Worst reasonable efforts: Difference between revisions

}}Few can dress up a nonsense in finery like we [[Legal eagle|goshawks of the law]]: to “use [[endeavour|endeavours]]” is to embark with laudable commitment on an action worthy of a memorialisation by [[covenant]]; to “try to do something”, not so much, despite amounting to the same thing.  

And a merchant who accepts responsibility only for her [[gross negligence]] promises little more than forbearance from outright [[recklessness]] in the performance of her bond. Yet counsel on either side (of the bargain; not the Atlantic!) nod along as if this is somehow okay.

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 that 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.  

Therefore, the [[SLA]] recognises the service provider’s economic imperative to satisfy the literal, formal criteria of a contract and not a whisker more and purports to neutralise it, with a grisly intercessional catalogue of deadlines, quantities and auditable standards.

Worst reasonable efforts is how for-profit [[insurance|insurers]] work, too, come to think of it, whose business model might have been formed by the following monologue: “we may have a [[Uberrimae fidei|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: we will delay, ignore and quibble: we will lose correspondence, misdirect responses and at every turn raise spurious objections in the hope of so sapping your will to carry on that you won’t.”<ref>Why, by the way, aren’t mutual insurance companies, owned and run for the benefit of the insured, more of a thing? I have never understood this.</ref>

We also see worst reasonable efforts from organisations who know their captive customers have little realistic choice — banks, governments, insurers — and those — mechanics —  who suppose they’ll not see the same customer again anyway, at least until the exasperation of its last encounter has mostly leeched awayand especially, those which are a bit of both: 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 [[Premium mediocre|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 [[Net promoter score|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.

And so we tolerate [[worst reasonable efforts]], each time taking mental notes for the forthcoming revolution, and