Friday 16 December 2022 – Neo-nihilism in the New Year
Another Christmas, another story about a Hermes courier delivering Christmas presents. I received an email from Hermes (now called Evri, presumably to delete the reputation) on Saturday to confirm the delivery. I was out at the time, but, when I returned home, there was no sign of one. It was possible, I thought, that the courier had left the parcel outside, but I know the box is small enough to fit through the letterbox, so why would he? Nevertheless, I looked in the front garden, behind the bins, I asked a neighbour and even looked in his garden to see if the courier had thrown it over his fence (that’s what Hermes did last year). Nothing. I went back to the email to contact the online shop, the “vendor”, that I had not received the parcel. In it, I was surprised to find a link to evidence from Evri of delivery. Curious to know what “evidence” might constitute given that I know it hadn’t been delivered, I clicked on it. I assumed it would be confirmation of where the box was left like you get from Amazon; “Parcel was handed to resident”, the default delivery “confirmation” on your Amazon order regardless of where they put it. No, it was much more specific. This is what was in the link:
A picture of the courier actually
putting the box into my letterbox. That’s
pretty persuasive evidence. You can see
the left-hand corner of the box going inside.
But this box was not on the floor inside my front door when I got home. Nothing was.
I live alone and no-one had been in my flat. There was no sign of a break-in. If a burglar had got in, all he or she took was
this parcel and caused no damage to my door breaking in, even locking the door
behind them just as I had left it. This
seemed like a case for Jonathan Creek.
I have watched many Jonathan Creeks and I know he would conclude that this picture is not actual evidence of it going in the letterbox. Employing Creek’s technique, I deduced that the only possible scenario left was, after taking a photo of the “evidence” of him putting the parcel through the letterbox, the only way he could take a photo (he can’t take it after it’s gone through), the be-gloved courier must have proceeded to remove the box from the letterbox and launch it as hard as he could down the road. Satisfied with my conclusion, I returned to the vendor’s website.
It is a lot easier to buy something from a shop online than it is to report that it has not been delivered. After a lot of searching and clicking, I managed to find the link to send a message to the vendor to explain that, despite confirmation of delivery from their courier, the order hadn’t been delivered. The bot gave me the option of credit or a replacement. Since it was a Christmas present, I opted for a replacement. Done.
Not done. Sunday evening, the neighbour’s young son, wrapped up in coats and scarves to the point I barely recognised him, knocked on my door, gave me the box and ran back to the warmth of his front door as I shouted “thank you” after him. Now I didn’t need the replacement. As hard as it is to find the option to report “Parcel Delivered Not Delivered” (although there is one because, contradictory to Adam Smith’s theory of wealth creation, companies like Evri get paying clients and then those clients have to accommodate the different scenarios that they inexplicably create), there is not one for “Parcel Confirmed Delivered With Photographic Evidence Of Being Posted Through The Letterbox But Nothing Was Put Through The Letterbox And Replacement Ordered But Somehow The Neighbour Had It.” This must be a new scenario even for Hermes/Evri. So I added my message to the end of the conversation I still had open in a web browser with the bot:
“My order has now turned up so I don’t need a replacement. It seems that, when the Hermes delivery person took a photo of himself posting my order through my letterbox (the photo is in the email I received confirming that delivery and depicts a hand putting the package into my letterbox in my door), he must then have not put the package into the letterbox because a neighbour handed it to me this evening. I assume you and other clients now ask Hermes for photographic evidence of them actually posting deliveries because they can’t be trusted to deliver parcels otherwise but, even when he has it in the letterbox as the evidence depicts, the Hermes delivery person still didn’t know what the next step was (push it through) and, I assume, just threw it on the ground on my front drive where my neighbour saw it and kindly held on to it for me. As well as asking for photo evidence, you need to explain to Hermes how letterboxes work.”
Did the vendors ask for evidence? I mean, who is this evidence for? Who instigated this thing being a thing? Did the vendors all get together and say enough is enough; we can’t keep running a business with internet orders if so many of our customers claim they have not received their order and we have to send a replacement? Or did Hermes say, we need to do something innovative and drastic if we’re going to retain trust and clients: let’s provide photo-evidence and create a new brand so no-one will remember the car crash that was Hermes?
Vendors just can’t make money on their business doing business like that. Did they think it was opportunistic customers trying to get two of some orders because, where there is trust, some bright sparks will take advantage of it with a scam? Or did they think it was Hermes simply not delivering orders and saying they had? In the transactional world in which we think we live, and on which we model our economic policy based on demand-and-supply, profit-maximisation, entrepreneurialism-will-balance-the-economy opportunity, we are conditioned to think it is the former. But here is evidence that the evidence is to keep the couriers in check. Re-branded Evri provides photo-evidence to say to both vendors and customers, hey, look, we did deliver your order! If so, why, then, take a picture of putting my parcel in my letterbox and then take it out again? If he did take it out again for good reason, why post the picture of putting the parcel in the letterbox in the email as evidence? Why not take a picture of what he did do with the parcel as evidence of what he did with the parcel? What opportunity is the courier taking advantage of here by not doing that? What transaction is he satisfying? What is the scam? I don’t think modelling economics or game theory is going to answer what happened here. I can’t even begin to guess.
And then, as if to turn farce into satire, Evri asks for feedback. I got an email asking “How did we do?” What do you mean, how did you do?! You did awfully. You must know this already, why are you asking? A similar thing happens at work with our corporate services. My laptop keeps disconnecting from the VPN and I can’t access the team’s shared folder. I had to turn my laptop off and on again to reconnect to have any access to my work. I had to do this several times a day. I knew it was a problem because it was wasting so much time, but it’s like having a toothache: you know it’s a problem but you keep putting off going to the dentist because you know it is going to be unpleasant. That is what it is like dealing with the IT Service Desk. On 2 December, I went onto the intranet to report the problem but I couldn’t get into the app to log it because I wasn’t connected to the VPN (although I didn’t know this at the time until the Service Desk later told me). Catch 22. So I emailed the Service Desk email address given on the IT Service Desk intranet page, and reported my problem. The reply I got was from the email address: h&fservicedesk@agilisys.co.uk. It said:
“Hi,
“Please contact service desk for troubleshooting.
“Kind regards,
“SD”
I assume SD stands for “Service Desk”. I replied simply:
“Your reply below is as a result of me contacting the service desk?”
This mercifully triggered someone from the Service Desk calling me. True to form, she asked me if I had tried turning my computer off and on again? I explained that that was the problem; that is what I spend most of my day doing. She explained the problem is with Microsoft and that lots of staff had the same problem. As a temporary fix, I can log out of Internet Explorer and reopen it. This will have the same effect as turning the laptop off and on again.
There’s nothing more she could do for me. Fair enough. We are where we are and that’s never a good place to be when you work for a council and have to deal with council corporate services. It will have to do. I’m not sure it’s Bill Gates’ fault, though, because the rest of the corporate world seems to be connected to their companies’ VPNs without complaint. That was a bizarre twist blaming the council’s crap tech support on Microsoft. Then I got an email: “Incident closed. How did we do? Please provide feedback in the link below.”
What do you mean, how did you do?! You did awfully. You must know this already, why are you asking? Does the Service Desk not find it jarring to provide such an obviously rubbish service and grub for compliments? I scored them two stars out of five and commented:
“The Service Desk on the Intranet doesn't work. When I emailed the Service Desk instead, the reply (from h&fservicedesk@agilisys.co.uk) was "Please contact service desk for troubleshooting." When I replied saying, I thought they were the Service Desk, the Service Desk called me and said they didn't know how to fix the problem but here's a workaround which you have to administer numerous times per day.”
Today, two weeks later, a Service Management Apprentice replied to me about my feedback:
“Dear Paul,
“…
“The Service Desk are [sic] provided through a third-party company (Agilisys) with the call logging system be [sic] hosted on their domain [sic] there will sometimes be emails from the Agilisys address.
“I apologise for any confusion, but this is a legitimate [sic].
“…
“Thank you again for taking the time to provide feedback. We welcome both positive and negative feedback and will always use it to improve our service.
“Kind regards,
“[Service Management Apprentice]”
What? I couldn’t let her get away with her saying the confusion was my fault. I replied:
“Hi [Service Management Apprentice],
“In the spirit of feedback being useful, my point [in my feedback] is not that I was confused about who the Service Desk was but that the Service Desk was confused about who the Service Desk was, at least in their interaction with me.
“Paul."
It is this lack of interest in doing even a passable job of which I am envious. If you haven’t heard, nihilism is the new trend in the workplace. Who cares? The IT Service Desk Apprentice Manager doesn’t. The courier certainly doesn’t. Hermes/Evri doesn’t. And neither does Gymshark, the vendor in this case. I didn’t commission Evri, Gymshark did. It’s their business. They’re the ones who have to provide replacements for every order Evri misplaces/throws on the ground. On Monday, Emma Beddington reported in The Guardian “a dense, pillowy fog of meh enveloping the globe.” It is this example of freedom and not caring given by the Evri courier and council Apprentice Manager which I find deeply appealing even if it does go against my early-formed instinct to want to help people.
Obvious
plant on Twitter: "Why Don't You Just Give Up. Available on eBay.
Referencing Wendy Syfret’s 2021 book The Sunny Nihilist, she describes “this ‘nothing
matters philosophy’, appealingly, as ‘a balm for a group burning out over
exceptionalism, economic downturns [and] performative excellence…’” Exceptionalism? I’m not sure I agree with her because I doubt
anyone has ever thought of Hermes couriers, or IT helpdesks in general, as
exceptional and performatively excellent.
In fact, if you throw mobile phone call centre staff into the mix, you
have the holy trinity of source data for Tory members’ Britannia Unchained findings. However, in the spirit of exceptionalism,
performative excellence and the economy, I met the new Assistant Director for
Economic Development on Monday to discuss Social Value and S106. After six months of hiatus and, I assume
hibernation, since the last AD left, my line manager and Head of Service woke
up and got back to his day £69k pa job of being PA to the AD and arranged the
meeting and drafted an agenda based on all the points I gave him (and watched
him scribble down without commenting on them himself). Reading the agenda before the meeting this
morning that he sent at 2:57am (a common technique of sucking up by seeing to
be doing work out of normal working hours taken to an extreme by a seasoned professional
senior council officer), I have to give it to him that he did a good job of
succinctly capturing the essence of my rants.
I assume he didn’t draft the agenda in the early hours of this morning
because, why would he(?), but set the alarm to wake up and hit the send button
because, otherwise it would be a mess of foggy thought and typos. But this was clear and well-written.
He and I
have gone through (or rather he has endured my ranting at him in our one-to-one
meetings he still feels a duty to book in the calendar, and even attend some of
them) the council’s ambivalence towards asking big business to contribute to
the places in which they build things, and receive public money, agendas he
heads up and employs me to manage, but the moss has had him for the last six
months and I have not received even a “meh” from him in support of the
governance and enforcement capturing these measures require. But,
despite him now revitalised by his new PA role and getting meetings arranged, I
wasn’t expecting much more than neo-nihilism from the new AD, and old AD and
senior manager of another local authority which eventually decided they didn’t
want him. This opinion is a prejudice of mine but at least it’s
based on some sort of logic. It’s now time to see if that prejudgement
is flawed. (That wasn’t written in my manager’s agenda).
Art is pain. Life is suffering. Principles are punishment. But I’m not sure I can be bothered any more if the council just doesn’t care about imposing planning and procurement obligations on big business, or simply doesn’t want to. I wrote above about Turning Point’s contract renewal (see When Good Services are Lumped with Bad People), that it had to happen before Christmas or the whole thing has to go back out to retender anyway. But I never did hear from this commissioning team again. I assume the “vendor”, Turning Point, continued delivering the service. And the team must have authorisation to pay them, at least until the new contract is procured for 2023. So I assume the Contracts Assurance Board (CAB) has approved this. Which means the commissioning team sent them a report. I certainly didn’t comment in it. CAB must be sanctioning contracts, and their extensions, without recourse to its Social Value policy anymore. Curious, on 12 November, I emailed the administrator for CAB and asked her to send me “a list of the contracts that have been allowed to be awarded by CAB since the start of June this year” (since the previous AD left and Economic Development has had no representation at CAB). She sent me a long list of contracts awarded, most of which I had never seen and, I assume, giving their suppliers no obligations to contribute social value measures. Certainly none of these commissioning teams have registered these contracts on the council’s social value register (Social Value Portal). Although it is policy and social value is a thing democratically elected councillors have chosen to do, if senior officers simply ignore it, there is not a lot I can do about it. So why care? Expending that emotion is not going to affect senior council officers’ decisions. Or perhaps I should expend the emotion anyway if for no other reason than to challenge the passivity and indecision? Aldous Huxley suggested “Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the inclemency of life?” But this isn’t art; this is council business. No matter the inclemency of stressing about something I want to control, it is a moot point if that something is not up to me. I can’t affect anything if senior managers are going to let lucrative contracts unconditionally. If so, the inevitable outcome for me is to go into the new year with little responsibility and work. I get paid either way. Why fight it, at least any more than I have done to date? It is up to the AD for Economic Development to pick up the baton and affect things if he wants now that he is here. And now his expensive PA has arranged a meeting for he and I to discuss what he wants, with these points on the agenda. Let’s see if he is expecting performative excellence from me, or if I can join the courier and IT Service Desk apprentice manager in apathy and entropy.
In the meeting, I agreed with the AD that he will represent the team at CAB so that there is governance of social value in procurements (albeit I am to attend with him because he doesn’t know what he is doing yet). However, he is reluctant to “take ownership” of the enforcement of social value measures delivered in contracts, whether through contract management or legal enforcement of the contract once it ends if these key performance indicators have not been delivered. Instead, he wants to retain the ability to “blame” Corporate Procurement if delivering the council’s Social Value policy doesn’t work. “This is politics with a small p” he explained, “a strategy to not take ownership” of effecting the policy when responsibility could be lain at the door of another department.
In my one-to-one with my HoS the following day, he asked me what I thought of the meeting with the new AD. I said I am glad he intends to do something about social value and has taken all my points and suggested actions but that, what he said about “strategy” and “politics with a small p” seems unnecessary; it’s not that complicated. But they are hired to do complicated and strategic (I didn’t say this bit) whether it is or not, otherwise why have those layers of management? I also didn’t go into the role of his layer of management. In the meeting, as the AD mulled them over, I thought my HoS has done nothing with my points and suggested actions for the six months interregnum between ADs except to arrange the meeting with the new AD and me, and write the agenda (which were all my points). This confirms his layer of management as PA to the AD.
At the same time, Corporate Procurement, to whom the AD wants to have responsibility for Social Value, doesn’t know what social value is beyond the conceptual (if that). For example, earlier in the year, they accepted a bid that proposed one week of an apprenticeship. What is a one-week apprenticeship?! There is no reason why a corporate service should know the details of managing businesses providing employment and skills opportunities, business support, community initiatives and reversing climate change, but they don’t have to be this ignorant! Surely, in lieu of asking for my expertise as an Employment & Skills Officer, is it not common sense that a proposal of a one-week apprenticeship is not something a business is actually considering doing?
In the meantime, my job and whether I have any responsibilities to manage social value in the new year is yet to be determined. The ball is in my AD’s court so to speak. And he is trying to hit the ball into the AD for Corporate Procurement’s court. Extending this analogy, the ball that is my responsibility is being hit by me into my AD’s court with whom I am forced to play tennis who, in turn, is whacking it into a completely different court with someone who doesn’t know how to play tennis. Or owns a racquet. If I don’t see the ball returned next year, I will have no responsibility for social value. It will be time to lie down and let the moss reclaim me.
P.S. What’s a VPN?
Comments
Post a Comment