Permission to be Cruel

Well. We did it.

Somehow, despite knowing better, we’ve ended up in a world where corporations quietly allow themselves to act cruelly. There’s no dramatic villainy, just polite indifference and endless, gawd-awful hold music.

We’ve given into bots who are neutral, tireless, and without feeling. A human could easily be on the other end, but there isn’t, because a person might actually listen, or dare I say care. Instead, we’re left explaining urgent, emotional problems to a blinking cursor that replies with that standard line that ignites instant insanity, “I didn’t quite get that.” Have we lost our humanity, or did we outsource it?

Customer service, as a concept, has been euthanized. The “good” companies where the service feels astonishing are few and far between, and that’s why we’re shocked.  Because the bar is now underground. It’s not exceptional. It’s just what many of us grew up with. Back when it came to resolving a problem, it wasn’t treated like a loophole to be sealed.

Corporations have mastered the art of extraction, unlike dental or archeological practices,  through subscriptions, loyalty programs, fees, and your last shred of patience. But should you dare to encounter a problem, they perform a Houdini act. You’re left to spar with a chatbot whose purpose is not resolution, but attrition. It’s a modern endurance sport, sponsored on behalf of your own sanity. It is not customer service. You’re naive if you believe for a moment that the issue you’re having is misunderstood; it’s just not invited. Your complaint is immediately enrolled in a witness protection program and then dropped off in a bureaucratic Bermuda Triangle, engineered for maximum vanishing potential. The modern institution’s innovation?  Weaponized indifference, now with 75% more plausible deniability. Cruelty isn’t a byproduct; it’s the actual business model. Streamlined, optimized, and ruthlessly scalable. And what’s truly breathtaking is how they’ve managed to automate a soul-crushing experience with such efficiency that you almost have to admire the craftsmanship if it wasn’t so twisted.

Take banks. A perfect case study. They have one real job.  Protect their clients’ money. That’s it. One, singular, clear job. They post obscene quarterly profits while publicly congratulating themselves, and have come to market themselves like they’re the next best energy drink. Yet when their clients are scammed? Suddenly, it’s a “customer issue.” Oops. So tragic. Lesson learned. Try harder next time. Their mandate should be airtight. Scammer-proof, annoyingly secure, but it’s not. It should be so secure that clients have to jump through hoops to prove their identity; instead, the scammers win, and the banks, which are fully insured, ask the public to subsidize the loss. They are, in effect, being enriched by fraud. It’s a reverse loyalty program, and the government allows it. How insane is that?!

And let’s be perfectly candid. We’re also footing the bill. The exact demographic of the public who respond to authority by quietly trusting it, just like we did in Aesop’s Fables. Seniors, newcomers, and anyone raised on the fairy tale that institutions exist to protect them. In this landscape, cruelty is an intended design feature hardwired into the code of modern bureaucracy. It’s not a bug, and banks aren’t the only evil geniuses; they’re just the most flamboyant performers in a crowded circus of institutional indifference.

Consider the airline industry. They’ll sell you a seat, then cancel your flight for sport. Meanwhile, your luggage is launched into a black hole, and you’re rewarded for your inconvenience with a voucher that expires faster than your outrage. Telecom companies don’t even attempt to hide. They are blatant in arbitrarily raising prices under the noble banner of “service improvement,” a phrase synonymous with dropped calls, slower speeds, late texts and automated labyrinths that ensure you will never encounter a human being. Insurance giants suck up premiums like a Dyson after a confetti championship. But if you have to file a claim, they treat you like you’ve committed a personal affront. It’s insanity. Utility companies happily penalize late payments with the vigour of a parking enforcement officer, yet their own billing errors take epochs to resolve. Tech platforms will mine your data with the enthusiasm of a good old gold rush, only to suddenly demonstrate amnesia when you ask who’s responsible. Each sector has a singular job description, yet accountability remains as mythical as the lost luggage carousel.

What’s mind-boggling is the normalization of it. The quiet collective agreement that this is just “how it is now done.” That efficiency overshadows dignity, even though they were once best friends. That scale excuses indifference. That cruelty, when automated, appears to count for nothing, nor does it even look like cruelty, as its chameleon-like attire has changed, but the intention remains the same. Somewhere between the bot, the script, the profit margin, and the shrug, we planted the seeds for corporate cruelty to the exact people who are responsible for their profits. We didn’t just eliminate customer service; we’ve deliberately lost sight of the fundamental agreement to treat people like people.

So what do we do besides madly pressing “zero” repeatedly and screaming into the dark abyss?

We exercise our power and opt out wherever we can and choose to support the rare companies that remember and behave as if it were humans and not bots that built them. We have the power to call out bad behaviour rather than normalizing it. We can escalate, document, write, cancel, switch or walk because we need to remind ourselves that indifference thrives on silence. We stop apologizing for expecting competence.  The contract we have with those supplying our services should include that. We can choose not to confuse and accept “policy” with morality. We slow the machinery by insisting on presence. By demanding a human when it matters, and it always matters. By remembering that systems only exist because people put them there, and people can remove or change them.

Here’s what corporations don’t advertise. By changing the system, you change the profit. Money doesn’t lead behaviour, incentives do. Profit follows whatever is tolerated, ignored or rewarded.

If cruelty has a definitive ROI, it’s exercised.  When negligence can show to cost less than caring, it’s policy, baby. The inverse is also true. Once the public stops complying and starts cancelling, we switch from tolerating to declaring ourselves by recording and documenting. Instead of disappearing, we can choose to support companies that will still show up. Profit is fluid and moves. Systems never evolved out of conscience but pressure. Ask any small business whose pulse is so close to the ground, alongside their awareness, allowing them to pivot during the pandemic. They’re the heroes we should be supporting wherever we can.\

Corporations listen to one language fluently, and it’s not outrage or loyalty. It’s revenue. Change where the money flows, and the script rewrites itself. It’s not because they’ve suddenly grown a soul, although that would be nice. It’s because the math changed. It’s that simple.

What we can start practicing is humanity: staying decent in a culture that’s speeding toward numbness, protecting the vulnerable, and sharing warnings. We need to help each other navigate these traps. Remember, even though cruelty may be contagious, so too is compassion. That’s how we transcend it. The perceived power institutions hold is borrowed. The power people hold collectively is inherent. I’ve come to discover that institutions fear awareness far more than rebellion because it changes behaviour, and that changes systems.

We can make the shift not by waiting for institutions to remember who they are, but by refusing to forget who we are and the power we hold collectively, because, at the end of the day, the power we hold collectively will always exceed what they have individually.