This is an urgent message. I repeat, this is an urgent message. I have good reason to believe that our home country may be under attack. Be on high alert and vigilant at all times. It is possible that the population of the United Kingdom is being slowly transformed into robots. Please be watchful for symptoms in your fellow countrymen, which may include failure to engage in non scripted conversation, repetitious and non targeted responses to specific questions and an unnatural prevalence of the words ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’. This is likely to occur initially among service providers and office workers but is very dangerous and liable to spread. Little is known as yet about the prognosis of this disease but it is believed to lead to the gradual erosion of the ability to listen, extreme cynicism, leading to depression and apathy, and the extinction of the human understanding widely known as empathy. An epidemic may cause politicians to refer to ‘society’ with a wistful vagueness, to a re-definition of the word ‘community’ to mean simply ‘subsidised’ or ‘a haphazard and costly construction covered in grafitti’ and, in the as yet uninfected, an even greater tendency to become nostalgic about the ‘war time spirit’. There is a rather bitter irony in this last consequence as the transformation from human to Cyberperson, and the accompanying loss of compassion or understanding is likely to lead to a decreased sense of the value of human life, an increased urge to acquire objects or land masses and, eventually, war. Or, even worse, the inability to relate to anybody who is not in Eastenders.
I will pause the rant to explain. The ability to connect via internet being a mixed blessing, I recently received an email from a service provider attached to a beer company with whom I hold a tiny number of shares. (One, to be exact). Before leaving the UK I had contacted the beer company to let them know I would be travelling and therefore that my address was changing. I gave them the UK address I will be using to collect post and explained, while I was at it that I had recently got married and changed my name. The beer company replied warmly and enthusiastically, congratulating me both on marriage and travel plans, and immediately updating their records. The email exchange took four emails in all, including both sides wishing the other well for the next year. Unfortunately, the service provider also needed to be contacted separately. I sent them an email explaining the situation, and providing both old and new address, received an automated reply to state that they were dealing with my query and thought no more of it.
A little later I received an email from the service provider advising me very formally that I would need to send my original or solicitor certified copy of my marriage certificate and my share certificate and print off, fill out, sign and post back a form advising them of my change of address. I was in Cambodia when I received this so I replied explaining that I understood the requirement but had put both certificates in safe storage before leaving, and did not have easy access to the post. Could they take a scanned copy of my marriage certificate over email perhaps, or if not, we could leave the change of name until I arrived home but was there any way they could update my address online.
I received a block of text, copied and pasted from the previous email, which repeated the requirements verbatim. I reiterated my dilemma.
I received almost the same block of text but with a slight tweak noting that I could also change my address by telephoning the office in the UK within the usual office hours. I would need to quote my shareholder number which I could find on my share certificate, which I should have to hand when phoning.
I reiterated with rather less patience, that I was travelling, and simply asked that they confirm it would be OK for me to change everything later, and perhaps put a note next to my details to the effect that a change of address was pending, so that important documents were not sent to an address I was no longer at.
I received the block of text again, with the addition of another standard paragraph which mentioned I could change my address online. I attempted this. The first information it required was my shareholder number. Which I could find on my share certificate. There was no other way it would allow me to identify myself.
I am afraid, and slightly ashamed, but I gave in and enquired simply whether the emailer was an automated service and was it possible for the enquiry to be escalated to a human. Or perhaps I wasn’t quite that sarcastic, but I did enquire about whether the replies were automated. And frankly, it was a genuine question.
I received a response from someone who gave his full name at the bottom of the email and who noted that he was treating my email as a formal complaint and as such, was responding personally. He demonstrated actual understanding of my situation and clearly and specifically responded to my questions, essentially noting that there wasn’t much I could do until I got back. I responded with a rush of warmth – I deeply appreciated his response which was polite but specific, I understood the requirements and was happy to wait to update them, given it was the only real way to do it. I said I hadn’t wanted to get anyone into trouble, did not intend to complain in my ill thought through rush of frustration, and explained I had felt saddened by the impersonal nature of the response, thanking him for his more personal email. I wished both him and whoever originally had the misfortune to receive my original cross sounding email, a merry Christmas, and said I understood that they must be very busy and could not send four pages worth of chatter in each email. I was by that time in Thailand. A full two months had passed and more than ten emails had been sent to accomplish nothing.
I received a formal response, reiterating verbatim his advice in respect of how to update my details. It neither acknowledged, nor returned my Christmas wishes, and made no reference to anything else in my email. I admit that it gave the lie to my show of empathy in acknowledging the service provider’s time constraints, but it was the most depressing exchange since leaving England. I began, fervently, to look forward to my time in Langkawi, when I would be staying the middle of the jungle without phone or internet connection. I took back my original complaint about the Doctor Who series, that it did not provide enough new villains and kept reverting too often back to the Cybermen because now, I thought, I understand the coded message the makers are trying to tell me. The UK is being gradually transformed into cyber men.
It begins with the lower paid and lower skilled end of the service and office industries. Gradually thinking, breathing, feeling, chattering human brains are replaced with a mechanical component which can respond only in formal script, and without deviation. In the less well crafted models a deviation by the actual human customer, from the set scripted options may actually blow fuses, leaving the malfunctioning cyber brain simply mournfully repeating a certain phrase, as if stuck. Gradually, however, though dealing with such cyber service, users can be tempted to choose the cyber upgrade, until eventually whole populations have volunteered for the removal of their warmth and emotion, in the pursuit of efficiency, money and power. They are, like the Doctor Who villains, unaware of their own transformation, still believing they are human, unable to respond emotionally to the brutal extraction of everything that is spontaneous or which might create anything but a standard connection between others of their species.
And it’s Christmas.
In case you are wondering at this rather impassioned diatribe, this train of thought is born out of more than simply a frustrating chain of emails. M loses his bank card and speaks to an operator. As he tries to explain that he is abroad and needs some other option of picking it up, she simply repeats, monotone, that she ‘can only send bank cards to the registered address’.
The registered address….the registered address….she makes no response to M’s explanations as to why sending the card to his parents in the UK will not help him. It is as if she hasn’t heard.
Another organisation, which is actually automated, doesn’t work for a transaction M tries to make without explanation. When he tries again his account locks. He emails a person, noting the account is locked and stating that he will input the relevant identifying info to unlock it, but asking in the meantime, if they could look into the cause of the original issue. The person responds to inform him that the account is locked and that he needs to input the relevant identifying info to unlock it.
It’s funny. But it’s not. Admittedly all these examples are to do with the exchange of some sort of financial information and these sorts of organisations are notorious for over formality in the interests of security. The trouble is, long before I left I was seeing it more and more everywhere. Cashiers respond with surprise and a certain alarm if I make conversation while at the check-out, people who I smile at in the street just stare at me, even bar tenders, those notorious for being ready to listen to their punters’ stories, glass and tee towel I hand, look confused and ask me to repeat my order if I say anything to them that isn’t, ‘two pints of that, please’. In the office people who know me, pass me and say ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ They are still walking past me and out of the door as they say it. I have no time to reply to the question and I realise, suddenly, that no response is expected. Social conversation is now not always expected to be conversation.
There are several points to note. One is the notable exceptions, the lovely chatty man in the wine shop, the lady in the charity shop who knows my name, the post man who put a card through our door to congratulate us when we got married and who delivered our wedding rings with obvious delight. The other is that there is a strange dichotomy in this move towards formality. At work, for example, I am surrounded by people who are warm and interesting. It happens to be a part of the business which is replete with ‘characters’ and personality. People are not engaging verbally with me solely in set phrases and formal jargon. I have, however, been asked several times to change my email style to make it more formal. I don’t use text speak or make ambiguous jokes, but I do woffle on a bit, and there’s a lot of ‘hi how are you, hope the kids are well..’ etc. I have never been asked to be less friendly, but there is a need, which I too can identify and admit, to get a little less verbose when emailing busy people. I have no problem with this request and genuinely am trying to make my communications clearer. Woffle does rather muddy the waters and not everyone has time to pick through it to get to the point. What I note with alarm though, is that there is an increasing number of courses and materials to teach you the art of formal communication. The sole aim, it seems, is to get the information across clearly, make the thing you want the other person to do very clear – and that’s it. Relationship building is an acknowledged gem in office work, and yet there is nothing about this in these courses. My boss makes rather more sense in that he recommends that we do this as a department workship style, everyone being better at different things. If you combine X’s directness which can sometimes be misunderstood as rudeness with my fluffy openness which can seem a little too frivolous and W’s ability to be precise and clear no matter how complex the subject – you’d have the perfect communicator and you might just avoid becoming the robot the courses might have you churned out as.
But the trouble is when this happens outside of the office, as with the service provider emailing me about the shares. Office speak can be carefully formal for the sake of efficiency in an office where hopefully there is also a sense of comradery and the odd chat at the water cooler to back it up with something living and breathing. But in my leisure time I don’t want to receive an email which is so faceless and characterless I don’t believe it’s not automated.
The trick, quite obviously, is to adjust your style depending on your audience, which is a skill people are consistently trying to learn, or endorsing. I guess what I am railing against is the idea that the most efficient communication is formal and featureless. I just don’t believe that’s true.
How much easier do you find it to understand not only the person themselves but what they need from you, if you have some inkling, if only vague, of the kind of person they are. In fact, all you need is some inkling that they are a person at all and you won’t need to wade through guards and defensive tactics you’ve put up by reflex because you can’t empathise with a robot. When the person who is lecturing makes a mistake, drops a pen, laughs or does something normal and human amid their spiel I genuinely tune in again. I listen better. If I get a business email which opens by commenting on how slowly the week is going, how great the weekend was, even the weather, I smile to myself and focus better on the rest.
“Begin with a joke”, they tell you if you are about to do some public speaking, “because it takes people a little while to tune in.” Yes. And also because it makes people listen. How many of us really feel we can access a wall of information thrown directly at us as soon as we sit down in a lecture theatre? The fact is we are human. Why do we believe that the most efficient communication for humans is to emulate a robot?
The fact is, we seem to know this and always to be at odds with ourselves. We send emails which may be so formal as to appear inhuman yet no longer shy away from signing our full name at the bottom. If we wish to put that much distance between ourselves and the recipient why don't we go the whole way and sign ourselves just with our job title, or as Mr or Mrs?
We identify certain regional accents as sounding friendlier, and base our call centres in these regions but don't train the operators to deviate from a script.
Perhaps the most odd dichotomy is the way we interact with our colleagues. We spend thousands of pounds on team building days outside the office, but very rarely invest in or encourage this on a daily basis within work. Is this why we so frequently use alcohol as our mediator, because we have spent so long instilling a sense of formality only to require it to be unravelled later in set situations?
I have a friend who works for an arts company which should be genuinely inspiring to work for. And do it is. But he came across the business plan for the company, which set out its strategic aims and aspirations in a slide set untended to be shared with all staff, at all levels, so that they could work towards these aims together. But, being a business plan and therefore a business document, it was written in business speak. The majority of people found it hard to find substance beneath the often rather woolly office speak about 'embedding excellence' and 'ensuring a commensurate standard of service' and it left most people none the wiser and certainly uninspired. Never, said my friend, had he seen such exciting aims communicated in such a deadening way. How much easier it would have been to charge the imagination and energy of the work force if it had talked about 'making it a place people raved about after they left' or 'filling the customer service parts with little thoughtful touches that would make customers feel really special'. Or even, if the aims were intended to be vague, to just 'be really fantastic'?
I have worked for service providers in a professional capacity and found that the contract drawn up with the customer and then handed to me as the expert they were hiring was so full of business buzz words that I couldn't quite grasp what I had actually been engaged to do for them.
Why, when we, as a species, use language as a key communicator, do we go to such lengths to avoid communicating with it?
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