Excuse Me, I'd Like to File a Complaint
Let me talk to your (very ancient) manager, please.
Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. Before getting into today’s fact, I want to tell you about Birby Studios.
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Now, onto the fact!
The oldest customer complaint dates back to 1750 BC, written on a tablet in ancient Mesopotamia.
You’d think that the rise of sites like Yelp and literally any social media platform was the nadir of customer complaints. And yet, folks have been upset about transactions for far longer than that.
The “complaint tablet to Ea-Nāṣir” — which you can see at the British Museum or here — was written by a customer named Nanni to a merchant named Ea-nāṣir. It uses Akkadian cuneiform and is believed to be the oldest known complaint in writing.
Ea-nāṣir had gone to Dilmun to buy copper and came back to Mesopotamia to sell it (not unlike dropship merchants of today who buy cheap items and resell them on Amazon). He had an agreement with Nanni to sell him copper ingots. Nanni, too busy to handle the transaction himself, sent a servant to do the deal.
The servant probably didn’t have as keen an eye for copper quality, and upon returning, Nanni said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “What is this garbage?!”
Nanni, upset that he had received subpar copper, immediately took to a tablet and started scribbling. He said the copper delivery was the wrong grade, called out issues with another delivery, and claimed Ea-nāṣir was rude to his servant.
Perhaps the best part of all of this is that the tablet, discovered in a Babylonian house in the ruins of Ur, wasn’t the only complaint. The house, which very likely belonged to Ea-nāṣir, contained other tablets that also spoke ill of Ea-nāṣir’s dealings and business acumen.
That’s a good lesson to remember. We all might screw up something now and again, but at least we don’t have an entire house full of people criticizing us in writing.