15 Comments
User's avatar
Marcia Heath's avatar

Loved your clever and humor-filled riff on ratings. I give you a five out of five.

Expand full comment
Catherine Hiller's avatar

Thanks so much Marcia! Delightful to hear!

Expand full comment
Not The Enemy's avatar

SO with you on this, Catherine. No, I don't have a minute to rate your service on a scale of 1 to 5, because 5-level service should be expected by every one of your customers if you hope to keep their business. Ha!

Expand full comment
Catherine Hiller's avatar

EXACTLY!

Expand full comment
Catherine Hiller's avatar

Thanks so much, Marcia! This is lovely to hear.

Expand full comment
Mark Thompson's avatar

If the length of time to fill out a questionnaire exceeds that of the original transaction that triggered this request, then it’s not worth the trouble.

Expand full comment
Catherine Hiller's avatar

Amen! I like that math!

Expand full comment
Francis Dumaurier's avatar

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

😈

Expand full comment
Catherine Hiller's avatar

Perfect! And thanks!

Expand full comment
Catherine Hiller's avatar

PS Chase followed up with me today: Reminder: How was your experience?

Expand full comment
Louisa's avatar

Both Greg & I couldn't agree more! Enough already! Yes, this issue (or irritation!) is probably somewhat generational, but voting with one's wallet is STILL the most potent way to judge a product or service & I think it always will be.

That said, I give this column a 5 out of 5!

Expand full comment
The 435's avatar

Thanks for griping on my behalf, Cathy. You do it so articulately and humorously, whereas when I do it it just comes out as complaining.

Yesterday I was asked to rate a website that I had never used. Thank goodness for the delete key. If only there were a delete key in the real world.

Expand full comment
easleyart@gmail.com's avatar

Dearest Cathy, we are of the same mind on this,

Having waisted my time with bot nonsense questions and prompts before I can ask my question, companies have no right to ask for more of my time. 99% of the time, I hang up. That said, there is one product in need of ratings...ART. Just below, if you wish, is my response to the absence of an art ratings system:

Cheers and hugs,

t

Kung-Fu Ratings System:

The meaning of Kung-Fu — supreme skill from hard work — goes well beyond martial arts. It provides practicable means and perspective for bettering ourselves and the work we do regardless of the nature of our work.

As it concerns art: Kung-Fu ratings are an attempt to amend the misrepresentation of value made popular by the commercialization of false equivalence — the raw dismissal of the skill required of an artist to do the work he does piece by piece. The more rigorous the work the higher the skill, and the higher the Kung-Fu rating.

In this, it’s not a question of like or dislike, character evaluation, monetary value, artist fame, or the historical significance of each piece rated. While we have ratings for everything from wine to airplane seats, to restaurants, chair and bed comfort, doctors, sports teams, films, music, beauty, strength, home building, sanitation, pain medicine, quality of sleep, honesty, wealth, poverty — basically everything — art has escaped ratings.

Kung-Fu provides us with an elegant and simple metric for assessing artistic competence, the absence of which has given novelty too great an influence over the art market and our perception of creative value.

An Artist’s Philosophy-Aphorisms and Artwork

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT:

Art, as a valued, even transcendent or mystical medium of expression, was rated as such because of the rarity of expertise and talent required of the artists to produce art. Today, while art itself has retained its numinous allure, mastery and supreme skill — the exception of proven expertise that once gave the art world life — have dissolved into a generalized idolization of novelty as mystical illumination equivalent in value to a time when accomplished artists, as rare as fine cut stone, stood above the granite stones cobbling the streets.

It is not the artist’s name, the price paid, or the subjective meaning that gives value to a work of art; it is the depth of objective mastery of material and subject matter.

https://medium.com/@easleyart/from-mindstorm-1001-easley-aphorisms-paintings-drawings-9a87d7d9fcd2

THE NOVELTY MARKET

Article and Painting by Thomas Easley

A Red Apple Sunrise — Acrylic on Canvas — 24x30 inches

https://medium.com/@easleyart/from-mindstorm-1001-easley-aphorisms-paintings-drawings-e8e9e8c7e463

Expand full comment
Catherine Hiller's avatar

We'll talk about all this soon!

Expand full comment
Jackie Shabbot's avatar

This was one of your funniest pieces and anything that can make me laugh out loud THESE days gets ********** and a 👋-

Expand full comment