{"text":[[{"start":5.6,"text":"Relaxed, with stretches of time between ice creams, a Spanish beach holiday seemed the perfect moment to tackle an issue that had been weighing on me for months: cancelling a tech subscription. So I found myself passed between customer service assistants for over an hour, increasingly frazzled, before giving up. Big tech, 1; me, 0."}],[{"start":27.950000000000003,"text":"This is one example of the “annoyance economy”, which, according to a recent report, includes myriad such annoyances (spam, robocalls and unseen fees, as well as unhelpful chatbots). All this leaves “people feeling overwhelmed, ignored, or jerked around” and costs “wasted time and lost money”. The total? $165bn a year in the US alone. "}],[{"start":51.550000000000004,"text":"Some throw yet more money at the problem. Kath Clarke, who provides remote (human) personal assistants to clients, tells me that most requests are not for fancy holidays or high-end restaurant bookings, but “to take on the things [customers] absolutely dread: sitting on hold with the council, navigating endless customer service chatbots to sort a refund”."}],[{"start":72.35000000000001,"text":"Some annoyances might be accidental, stemming from dilapidated, byzantine systems, but others are deliberate, profitable for business but costly for the consumer. One woman phoned BBC Radio 4 to complain that, seven years after buying two pairs of leggings, she had discovered that the payment was not a one-off but a monthly subscription that eventually totalled £5,000. "}],[{"start":97.10000000000001,"text":"Such tactics have been referred to as “sludge” — the opposite of “nudge”, the theory coined by behavioural economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein to describe small tweaks in “choice architecture” that encourage people to become healthier or to save. Sludge, wrote Thaler, is “essentially nudging for evil”."}],[{"start":117.65,"text":"This form of annoyance thrives in the workplace, too. Convoluted expenses software deters staff from racking up costs, while bureaucratic management sucks unnecessary hours from the working week. "}],[{"start":129.9,"text":"According to Robert Sutton, co-author of The Friction Project, the best managers are those who see themselves as “trustees of others’ time”, seeking to reduce such sludge so staff can concentrate on their tasks. He cites one example of a senior manager at Google who decreed that written permission from him was required if any more than four job interviews were scheduled. "}],[{"start":151.55,"text":"Will technology help dial down the annoyance? Neale Mahoney, professor of economics at Stanford University and co-author of the “annoyance economy” report, tells me that he worries “AI will make things worse. Dark patterns tailored person by person. Scam calls that impersonate a family member’s voice. Back-end fees calibrated to the maximum amount we are willing to pay.” "}],[{"start":175.15,"text":"Policies to deal with all this are a work in progress. Last year, Amazon agreed to pay $2.5bn in penalties and refunds after the US Federal Trade Commission found the tech company got millions of customers to subscribe to Prime, making it difficult to cancel. But André Spicer, co-author of The Art of Less, says government crackdowns typically provide relief in one area while sludge gets worse in others. "}],[{"start":202.65,"text":"For some, however, there are small pleasures to be had in turning annoyance into art. The Irish writer Ciaran O’Driscoll’s poem “Please Hold” encapsulates the specific hell of waiting on the phone, listening to “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”. “The robot transfers me to himself. Your call is important to us, he says.” "}],[{"start":223.75,"text":"Or in small acts of sabotage, like the man who dealt with his frustrations by encouraging the robo-assistant he was arguing with to call its delivery firm the worst in the world before describing itself as a “useless chatbot that can’t help you”. Silly, yes. But the annoyed among us must find our joy where we can."}],[{"start":248.54999999999998,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1776589462_8721.mp3"}