I Give This Article… Five Freaking Stars!!!
We are living in a golden age of confidence. Not competence, mind you. Confidence. Two very different things.
We’ve collectively decided that a strongly held opinion is basically the same as knowledge. When someone casually throws in “I recently read something about…” my BS-alarm bells start ringing - they then launch half-remembered ideas from a podcast they had on while doing something else into the conversation as if they were established facts.
And weirdly, the people who actually know what they’re talking about? Increasingly met with suspicion. Why should the expert’s opinion carry more weight than mine? Especially when I can Google something in thirty seconds and find an article that agrees with me.
(I say this as a pharmacist who spent four years at university, and who still has to gently explain to patients that maybe the social media influencer isn’t the most reliable guide to their health - and no, Goji berries will not fix your blood pressure, acne and gout so you can stop taking your medication.)
Enter: The Google Review
Nowhere has the Age of Confident Opinion found a more perfect home than the one-star review. A way to settle a score, punish a business for a single bad moment - often with zero context, zero conversation, and zero attempt to fix the problem first.
We’ve had our share at Roslyn Pharmacy. A wait that felt too long on a day we were slammed. A miscommunication that - had someone simply mentioned it at the counter - we could have sorted in thirty seconds. Instead: one star. Posted from the car park.
And here’s the thing - I get it. I’ve left a one star review before. We’ve all done it. I’m not proud.
Google review culture - where every experience is instantly rateable and permanently on the record - makes us all a little bit meaner. A little more transactional. A little quicker to judge and slower to extend the benefit of the doubt.
And small businesses - your local pharmacy, your favourite café, your bakery - we absorb this disproportionately. One bad review can take months of goodwill with it. It sits there, permanent and prominent, while a hundred positive experiences go unrecorded, because people only really feel moved to write something when they’re unhappy.
Next time something isn’t quite right- try talking to someone first. Actually talking. In real life. You might be surprised what happens.
We’re not perfect. No business is. But I can promise you that the team at Roslyn Pharmacy genuinely want to fix things when they go wrong. We just need the chance.
And if, on the other hand, someone has helped you, listened to you, gone a little bit out of their way for you? Maybe write that down too. Because those stories matter just as much - arguably more - and they’re the ones that tend to go untold. And there’s oodles of evidence that showing a little gratitude makes you feel better too.
We’d love it if you left us a Google review. Just maybe not from the car park.
Andy and the team at Roslyn Pharmacy - Dunedins Friendliest Pharmacy