The James Hilton Column: Stress is a Killer

I don’t get stressed that much. And I’m not a violent man, mostly, but I do have my moments. 

Some people talk about ‘the red mist’. I don’t get that. I do however get a small, quiet, considered voice in my head that soothes me by gently repeating, ‘It’s very simple. You just need to kill them. Yes. That’s it. Kill them. Kill.’ 

Don't sweat the small stuff

That voice was talking to me today. My stress levels reaching the heights where I flip from being simply angry to the very reasonable demeanor of Hannibal ‘Ready when you are, Sergeant Pembry’ Lecter.

Was it a client escalation? No, that would, in the words of Trainspotting's Sickboy ‘present no significant problem’. How about a particularly nasty personnel management issue? Tiresome yes, but completely doable with an hour’s focused effort. No. These things are trifles. And while annoying, not actually the cause of psychotic stress. It’s the little things that send me flying. ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’ is apparently what you’re meant to do. Well, sorry to disappoint, but I will. I will quite a bloody lot. 

Just one thing

I was the same at college. I could happily skip from one scorchingly tight deadline brief to another. I even displayed (I like to think) something of a cavalier attitude to group critiques. All the while my classmates fell about themselves in lathers of indecision, panic and self-disbelief. When something ‘small’ happened though – the printer breaking down, for instance – I exhibited all the calm and restraint of a fat kid being told they can’t have any more cake. Ever. 

What specifically did it wasn’t that the item was faulty, it was that I simply couldn't comprehend that a machine specifically designed to perform one task (i.e. print something) and that was presumably manufactured by people who knew it only did one thing and who wished it to do that one thing perfectly, couldn’t do that one thing.

I mean, a printer isn’t exactly new tech, is it? We’ve had them for a while. Long enough to get it right, you’d have thought. Long enough that we should really be at the stage where producing things that only do one thing shouldn’t be too taxing and they just work, no? 

Parcel problems

Today I had to deal with an international courier company. A brown and gold one. They, like the printer, do one thing. They deliver things from A to, say, B. This can be problematic at times, I suppose.

But they say they ‘love logistics’, and if you’d spent years building a company whose sole purpose it is to make the task of taking a thing from somewhere on the planet to somewhere different on the same planet (whole other kettle of fish for a different planet), and you’d done all this with the aim that it’s easier to get your company to do it rather than for your customers to do it themselves, and you’d probably figured out all the niggles and levels of service those same customers might experience… You’d have thought that such a company would know what they were doing in the moving-things-from-here-to-there game, wouldn’t you? Well you’d be wrong. So very, very, wrong.  

A taxing situation

I was having a small package shipped from the US. It all started well enough. They emailed me a tracking number and made me feel like I’d done the right thing. But then my package didn’t arrive when they told me it would. ‘Annoying’, I thought, but calmed myself with ‘they know what they’re doing; they’ll email me if there’s an issue’.

Still nothing a couple of days later, so I used the tracking number. ‘This number is invalid'. Deep breath. I called them. They apologised. I got a new tracking number. It transpired that my package required some taxes to be paid, so I paid. My package would arrive the next day. Lovely. Except it didn’t. Not lovely.

Cheque mate

So I tracked it. It had been in London for two days, and delivery had been attempted twice but because money was required to cover taxes it had gone back to the depot. I called them. I explained that I’d paid so what was the problem? They explained back that whoever took my payment shouldn’t have taken my payment because payment over the phone isn’t allowed, so my payment will be paid back to me. With a cheque.

I have to pay the delivery driver with cash. Can I give him a cheque? No, we don’t accept cheques. But how can I be sure that the driver and I don’t miss each other (again)? We will take your mobile number and the driver will call you. OK. The next day my package did the opposite of being delivered. I tracked it. Delivery attempted, package taken back to depot. I called them. But you said the driver would call me?! Our drivers don’t carry mobiles to call customers. (AAAGGGGHHHHHHHH).

Look, I just want my package. You can come to the depot but the only time we have is 6pm tonight, and you must be on time. I arrive at 6pm on the dot. At 6:40pm they bring my package out. 

It took every ounce of self-control to stop myself becoming a news item with the words ‘insane’ and ‘killer’ in the headline.

Going postal

As I sat there in the waiting room that fun forgot, I was drawn to the various bits of advertising hanging on the wall telling me how brilliant this particular company is. And that was the moment I went Hannibal. The moment of realisation of the insane gulf between two very different realities – theirs and mine. Actions prove who someone is; words just prove who they want to be.

So here's an idea that I hope catches on in the creative ‘industry’. Instead of wasting your client’s money creating advertising to tell people how amazing they are or how much they love logistics, spend it instead on taking the inconvenient path of telling them the truth and helping them build a better business by creating better services, on designing robust technology solutions and on empowering and motivating their workforce so they actually give a shit, to make something that doesn’t need to be advertised because it just works well. Imagine that.

And another thing. People not tucking their chairs under the table in the canteen at work really pisses me off too. I pointed this out to someone last week. They apologised. I nodded. Then ate his liver with a fine Chianti (now make the Hannibal Lecter sucky-teeth noise).