| Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" is relevant here. Professionally, I feel I'm fighting against the corporate oligarchy when I rate all workers (telecom customer service reps, Microsoft support personnel) as five stars irrespective of how I actually felt about the service. I get paid the same at my job regardless, so it seems a waste to not be collaborative. Recreationally, maybe it's an American thing. Our culture is one of generosity in spite of (not necessarily because of) the experience. I'll tip decent at a restaurant even if the food wasn't great or the service was slow. Granted, I might never go back, but if I'm there, I'm there to have a good experience and to be a good patron. Something would have to be VERY wrong for me to change course. I don't use gig apps like Doordash or Uber often. I Uber'd once in an emergency and rating the driver was the last thing on my mind. He got 5 stars of course, but he always would have, unless I somehow never made it to my destination. When interacting with large (or even small) businesses, gratuity items are one of the few things I as a customer have complete power over. For meals, I've already factored the tip into the cost so it's no sweat. For apps, the decision is even easier. One tap on the 5-star button and I can increase the level at which Uber values this non-employee? Easy. Maybe it comes from the bad old days of raiding Internet polls and intentionally trying to disrupt corporate properties online, but I approach it from the mindset of "how much fun can I have with this?" and always using the highest rating seems the most amusing to me. Sometimes it's legitimate, other times it's more rueful, but it is always good-faith patronage in my opinion. Somebody mentioned an Uber driver who crashed his car (hopefully not at-fault). I assume they didn't crash on purpose, so we know that guy was having a supremely shitty day. Yeah, I'd probably rate them 5 stars just for the hell of it. It had to have been the most memorable Uber ride ever. Maybe that's not worth much, but it's also not incentive to actively work against your fellow man on behalf of a corporation. If corps want to farm out KPI work to the customer, I'll gladly oblige, but I'm going to mess with your stats for my trouble ;) |