| > society taking a wrong turn to being driven by ratings on the I internet Workers being driven by ratings systems pre-dates the popularity of Internet gig economy jobs. By a lot. The customer ratings concept even infected places like your local doctor’s office a couple decades ago. Doctors have been complaining about how patient satisfaction surveys have discouraged them from bringing up obesity, smoking, or excessive drinking for decades. Doctors are also more likely to give in to patient demands for unnecessary antibiotics or controlled substances when they know it’s going to result in a hit to their ratings if those ratings are related to their compensation. Every time I’ve visited a car dealer for service in the past few decades, the service manager is almost begging me to give them a “9 or 10” on the survey that will be sent to me afterward. He pleads that I work with him first to address anything that might reduce his rating. Even vehicle drivers have had “How is my driving?” numbers on the back of their cars for a very long time. Having customer satisfaction surveys tied to performance reviews isn’t new if you’ve worked in anything customer-facing. It’s just getting more attention now because “gig economy” has become a journalistic buzzword and people are more likely to be sympathetic to an hourly worker than, say, the doctor or service manager at their local dealership. Even long before all of this, tipping was the standard way of linking customer feedback to compensation. This applied to delivery drivers, too! The hand-wringing over customer feedback being an internet-era gig economy thing is misplaced. It has always been this way. |
It's extremely toxic.