Worst reasonable efforts

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Few can dress up a nonsense in finery like we goshawks of the law: to “endeavour” is to embark with laudable commitment on an action worthy of a memorialisation by covenant; to “try”, not so much. And a merchant who agrees to be held accountable only should she note be grossly negligent promises little more than refraining from outright recklessness in the performance of her bond.

In the same vein: if we can commit to our best reasonable efforts — why not something less than that? How about our worst reasonable efforts? A sort of cheapest-to-deliver; a high-jump clearance that leaves the bar a-wobble, but not quite on the crash mat; a leave outside off that brushes the stump but does not dislodge the bail.

It sounds like a satire; a gentle perversion of the basic premise of good faith commerce — all right, it is one of those — but still, it is the operating theory behind outsourcing. It is this precise villainy that the service level agreement addresses: the tacit knowledge that any organisation which sub-contracts services at scale measures its internal return by how close to the naked minimum requirements of its contract it can swoop without regularly shipping complaint. The SLA recognises a service provider’s economic imperative to satisfy the literal, formal criteria of a contract and not a whisker more, and so sets out what these are, with deadlines, quantities and auditable standards, in grisly detail.

This is how for-profit insurers work, too, come to think of it: yes, true, we have a fiduciary obligation and we will, if we really must, honour it — but not with any enthusiasm: we will do nothing in our power that we don’t absolutely have to, to discharge it: we will delay, ignore and quibble: we will lose your correspondence, misdirect our responses and at every turn raise spurious objections in the hope of so sapping your will to carry on that you won’t.

We also see worst reasonable efforts from organisations who know their captive customers have little realistic choice — banks, governments, insurers — and those who suppose they’ll not see the same customer again anyway, at least until the exasperation has leeched away — mechanics — and especially, those which are a bit of both, kind low-cost airlines, car rental companies and ticket booking agencies.

So we can giggle, but for much of our rubbish modern lives, worst reasonable efforts are what we can expect from our rubbish modern overlords whose whole model — the presentation of the mediocre as premium — purport to deliver have sacrificed quality, bound and gagged, at the satanic altar of scale. It is they that will send brusque emails from unmonitored accounts; they whose pre-recorded messages assures you your call is important and will be answered within the hour; they who ask you how likely you are to recommend your HR department to your friends and family; they who add booking fees for a performances booked online; they who explain your disc brakes were worn, again, and needed replacing when you took the car in to get the wipers fixed.

See also

• Work-to-rule
• Premium mediocre
• service level agreement
• Gross negligence
• Best reasonable efforts
• Endeavour