Feedback
Posted by Chevalier on January 7, 2009
The whole process of P4P reviews and comparable forms of feedback has always interested me. There is a certain ambivalence about them, from both sides of the aisle, or a difficulty in coming to terms with exactly what they represent.
It particularly stands out — for me, anyway — in the exaggerated reactions to what may be relatively minor negative comments, sometimes focusing greatly on those rather than on the review/feedback as a whole.
One example, that a lady posted publicly about on ASPD a year or two ago:
I was horrified when a Hobbyist (whom I respected a great deal and wanted to impress) emailed me after our first session to tell me that my incall had the stench of cigarette smoke. Since then, I have been more carefull keep my incall more freshly scented (the Hobbyist who wrote me the email visits frequently and has not commented negatively about the smell since).
I think she was talking about me, because I did comment to her about smoking, although I put it in somewhat milder terms that her reaction suggests:
I had a good time today. I’m very sensitive to smoke, but of course I knew you smoked going in — just something to deal with — and everything else was fine.
I considered a minor comment in passing by email, and she didn’t say anything at the time – I understood it was a negative comment, but ”horrified”? (I did, by the way, go back and see her a second time a week later. And many more times after that.)
I wrote a review of another lady that mentioned, in passing, that: (1) she had implants, and (2) you could tell, although she took efforts to minimize it, that she still smoked. I indicated that both were slight negatives from my perspective but that overall it was a great experience, and I thought I was reasonably tactful. (Based on the replies to the review, other people also interpreted the review as very high praise.) She read the review — at the time, as I recall, the Comments section was not restricted and anyone could read it — and was very unhappy. I had been seeing her somewhat regularly and all at once I was frozen out, for several months. (She eventually got over it. I think.)
Both of those times, the reaction took me by surprise. Sure, some of that is because of typical male cluelessness. Or perhaps an even stronger version of cluelessness in my case. 
But some of it was because of different perspectives, beyond just the difference between man and woman or between the person making a comment and the person the comment is about.
Some (not all) guys, by the time they get around to a review or comparable feedback, have made a mental switch. They’re not thinking — well, not entirely — in the context of an intimate relationship.
I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable publicly posting even a discreet description of the BCD portions of a date with a girlfriend. Hell, I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable publicly posting even a discreet description of a one-night stand, other than in very general terms and without naming her. OK, I’m an old fogey and perhaps a bit repressed or a prude, but that sort of thing is private — whether negative or positive. Not the sort of thing I would want to share. Neither would I comment to a lady whom I was dating, at least until we knew each other very well, that I was bothered by her implants or that she had bad breath. Criticism just doesn’t seem to fit well with that intimate relationship. You might express it (tactfully) to a spouse, but a boyfriend/girlfriend that you’ve only been seeing a short time? Probably not.
When I post a public review, or provide private feedback, though, I try to switch gears, to thinking about P4P as a business. Yes, P4P does mix the personal with business, but we post those public comments because of the business aspect, not the personal. I am recommending a quality business and/or giving recommendation (or warning) to potential customers. Just as the lady requests a public review, rather than just being satisfied with private comments, because it is helpful for her business.
Yet, because of the intimate components of the P4P relationship, we can’t completely avoid thinking of a review/feedback as personal as well.
Certainly the ladies can’t maintain a business-only perspective. For the most part, anyway, a positive review is not only “oh, good publicity, that will help” or “great, another satisfied customer” but also a warm feeling that the client likes her. And a negative or lukewarm review is not only “uh oh, I need to work on that, to improve my business” but also hurt feelings of being rejected. We don’t expect civilian businesses to take reviews/feedback quite that personally (although even they can’t avoid it entirely), and it certainly isn’t reasonable to expect that escorts would be able to.
Guys may be able to do a somewhat better job of keeping a business perspective on all this than the ladies. Some guys better than others, as is evident if you read many reviews; some turn into virtual love letters. But none of us can keep the business perspective completely. When I write reviews, I try to keep a very objective attitude. Sometimes I manage that reasonably well, but not entirely, and other times . . . well, if I really like the lady, how can that not come through in the tone of the review?
I imagine that duality is one of the reasons that many guys feel uncomfortable with the idea of writing reviews. How do you simultaneously maintain the objectivity appropriate for evaluating a business with the personal feelings associated with what is an intimate relationship? How do you balance those?
And I imagine that duality is one of the reasons that some escorts struggle with the whole idea of reviews. They may want or need the positive word-of-mouth advertising for the business, but they cringe at the idea of public discussion of what happened privately. (And, yes, there are lots of other reasons that many escorts are ambivalent about, if not downright opposed to, reviews.) That may also affect the idea of directly asking a client to post a review. It’s hard enough for a civilian business to ask a customer for a recommendation to someone else, but much harder for some women to ask someone with whom she’s been intimate to mention her — in detail — to friends, let alone hundreds of strangers. (I can still recall one lady who was obviously extremely nervous and uncomfortable asking me to write a review, even after a few visits when it was evident that any review would be very positive and even after I indicated my willingness to write a review if she wanted one.) Hell, some civilians feel uncomfortable about the very idea of a friend talking about them in general, non-intimate terms to a potential blind date.
We might all, escorts and clients, be better off if we could just flip a switch mentally and think “this is business, not personal” when it came to reviews or comparable feedback. Some do a reasonably good job of that, but many can’t.
lehuh said
Yet another proverbial can of worms…
With respect to your smoke comment and the ladies’ translation – don’t you just shake your head when someone shoots themself in the foot?
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Reviews are a pain to write and you pretty much spelled out why. I have the same difficulty writing a p4p review that you note regarding a review of a girlfriend, which is why I just made it a policy to never mention activities and try to describe the environment and atmosphere and her contribution to that.
I’m not sure what else to write. My frame of reference consists of dates and girlfriends and a few one night stands. When my experience with an escort is worse than any experience to which I can compare it, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to post in the review. Except for the last review I posted, most fall into that category, a few have reached, OK compared to sex with someone else I’ve never met (if it’s a first appointment, for which my expectations aren’t real high.) When appointments 2 or 3 are just like appointment 1, I give up. Being that negative in a review of someone who is apparently superwoman to lots of other reviewers, is kind of hard to justify, so
this is also a good reason to avoid saying anything about specific activities. If the atmosphere and environment were very nice, the activities qualify as GFE, then I can write a review that includes a physical description, whether she’s GFE or not, which addresses the cbj/bbbj issue that is a big deal and I can say something about her personality. In most cases, the ladies were all very personable and likeable, so that’s easy.
That’s the best I can do. Since I only write one if asked, I can’t really decline the request very easily. Actually, I try to make it easy to ask, since I know it’s probably not easy to do that.
Chevalier said
Always a difficult question. I try to balance what the lady would want known against what readers would want to know . . . but with respect to the latter, it’s really closer to what I think readers closer to my interests/philosophy would want to know. I suspect a lot of readers would like a very graphic, blow-by-blow description. I think it may have been Sarah Summers who once referred to that type of review as “wank fodder.” Unless that’s specifically what the lady wants, I wouldn’t write a review that way because that’s not what I want from a review.
If those who write the Penthouse Letters style of review don’t write reviews to please me, why should I write reviews to please them?
If the staff doesn’t think the review is very useful, they can always reject it for credit. Of course, if I didn’t have Lifetime BCD, I might be more concerned about that.
—————–
The reluctance to ask for a review used to surprise me a little bit. That’s the sort of thing — although more often a referral or a recommendation to another potential client — that a lot of service businesses just have to learn how to do, but providers seem incredibly reluctant to do so. Perhaps the whole issue of separating the business from the personal.
The instance I mentioned in the original entry? That occurred on my third visit to see her. I’d already made very clear (at least I thought I had) that I really enjoyed my time with her, so there shouldn’t be any significant worries about the recommendation or the content of the review. She always seemed very confident and self-assured to me. She was very popular in general, with a lot of great reviews. In a previous email, I had told her that I would be glad to write a review, she just needed to ask. And still . . . she sat there kind of scrunched up, almost cringing, eyes down rather than looking me in the eye, a catch in her voice, some hemming and hawing, and a very meek “if you wouldn’t mind, I would appreciate a review.” With an expression on her face like she expected me to reject the request or even yell at her.
At least, that’s my memory of the occasion. It was over three years ago, and in my old age, my memory ain’t always accurate.
lehuh said
You’ve described a phenomenon with which I am very familiar, so I think I know precisely why she acted that way.
When I was teaching physics (esp. to freshman and sophomores), it was very difficult to get students to get students to come by my office to ask for help when they had questions. Your description of the lady in question is the same. I first had to convince students that it was ok to come by my office because it was part of my job. The ones who eventially did, followed the same pattern. They would knock lightly on the door, walk in looking at the floor and quietly say, “I hate to bother you and I know you’re going to think this is a stupid question and I’m probably doing something dumb, but…”
When people do that, it means that for whatever reason, they feel intimidated, they are worried about what you think of them and feel like they shouldn’t be wasting your time.
Don’t underestimate the difficulty in convincing someone otherwise. Just telling them it’s ok, even repeatedly doesn’t usually work. With students, I always had to explain why the question wasn’t dumb, that the material was difficult, etc. before they loosened up enough to feel comfortable. It was most evident in smarter students, who tried to get it on their own first and realized they might have overlooked something obvious and/or they didn’t try hard enough.
I think your experience is similar. You have a lot of education, you appear to read a lot (and by that, I mean the sorts of things most people would consider to require too much thought to appreciate) and you can probably discuss most anything at a level above the level of idle chatter that usually passes for knowing something at cocktail parties. For whatever reason was important to her, your opinion her beyond her ability to give a good blowjob might have been important. Most people lack the ability to take an observation of
something they do as different from criticism of them, personally. Try finding someone you know who does something unusual, like chews pen caps and mention it. Most likely he/she will assume you think it’s annoying instead of being merely an observation.
I know the above is a little disjoint, but getting connecting the dots was taking a lot of writing, so I hope it isn’t too sketchy to fill in some gaps. Also, saying exactly what I think is going on would almost certainly be taken negatively by some readers rather than being seen as an observation.
The only way around the issue (in this case, the reviews) is to make sure you get the point across that you really would like to write one if she really wants you to write one. I think it also helps to give her some idea of the kind of review you would write. Not in terms of good or bad, but what you will write about her. I always emphasize that I’m going to write about her as a person. That seems unusual enough and is more in line with what I think most escorts would like to think clients care about that most would probably ask. Most have been more inclined to ask after I explain what I’m going to write about.
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BTW
I know my last review probably seemed excessively positive, vague, and perhaps delusional, but that really did describe my experience as well as I could and still feel comfortable.
Chevalier said
I understand the possibility of intimidation — although she’s a pretty sharp cookie, and very articulate, herself — on a rational level. But it still surprises me when it pops up. Either a blindspot of mine, or a cognitive failure.
I guess part of that is that I’ve usually assumed (not necessarily with good basis) that in P4P the ladies are more confident than the clients. They’re typically more attractive than we are; they’re often more knowledgable about the protocols and the how-to’s of P4P (because they engage in it more than we do); we chose them rather than the other way around; the session is limited by their boundaries; they seem more in control; etc. Of course, that assumption may be just a reflection of my own intimidation by young, beautiful women rather than a valid prediction of the relative comfort levels.
Part of it, too, may be an assumption that physical intimacy is the great equalizer. If you’ve already had sex three or four times, wouldn’t that weaken the intimidation factor? (One way that P4P would be different from your teaching experience — at least, I think so.
)
Part of it is probably non-P4P related subconscious perception bias — “I don’t seem intimidating to myself” (who among us does?) translates into “I’m not intimidating” or “why should anyone be intimidated by me???”
Again, I’m not arguing that she wasn’t intimidated, or that many escorts aren’t intimidated by their clients. It’s just a blindspot/cognitive error on my part. It just doesn’t seem reasonable — even though it is.