive poor quality copper here. I plan (in the future) to pick the ingots individually in my garden and take them home. And since you have despised me, I will exercise my right of refusal against you.
Perhaps Nanni took this poor service a little too personally. Either way, I hope he gets some satisfaction for the pain he must have put into carving out this angry message.
Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2015.
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Hunter S. Thompson calls tech support and goes on a rant filled with fear and hate (NSFW)
Behold the world’s oldest document: the Tablets of Kish, circa 3500 BC.
Hear the world’s oldest song: Sumerian hymns written 3,400 years ago
How to write in cuneiform, the world’s oldest writing system: A brief introduction
Hear the oldest recorded customer complaint letter: from ancient Sumer, 1750 B.C.
josh jones I’m a writer and musician based in Durham, North Carolina.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
