“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.” ― Lao Tzu

Early today, a post was made on a local garage sale site about the poor quality of service at a local dining establishment. After many comments, rants and debate, the post was removed because it didn’t follow the guidelines of the garage sale site, but not before it had negatively impacted many residents. In response, a new page was created by other individuals specifically for Raving and Ranting in the community. The question is, does ranting about people mix with social media?

I am only speaking from a business owners perspective to begin with. When someone has a terrible experience, they want to vent about it. Its in our nature. In fact, statistics show that a person is more likely to share their negative experiences than their positive. However, is it appropriate for social media?

Unfortunately, groups devoted to this have had negative impacts on the community. By opening up a forum where people can complain and rant about negative experiences only opens up for one persons opinion, and gives the business no opportunity to correct the situation or even comment professionally on why a situation may have been handled the way it was. Some say, “Sometimes you just have to call the business out to get them to do something,” but is that really the right way to handle it?

Unfortunately sometimes the business owner wasn’t given an opportunity to have their say on what may have made the situation escalate to that in the first place. In fact, in most situations, it has been known that people won’t voice their concerns to the business at all, not giving them any opportunity to correct the situation. However, when given the opportunity, such on a place devoted to ranting, they may be more apt to share their experience, even if the business had no idea what they had done to wrong that person in the first place.

In our community, a page like that could have had a severe negative impact to our community. We are such a small town to begin with, and a bedroom community at that (a community where many people reside, however work in the closest largest city). Many of our businesses are in fact small businesses, run by families who already yearn to have its residents shop local. From the tight knit community of business owners I know, we all try very hard to do our very best, but the truth is, you cannot please everyone. I think we all have tried very hard to do that, but the fact of the matter is, we just simply cannot make everyone happy. But does that mean we don’t have great customer service? No, it doesn’t mean that at all. Does it mean we don’t have an abundant list of happy customers? No, most of us have a very lush group of followers. It means that, sometimes, we just can’t make everyone happy.

Now speaking from a residents perspective..

Within an hour, the page already had its “first real rant.” Although no names were involved, this individual went into grave detail about their issues and concerns, even going as far as naming the location of the neighbor they were distraught with. Others chimed in, things were said, and by process of elimination two individuals had to defend themselves in a situation that could have been done offline. Unfortunatly, my best guess is, that those two individuals are less likely to fix the situation at hand because I bet they now have a sour taste in their mouth. Instead of working together to finding a solution or compromising, we now have a negative impact in the community.

Fortunately with enough individuals raising their concern, this page was brought to rest, but not without casualties.

My point is, that yes, we all need to vent, and we all need someone to listen to our negative experiences, especially if our situation isn’t being resolved. But to what extent do we need to think about how it is impacting our community? Our businesses? Families? At what point do we make a community rise in such upheaval that it starts impacting our children? Small communities, need more than ever, to be brought together. To stand together. To support their local businesses. Because at the end of the day, its those same small businesses that are paying taxes that are paving your roads, supporting your local organizations, and donating their time and money to your fundraising events.