What do you hear when you witness a big spat between an angry customer and the business owner? ‘I’ll take you to court’ is what the customer screams. And “Do what you want” is how the business owner responds. Interesting na, when you’re angry “I’ll take you to court” is the easiest thing to say, but when you’re calmer and cool, you know “winning in court” is most difficult.

In the book ‘The Upside of Irrationality’ author Dan Ariely has dedicated a chapter to ‘The Case of Revenge: What Makes us Seek Justice’? Ariely doesn’t just talk about the phenomena of shouting and screaming customers—but focuses on why ‘getting back’ becomes an obsession for so many agitated customers. He shares a lot of personal experiences/ experiments on what drives us to spend time, money and energy and even take risks just to make another party suffer. Ariely illustrates with examples how at times revenge can be ‘useful’ too!

Some of Ariely’s insights include:

1. Given the opportunity, most of us are generally more than happy to seek revenge, though few of us take it to the extremes. Revenge is one of the deepest-seated instincts we have. Throughout history, oceans have been spilled and an endless number of lives ruined in an effort to settle scores- even when nothing good could possibly come of it.
2. Trusting societies have tremendous benefits over non-trusting societies, but when the social contract- founded on trust is violated- we sometimes take physical risks to punish the offenders.
3. As consumers encounter offensive service, we become angrier and tend to take it out on the next service provider- whether or not he or she is responsible for our bad experience. The people receiving our emotional outbursts then go on to serve other customers, but because they are in a worse mood themselves, they aren’t in a position to be courteous. And so goes the carousel of annoyance, frustration, and revenge in an ever-escalating cycle.
4. Most companies don’t have a clue about the cause-and-effect relationship between their offending behaviour and the retaliatory urges of their annoyed customers.

I’m sure you’d be livid if I told you to forget the past or just forgive every business or service who caused you tremendous inconvenience, loss or pain. So in the book, Ariely also shares a lot of interesting ‘revenge stories’, how and what customers did to communicate to others about their bad experience. Like the amusing power point presentation, “Yours is a Very Bad Hotel” a businessman made on his horrible experience at a hotel—and which got circulated all over! Or what Ariely himself did because of the terrible service he got from Audi—he wrote a fictional case study for the well-known business magazine Harvard Business Review posing the question “how should Atida Motors (the made up name in place of Audi) have reacted to the customers anger? After the case study got published Ariely mailed a copy to the head of customer service at Audi. He never heard back from them, but he says “I now feel better about the whole thing—though I am not sure whether that’s because I took revenge or because enough time has passed since the incident.”

What have your ‘Angry’ customer moments been like? Perhaps, like me you’ve reacted differently at different times? You ‘Blew-up’ whoever stood in front of you because he represented the inefficient business. Or you decided not to create a scene, but you stayed angry for many hours thinking what you should have done or could do in future.

Ariely propels us to look at more possibilities. And from what I gather he believes being ‘angry’ or ‘livid’ for a short while is absolutely fine; but then we have to ask ourselves ‘Is it worth my time or money’? If the answer is yes, explore all possible options so you get what you deserve. Else if you can come up with a creative way to spread the word about whoever screwed up; then just forget about whatever happened or what all you could do next.