Worst reasonable efforts
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Towards more picturesque speech™
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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 to volunteer liability for gross negligence is, from the muzzle end of the barrel, no more than a commitment not to be outright reckless in the service of one’s customers.
And if we can commit to our best reasonable efforts — why not something less than that? How about our worst reasonable efforts? A 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 clips 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 rigfht, 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 business model of any business that sub-contracts services at scale ones is explicitly based on the delivering as close to the naked minimum requirement as one humanly can without shipping legitimate complaint: on a literal reading to satisfy the formal criteria, and not a whisker more, of the contract.
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.