If the tricks had their own room

Imagine that every company kept its worst habits in one room.

The people who hide the cancel button three screens deep would sit there. So would whoever decided that the box for extra cover should arrive already ticked, and whoever moved the delivery fee to the very last step, after the customer had spent ten minutes choosing. The person who writes the apology that admits nothing would have a desk there too, and so would the one who wrote the small print nobody is meant to read.

If that room existed, it would be easy to keep an eye on. Customers could ask which products it had touched. A new owner could lock the door. It would be the simplest reform in business.

The reason there is no such room is that nobody works in it full time. The tricks do not come from a few bad people. They come from ordinary ones, each under some pressure to move a number this month, each making one small choice that looks harmless on its own. The designer adds the ticked box because the target is the target. The person above signs it off because the last few months were soft. Nobody feels like the villain, because nobody is doing the whole thing.

That is what makes it so hard to fix. A problem with a name and an address can be dealt with. A problem spread thinly across everyone, a little at a time, for reasons that make sense this week, has no door to knock on.