GameDevBlog: Why Am I So Angry? Assembla And Perforce

I have a big problem with holding grudges. Particularly when it comes to companies. I never want to do business with Bank of America, Creative Labs, The Game Crafter, or HP again. (Of course, I probably own stock in BofA and HP thanks to mutual funds, etc. The irony.)

Turns out that holding grudges is an unhappiness habit. It's spelled out in detail in The How Of Happiness. And they have a trick for dealing with it - you write a letter of forgiveness. You don't send it, you just write it.

It mostly works. As a grudge resurfaces, sending waves out over the surface of my mind, I remember, "Hey, I already forgave them for that." And then I can move on and think of something else. (But as the years pass, I find I may need to write another letter ... if the grudge is buried deep.)

Well, I've been in a crap mood this afternoon after dealing with Assembla and their support team and what probably to most people seem like a few innocuous e-mails. So I guess it's time to write another letter.

Dear Ginger,

I forgive you. Although I honestly was just trying to provide helpful feedback on your company's services, maybe I came on too strong, maybe there was some miscommunication, or maybe you were having a bad day, so it's understandable that you wouldn't read my e-mails very carefully; it's understandable that you'd remind me that I'm not entitled to any support at all as a free user; it's understandable that you'd tell me 'we can’t spend any more time helping you at this point'; I can almost even understand why you'd close all my help tickets, the ones you previously asked me to open, and marked them as 'resolved' ... perhaps you think I'm just another entitled internet troll, trying to waste your company's time and money, for fun, inventing problems where there are none.

Again, I honestly was trying to be helpful by taking the time to write up those help ticket reports about problems that I'd already worked around, and was only bringing them to your attention so future customers wouldn't suffer as I had; and by taking the time to demonstrate my issues (with a screenshot, even!)

Still, nobody enjoys negative feedback, no matter how valuable it is. Even if you're just an employee of the company that's receiving the feedback, who likes to hear the company they work for devalued? That's loyalty, and I appreciate that.

And I forgive the whole Assembla company, as well - although they claim to have 'Outstanding Support' and from my perspective that doesn't seem to be the case, it's possible that I just got unlucky in the interactions I had with them, landing on ones who were not helpful and liked to remind me that my problems could be 'user error'.

And I forgive the Assembla company for having bad documentation. I suspect you're not getting any clients for the service, and the ones you are getting are probably running up your server costs as fast as they're bringing in revenue - if they're bringing in revenue at all, and not freeloading like I hoped to do. I suppose I could argue that if you had good documentation and friendly customer support, then I might have been converted to a paying customer and had nice things to say on my blog about you, which might have gotten you more paying customers, but that's a lottery ticket, yeah? And with server costs being so high, you might not want those customers anyway.

So. It all makes sense, and I don't know why I'm dwelling on it. Maybe it's because I had to spend two days trying to get your service to work and I'm harboring resentment over that, but who knows.

Okay, so this sounds sarcastic, but I am trying to genuinely believe what I say here. Hopefully it'll work and I'll stop dwelling and move on. It really was a pretty innocuous series of e-mail exchanges. I am probably just overly sensitive. I forgive you. I forgive you. I will try to think no more on it.

Take care,

Jamie