The Adventures of a Corporate Troll

  Kayla Itsines is actually the devil. I know that sounds really harsh, but she actually is. But ‘devil’ in the sense that I think she’s freaking awesome for getting so many people exercise, and living healthier lives, but devil also in the sense that I just can’t do lay down push ups and I cry and throw a tantrum every time I see that I have to do 15 of them….that and skipping. [Fuck skipping is hard. Ever tried skipping since you were 10? Yeah didn’t think so. It’s fucking hard. Your legs just don’t want to lift up above that fucking tiny string that you keep flicking over your shoulder. Skipping just takes me back to that horror in Primary School where you’re just waiting, waiting, waiting to enter the group skipping exercise…everyone says it’s so easy, but you have no beat, and just can’t time your entry…and then you just run for it, you run right through the Skipping Rope Arena and just as you think that you’ve escaped you get whipped on the face by the rope…so cruel.]

So the start of the last paragraph was me being a troll. Reflecting my own insecurities (including my inability to skip) on someone who’s actually doing something pretty awesome…and from all my insta-stalking, Kayla Istines is also pretty humble about it all. It’s clear to me that bullying/trolling online should never happen. It’s weak and pathetic. But as you may have also gathered, I do love a good rant where it is actually deserved. I guess you could say that I potentially have an issue with both internally and externally expressed anger…that is until I discovered something so incredible I think it’s about to change my life…for reals. I discovered that in an effort to seem ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ and ‘savvy’, most companies now have a new customer service element to them, to help them no doubt ‘connect with millennials’…they all now have social media pages and specifically FACEBOOK PAGES. Game. Changer.

It’s an incredible new world. Finally I have found a place where the pen is indeed mightier than my fist. Where any complaint is heard not within a few days, where you’re not waiting on the phone for hours having “asked to speak to the manager”…no your complaint gets heard within minutes in the glorious world of corporate Facebook pages. It’s a magical place. You can feel the corporates sweat from proliferation of your legitimate complaint on a public forum. In fact if corporates could sweat, they’d be sweating so much they’d be getting their armpits botoxed so that they could still wear the light pink shirt on Fridays and not have everyone think it’s wearing a dark purple shirt.

On a corporate Facebook page, you’re allowed to immediately voice your concern/complaint on their page and within minutes, a customer service rep responds on behalf of said corporate apologising and/or offering you whatever compensation you deserve but would’ve taken you months to achieve through other channels. I had this persisting pain in my little finger which I first thought was due to excessive Kayla Itsines exercises [but then realised that was not possible given I gave up after the Week One Circuit One….] and then I realised I had sprained my little finger from over reaching to the SHIFT key to write in ALL CAPS in all my posts to corporate Facebook pages [let’s face it, hitting the CAPS LOCK key is just not a satisfying when you’re trying to write angrily in ALL CAPS].

My online corporate trolling is now getting to professional levels:

Exhibit A: NAB

Here’s one I wrote to NAB when they refused to give a charity I work for, it’s OWN money back…

Posting to NAB’s Facebook public page that they were literally taking from some of the world’s most in need quickly moved them into action after 8 months of sitting on their arse. What then followed was a series of similarly worded, private messages and also included NAB momentarily accusing CBA of being the party of fault only to realise that I would send a screen shot of this accusation to CBA and promptly got an apology and within a month we had our money back. NAB even made the extra effort of writing a letter to my dear co-volunteers to “ask Arani to cease contacting us on NAB” which I now have proudly framed in the pool room.

Arani The Corporate Troll -1; Big Corporate – 0

Exhibit B: Qantas

The nation’s airline who love to bring everyone home can’t escape their past of still having fossils for customer service representatives.

Again I got a lightning speed reply from a much nicer Qantas rep. The most amazing lesson from this was that despite having one shitty experience with one Service counter, just another excellent experience with the Qantas person managing their social media meant that I’m still a customer. Hmmm makes you think right? Maybe being semi-nice to customers might be a good thing?

Arani The Corporate Troll -2; Big Corporate – 0

Exhibit C: Booking.com

The last example was actually borne out of my stupidity and a security breach of Booking.com’s website. I made a lovely booking at a cute BnB and started corresponding with who I thought the owner was. Anyway turns out the owner wasn’t a lovely Polish woman, it was a group of French hackers who I seemed to trust far too much that I decided to transfer $2,000 via International Bank Transfer to…you know because despite all my online shopping I still thought it was possible that some people just didn’t like to take credit cards…fucking idiot.

Anyway rather than wait in a customer service tele-cue for 3 hours, I Facebooked and all the money (including all the shitty CBA bank transfer fees) were refunded into my account within 3 days. It was pretty amazing.

Arani The Corporate Troll -2.5; Big Corporate – 0.5 [I’m giving Booking.com some points for being awesome…haha no this is not a sponsored ad…but you should check out Booking.com for all your hotel and flight bookings in one convenient place]

Now obviously with power comes great responsibility. Don’t be a dick and now go trolling every corporate about how they should pay more tax and shit like that. There are better forums for that…like Joe Hockey’s Facebook page which is located here.