On Freedom of E-Mail Expression

I write a weekly commentary about the competition's price changes. I use a sharp style, speculating about why the change might have been made and how important or effective it might be. I've been working in this market for a long time now and I'm fairly confident I can call the changes with a high degree of accuracy. People actually like my "edgy" tone and comments.

Recently I expressed a dim opinion of a competitor's change - saying that it was simply too small to make any difference to anything: margins, positioning or customer perception. This was included in a regular newsletter compiled and sent by a colleague  that circulates confidentially. He incorporated my comment and sent out the newsletter.

Someone sent this back...

"Thought I should point out that we are in a 50/50 joint venture with XXXX and I am not sure that we should be referring to their offerings in quite this manner. As equal partners they would probably not appreciate the tone. Perhaps some feedback to give the YYY team for their future updates."

My first reaction was "oh shit - I've overdone it. The boss will be round muttering at me in a moment." I didn't apologise or explain to the sender, let alone the competitor, and just left it for a while. 

About twenty minutes later, I found myself in possession of a pair. I sent this back to my newsletter colleague...

"We may be partners in a joint operation, but not in the sales arena. XXX run their own business and they take customers from us – they are a leading competitor for our best customers. I don’t see them backing off our customers because we are 50-50 partners in a joint venture - I see them offering the second most aggressive rate in the market.

Individual people may be upset by our opinions, and while that might be understandable on a personal basis, it’s not a professional response. Pricing and propositions are highly public activities and need a thick skin.

We’re as entitled to express an opinion about those decisions as we are about the decisions of ZZZ or anyone else. We’re also entitled to express it as we choose. Do we really want to be the kind of company that only expresses its real opinions in speech, and whose internal communications are anodyne twaddle that’s therefore read and trusted by no-one?"

My colleague agreed, pointing out quite rightly that the newspapers often say much ruder things. and we decided to carry on. No-one of weight has said anything.

It would have been so easy to back down and moderate my approach in future. So easy to agree that we shouldn't express the slightest criticism - by content or tone - of anyone we were even vaguely associated with. So easy to think that maybe the competition knew something we didn't. 

The point isn't that I might be wrong. The point is in the last sentence. "Do we really want to be the kind of company that only expresses its real opinions in speech, and whose internal communications are anodyne twaddle that’s therefore read and trusted by no-one?" Nothing thrives in denial, except confusion, politics and distrust. 

On Pleasure, Dopamine, Oxytocin and Bullshit Therapy (Dear Diary 3)

Recently I read David J Linden's book Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Junk Food, Exercise, Marijuana, Gernerosity and Gambling Feel So Good. For a pop science book about sex, drugs, gambling and other pleasures, it's a refreshingly Vulgar Evolution-free and judgement-free treatment of the subject. (If you're a man, the stuff about women's sexual responses is going to freak you out: if you're a woman, it will be perfectly normal.)

There are only a few books I've read and recognised myself in. Melodie Beattie's Codependent No More of course, and Janet Wotitz' Adult Children of Alcoholics. Linden's description of how addicts respond to pleasurable events felt like the answer to why I react the way I do, or rather don't, to what are supposed to be pleasures.

Addiction, it seems, comes with its own brain chemistry. The counter-intuitive part is where the addict gets less pleasure, not more, than the Normals, from whatever it is. Addicts don't do dopamine as well as the straights, and it's dopamine that gives you that, well, whatever it is that you feel when you have sex, or see your baby, or whatever. I have no idea, because I don't feel it. All that stuff Normals think is wonderful and pleasant and makes their days worth living through get this reaction from me: "well, uh, it's... okay. I guess. Yeah. It was all right." And that's not because I'm trying to be cool or am afraid of showing my emotions or can't engage with the world or any of that guilt-tripping therapy crap - it's because I don't get the chemical high the Normals do.

I don't do oxytocin either, and if you don't produce or respond well to oxytocin, you're not going to experience a lot of bonding urges. It's not fear of commitment, or being vulnerable, or being known, or being rejected or any of that blame-the-victim therapy garbage - it's because I don't get the bonding chemical surge and reaction that Normals do.

If I were inside a Normal's body, I'd feel like I was blissed-out by the slightest thing. If they were inside mine, they would feel that they had gone to a hell where everything was an effort and nothing was a pleasure, and a shoulder-slumping weights of willpower was needed to do the simplest thing.

Linden says that the research suggests that what keeps the addict going isn't the pleasure - that's what keeps the Normals going. That feels like my life. The addict keeps going on anticipation. Addicts hope against all experience that the next time will feel, not better, but whatever it is they are supposed to feel to make it all worthwhile. Whatever it is the Normals feel. We never do feel it: drugs, booze, food, a moment of peace and tranquility under a blue sky - these are all respites from the weariness, the un-satisfaction, the sheer effort of grinding out day after day for no good feelings whatsoever.

This explains why the majority of people are over-weight, under-exercised, don't go beyond pop-culture, are innumerate, and so incredibly self-satisfied: they are blissed out just from waking up. Achievement takes a huge capacity for dissatisfaction, and you can't be dissatisfied with a brain full of dopamine making you feel good at the slightest trivial thing you do.


I'd rather be sober than drunk, clean rather than high, single than divorced or in a worn-out marriage, and if you knew what Normals look like to me, you would not want to be a Normal. But anticipation only works until the day you stop believing, then the weariness sets in. That's where I am now. I don't believe that anything will make me feel better, or even make me feel anything except
uncomfortably numb. And I don't know when it changed.

When There's Always Someone Who Comments Are Sour Grapes

So there’s an article by James Whittaker, who it seems is a software development superstar, about why he left Google. He didn't like the way Larry Page had responded to the success of Facebook by turning Google from a tech company that happened to make money from advertising to an advertising company that happened to do tech. Whittaker had the reputation to be able to walk into another job - at Microsoft. 

Buried away on page 4 of the comments is this from a Daniel Redman (who he?)

I'm sure it was completely unbearable to work at one of the most powerful companies in the world, well-documented as having the best employee benefits.  I hope the truth is that you actually got let-go and are bitter, rather than you're beating up your former employer for allowing you to lose your passion.  Either way, sounds pretty childish if you ask me.  

In any comment string to an article about why someone found Situation X unattractive and left for Situation Y there’s a snark like this. This one just got me riled enough to comment.

First off, it’s downright rude. I don’t mind vigorous and colorful language and commentary, I use it myself. Calling someone “childish” is neither vigorous nor colourful. It’s a Parent sneering at a Child. Second, it’s nasty. Hoping that someone was let go is just unpleasant: I’ve been made redundant more than once and there are only a couple of people I dislike enough to think would benefit from the experience. It’s also rather shallow: anyone who thinks that a market-leading salary and benefits can make up for doing something they don’t believe in and have the choice of leaving, is a little, well, inexperienced. Salary and benefits make up for bad jobs, products and managers only when you can’t find somewhere else to go (which is the position a lot of people are in).

Seems to me that Mr Redman is sucking up a lot of pain where he works. People who have no choice but to suck it up hate it when those who have a choice exercise it publicly. Now why would that be?

What’s puzzling is why anyone would post their pain so publicly. Actually, my psychiatrist tells me I have to stop saying things like that. Anyone who would post their pain so publicly has a head the rest of us would be better off staying away from.

Dear Diary (2)

(Continued ranting...)

All sorts of things used to make my life better, some for the moment and others for longer: hanging out with people, booze, movies, TV, books, music, chocolate, sex, women, food, blue skies, sunshine and warm air, beaches and noisy waves, and now and again doing stuff that makes the house feel more like home. Holidays are an odd thing which I enjoy more in the memory than the doing - except for the bit where I'm dining someplace like Chez Phillipe - because taking a holiday on your own is just slightly harder work than you might think.

I feel like a man who is slightly hungry all the time because he doesn't have the money or the time to eat well enough. When someone offers him a decent meal, he has to say NO. Why? Because he doesn't want to be reminded of what it's like to eat well and feel satisfied: it would make the hunger he's going to feel after his temporary benefactor has gone feel even worse. Now it's a permenant dull ache he's used to, but having something to contrast it with would bring back the sharpness and the pain and the sense of being deprived.

An addict does everything for two reasons: The High, and Stuff To Do When Waiting For The Next High. It doesn't really matter what that Stuff is: work, hanging out with your mates, watching TV, cleaning the bathroom, walking in the park... it's all just passing time. Some Stuff is better than other Stuff, but it's degrees of Stuff. It's not The High. Sometimes something I think is going to be Just Stuff turns out to give me The High, but that's rare. Stuff has no meaning to an addict: style, cool, yes, but no meaning. Sometimes hanging out with the guys gave me The High, and others it didn't.

I'm not supposed to be aiming for The High anymore. I'm supposed to be finding the purpose of my life in serving others and the Will of God As I Understand Him. I never did get that bit of the Program. Take away The High and it's all just Stuff. As a good Nerd, I can get a High from problem-solving and cool stuff, I don't need drugs or booze. Sunsets will do, or clear air and beautiful distant views. The catch is that my body still wants company. Bodies have lives and needs of their own. Get me a warm female body to be next to, it says. Get me someone to hang out with and get sweaty with. And my head and heart says that it isn't going to work out like that. My head and heart can't see the benefit at all. Neither wants to feel The High from desire that's going to be requited and all the rest of those feelings, only to know that it isn't going to happen again.

What's different this time is that I can't be bothered to do the displacement activity I used to do. Stuff I Thought Would Make My Life Better: decorating the house, visiting the few people left in my life, going for walks (a time-honoured displacement activity which only really works when the weather is good or the scenery is spectacular), going to the RA, Tate Modern, National Gallery or the National Portrait Gallery. I could explain it by the cold weather, ten weeks of viruses and colds and coming back tired from the gym, but I know that's not it.

(And it ain't stopping yet...)

Dear Diary (1)

(Okay, I am going to go on about this stuff until I come out of whatever it is... you don't have to read it)

There are times when I don't know how or what I'm feeling. These are not good, because I put on weight. If I weigh too much, my body fat is too high, so my blood sugar levels start to rise. When that happens, I can't think straight, my legs break out into blotchy patches and I get infections in my nose at regular intervals. This does not happen to you, which is why you can afford to be a little vague about how you're feeling. Also, you can get drunk Friday evening and I can't. Going to Meetings helps a little with this stuff, but in the same way that Paracetomol helps with a fever: when the effect wears off, I still have a fever. (You have a hangover.)

I know how I feel about the new office. It sucks. No-one liked it when we arrived, no-one likes now, and the people who have been there for a year still don't like it. Don't mention the blocked toilets, the ineffective aircon, and the fact that it looks like a modern-day workhouse, except with computers and strip lighting. It's run on "Workwise", which I may have ranted about before, which means no-one has assigned desks (not even the top management have assigned offices), and we put our bits and pieces away in lockers at the end of the day. Even in primary school, I had a desk. The essence of Workwise is that we are not supposed to feel like we belong there. Which sounds really... healthy and motivating.

I know how I feel about Shoreditch and the City: the City is an industrial estate and Shoreditch is a grim part of town with some mid-market shops and restaurants. It is not hip and the only thing it's on the edge of is civilisation. I'm going to do some posts on this when the weather gets warm enough to make street photography pleasant and you'll see what I mean. Soho, Covent Garden and the West End are home to me in a way that only central Amsterdam, the Marais / St Germain and the East Village / Upper West Side are. Spitalfields is not even real.

I miss walking through Covent Garden to work. Walking up Archway to get the Central line at Holborn is just about okay, but anywhere east of the Chancery Lane isn't. Walking through the City drains the joy from my soul and I have to use all my concentration to dodge the rushing drones. Anyway, a twenty-minute brisk walk to the office is one thing, a twenty-minute brisk walk to a tube station to take a train to the office is another.

This stuff isn't the mystery problem. Sex, women and relationships aren't the mystery problem either. A problem, sure, but not a mystery. Being the ACoA that I am, I'm missing the drama and dysfunction. The management are making remarkably sensible decisions around my part of the business. I got a good grade in my appraisal. The working environment might be physically shoddy, but in every other regard it's relaxed and professionally casual. Nobody is watching clocks, and it's the quality of your work that matters, not the quantity of your time. (Yes, I know, sounds like heaven.) Sick though it sounds, we ACoA's feel uncomfortable in such circumstances.

(Oh yeah... there's more to come)

Moral Litmus Test

Here is a simple question:

You put your iPhone 4S down on the cafe table and go to the toilet. When you come back, it's been stolen. Is this your fault?

Highlight the space below for the answer.


If you said yes, congratulations. Living in England has stripped you of all sense of moral responsibility and replaced it with the blame-the-victim mentality of the powerless. Secretly, you love bullies, criminals and people who just take what they want; you hate good manners and thoughtfulness. You are a policeman who regards criminals as local features rather than responsible adults, a bank saleswoman who thinks that "caveat emptor" means it's the buyer's fault if they were suckered, the teacher who asks the victim what they did to set off the thug.


The right answer is that it's the thief's fault.

Outsourcing The Dirty Work

There was a very good article in the Guardian last week about Wonga. In case you've been on Mars the last couple of years, Wonga are a payday loan company which, according to who you listen to, has just spent £12m on advertising to make loan sharking look respectable, or so that decent people wouldn't have to go to loan sharks again. A payday loan is generally taken to be less than £500 for less that 30 days. If you have enough credit with your bank and manage your money with even a little sense, you will use your overdraft facility. Payday loans are for people who don't meet those criteria: low-paid, erratically-employed, bad with money or just downright irresponsible.

Personally, I think that the clearing banks - especially those owned in large part by the Government - should be made to extend short-term overdrafts to the low-paid for no charge. Compared to what they lose lending to dodgy Irish property companies and southern European governments, and to what they pay in fines and rebates for mis-selling, the lost interest on a few million quid for ten days is a mere trifle. But that's enough of that.

This is the bit that caught my eye: "The company offices are filled with around 60 mostly young employees, dressed down in internet startup style. There's a personal trainer, employed to take staff running in the park for twice-weekly fitness sessions. A senior team dealing with people who can't pay back their loans are in another basement room ("Don't ask me why Moira has got a Barbie on her desk") but there are a further 100 people in a callcentre in South Africa, charged with ringing people to urge them to repay their loans.Staff say this is a fun place to work. [The CEO's] has a starkly minimalist white office, with white leather sofas, without any papers (everything is digital) or really anything except a bottle of Evian, a bottle of Carex hand sanitising gel, and a huge print of Che Guevara."

The reason the call centre is in South Africa isn't because it's cheaper: there are cheap call centres all over the north of England and Scotland. It's because they want the dirty work done as far away from the shiny front offices as possible. If the sixty mostly young employees had to hear the one hundred debt chasers in action, it would not be a fun place to work for more than a week. It would be painfully obvious what the real work was, and who the customer really is. Wonga seem to be in a state of chronic hypocrisy about who borrows from them. 

I don't like outsourcing. It exports jobs and imports poverty in the form of low wages. It's a fact of business life, and it's not clear that Western economies have the capital to reconstruct China's manufacturing capability back home. Manufacturing may be a lost cause for that reason, but service jobs should be kept in the UK. Outsourcing your dirty work is doubly nasty.

I've had a couple of calls from agents looking for an analyst to work at payday loan companies: the Yanks have read the smoke signals and are setting up over here. I had to think for a night before I could get my personal feelings straight. I can't make a good living from selling to poor people. I'm comfortable fleecing the rich (I don't deal with the rich, but I would be if I was), but not the poor. Fleecing the poor is what governments make Revenue and Customs do, it's what the Welfare State does. Bad company.