In which a few slices of salami accomplish what no committee ever could.

Sweden has many fine traditions. Midsummer, crayfish parties, Christmas smorgasbords and the almost sacred institution of fika.

For the uninitiated, fika is a coffee break, although describing it as such is rather like describing Christmas as an occasion when people exchange parcels. There is considerably more to it than that.

Fika is a social institution. It involves coffee, conversation and, more often than not, something sweet. Cinnamon buns, sponge cakes, pastries, biscuits. The sort of things that make life worth living, at least until your blood sugar remembers what you’ve done.

Now, I have absolutely nothing against cake. I am particularly fond of a good cinnamon bun, and I consider a properly made Danish pastry one of civilisation’s finer achievements.

But there is a time and a place for everything.

And four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, when you haven’t eaten since lunch and still have a lengthy staff meeting ahead of you, is perhaps not the ideal moment to subsist on sponge cake.

The Thursday Ritual

At one workplace, we had a rather pleasant arrangement. Every Thursday afternoon, the staff gathered for fika before or during a meeting. Participation was entirely voluntary, and those who wished to join in took turns providing the refreshments.

A perfectly civilised idea.

People brought homemade buns, cakes and biscuits. Sometimes someone would pick up a Danish pastry selection from the supermarket. There was always plenty of generosity and goodwill involved.

There was also an extraordinary amount of sugar.

I soon developed the habit of bringing a sandwich to eat beforehand. By four o’clock I was generally ravenous, and while a slice of cake might be delightful with an afternoon cup of tea, it wasn’t going to sustain me through a meeting and the journey home.

Eventually, my turn came to provide the refreshments.

I had spent several weeks observing what everyone else brought, partly because I wanted to do my bit properly and partly because I was wondering what on earth I could contribute.

I am not a particularly enthusiastic cake baker. I can produce excellent cinnamon buns, but they are best eaten fresh, and I had no intention of getting up at four in the morning to bake several dozen of them.

Frankly, I couldn’t be arsed.

So I decided to do something different.

Enter the Salami

The day before my allotted Thursday, I visited the supermarket delicatessen counter.

Could I have 100 grams of this salami, please? And 100 grams of that one? Perhaps 200 grams of the ham. A nice mature cheese, something milder, a selection of fruit and a couple of good fresh loaves.

And would it be possible to arrange the meats and cheeses on serving platters rather than wrapping everything separately?

Certainly, they said.

Splendid.

I collected the lot during my lunch break the following day and arranged everything in the staffroom.

No baking. No icing. No frantic attempts to rescue a collapsed sponge cake.

Just bread, cheese, cold meats and fruit.

At four o’clock, my hungry colleagues descended.

And ate.

And ate.

There was something rather wonderful about watching a roomful of tired people discover that Thursday fika could actually constitute a small meal.

Someone asked how much it had all cost and expressed concern that I must have spent a fortune.

I told them.

In fact, the whole spread had cost considerably less than buying enough pastries for everyone, particularly if I’d also needed to buy myself something substantial to eat beforehand.

It was a revelation.

The Revolution Begins

The really interesting part came afterwards.

Nobody announced a new policy. There was no discussion about reforming the fika rota. No working group was established to investigate the nutritional shortcomings of the traditional Swedish coffee break.

Thank heavens.

People simply began bringing different things.

One week there were hot dogs. Another time, someone brought homemade bread. Someone else produced home-cured salmon.

There were still occasional sweet treats, of course. Nobody was suggesting that cake should be outlawed.

But suddenly, Thursday afternoons had become rather more enjoyable.

Instead of sitting through a meeting while our stomachs growled and we wondered how long it would be before we could get home and eat, we could relax, have something satisfying and enjoy one another’s company.

The fika had become what it was always supposed to be: a pleasant moment in the working day.

A Little Consideration Goes a Long Way

I’ve thought about that experience occasionally over the years, because it illustrates something rather important about hospitality.

We often become so accustomed to doing things a particular way that we forget to ask whether the arrangement actually suits the people involved.

Cake at fika is traditional, so cake is what we provide. Nobody means any harm by it. Quite the opposite. People go to considerable trouble to bake something lovely for their colleagues.

But hospitality isn’t really about following a tradition.

It’s about making people comfortable.

Sometimes that means a beautifully decorated cake. Sometimes it means a pot of tea and a biscuit. And sometimes it means recognising that a roomful of tired, hungry adults might appreciate a decent sandwich rather more than another slice of sponge.

It needn’t be expensive, elaborate or homemade. In fact, one of the nicest things about that particular Thursday was how little effort it required.

The delicatessen did the slicing. The bakery made the bread. I merely collected the food and put it on the table.

And everybody was happy.

I hadn’t set out to start a revolution.

I just wanted something to eat.

The Fine Art of Being a Helpless Little Old Lady

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she discovers that being underestimated is not necessarily a disadvantage.

In fact, with a little practice, it can become something of a superpower.

I should know. I’ve been doing it all my life.

The technique has evolved over the years, naturally. When I was young, I played the slightly dim girl who couldn’t possibly be expected to understand complicated things. These days, I play the sweet little old lady who regards modern technology with a mixture of bewilderment and mild alarm.

Different costumes. Same performance.

And gentlemen, I regret to inform you that you’ve been falling for it for generations.

The Damsel in Distress

The first version is remarkably simple.

A young woman encounters a problem. A man appears. The young woman looks suitably helpless.

“Oh, you’re so clever! I haven’t the faintest idea how these things work!”

The man straightens his shoulders.

At last! An opportunity to demonstrate his superior knowledge, his practical abilities and his general indispensability to civilisation.

He explains. He demonstrates. He fixes.

The young woman listens with wide-eyed admiration, occasionally asking a question designed to make him feel even more knowledgeable.

“Goodness! How on earth did you know that?”

And there you have it.

A problem solved, a masculine ego beautifully polished, and everyone goes away feeling rather pleased with themselves.

Now, before anyone starts sharpening their feminist pitchforks, I should point out that I have never believed women to be less capable than men.

Quite the opposite.

I simply discovered very early in life that allowing a man to believe himself cleverer than you can be an extraordinarily efficient way of getting things done.

Why struggle with a recalcitrant piece of machinery when there’s a perfectly willing volunteer standing beside you, positively bursting with enthusiasm?

It would be positively unkind to deprive him of the opportunity.

From Damsel to Granny

Of course, the damsel routine has a limited shelf life.

There comes a point when fluttering one’s eyelashes at a young man becomes rather less effective. He may begin to wonder whether you have something in your eye.

Fortunately, nature provides an excellent replacement.

The Granny Strategy.

The transition is wonderfully straightforward. Instead of appealing to a man’s desire to impress a pretty girl, you appeal to his affection and respect for his mother or grandmother.

“Hello, dear. I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but my computer seems to have gone all peculiar.”

There is usually a pause.

A particular sort of pause.

The pause of a young man who has just realised that the next forty minutes of his life may involve explaining what a browser is.

“That’s all right, madam. Let’s see if we can help you.”

Madam.

Excellent. We are off to a splendid start.

“Now, have you tried turning it off and on again?”

“Oh, yes, dear! My husband suggested that. He’s terribly clever with these things.”

This is technically true.

My husband is an exceptionally intelligent man. Unfortunately, his approach to technology involves reading every available instruction manual before touching anything, by which time I have generally dismantled the offending equipment and put it back together again.

But the young man doesn’t need to know that.

Not yet.

A Little Background Information

There is, I suppose, something I ought to confess.

I used to work in IT.

Not the modern variety where somebody changes your password and tells you to clear your cache.

Proper IT.

I wrote code. I built websites. I investigated bugs. I worked on projects for companies whose names you would probably recognise.

This was back when websites were constructed by people who actually understood what went into them, rather than by dragging colourful boxes around a screen and hoping for the best.

My approach to debugging was somewhat unconventional.

I would print out the offending code, tape the pages together, spread the resulting monstrosity across the office floor and crawl around on my hands and knees following the logic.

My colleagues probably thought I was completely barking mad.

But it worked.

I mention this only because it makes my subsequent conversations with technical support departments considerably more entertaining.

Establishing the Appropriate Level of Incompetence

The secret is not to appear too stupid.

That would be suspicious.

One must instead cultivate the impression of a reasonably intelligent woman who has somehow wandered into the twenty-first century without adequate supervision.

“Could you open your browser for me, madam?”

“My browser? Oh, you mean the thing I use for looking at recipes?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Lovely. I’ve got that.”

You can practically hear his confidence growing.

He has this under control.

He is being patient and professional.

He is helping a sweet little old lady navigate the terrifying complexities of modern technology.

Bless him.

Meanwhile, I am quietly observing whether he understands the difference between a client-side problem, a server-side problem and a problem caused by somebody in development having made an almighty cock-up.

I do not interrupt.

I do not correct him.

I certainly do not announce my former profession.

That would spoil everything.

The Moment of Revelation

Eventually, we reach the interesting part.

The young man has exhausted his approved troubleshooting script.

We have restarted the machine. We have cleared the cache. We have checked the connection. We have performed the sacred ritual of unplugging everything and waiting thirty seconds.

Nothing has worked.

There is another pause.

“Well, madam, I’m not quite sure what else we can try.”

And this is where the fun begins.

“Would it help, dear, if we looked at the error logs? Because I noticed that the application appears to be failing during authentication, and I wondered whether there might be a problem with the session handling rather than the connection itself.”

Silence.

Beautiful, exquisite silence.

“Sorry, madam?”

“Oh, it’s probably nothing. I used to do a little programming, you see.”

A little programming.

The verbal equivalent of a retired surgeon mentioning that she once did a spot of sewing.

Suddenly, the conversation changes.

The young man sits up a little straighter.

The word madam quietly disappears.

And, if I am particularly fortunate, he stops reading from his script.

At last, we can have a proper conversation.

The Psychology of It All

The interesting thing is that neither version of the performance depends on making the man feel foolish.

Quite the opposite.

The young woman makes him feel clever, capable and protective.

The older woman makes him feel kind, patient and respectful.

Both appeal to something he would rather like to believe about himself.

And both work particularly well when accompanied by impeccable manners.

I never shout at technical support staff. I never insult them. I never tell them that I know more than they do, even when the evidence is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

I thank them for their assistance.

I compliment them when they get something right.

And I allow them every opportunity to solve the problem before revealing that I might have one or two ideas of my own.

If they know what they’re doing, splendid. We can dispense with the performance and have a perfectly sensible technical discussion.

If they don’t, well…

There is always the possibility of speaking to somebody who does.

Politely, of course.

One must maintain standards.

Never Underestimate a Woman

There is a peculiar assumption in the world of technology that competence belongs to the young.

An elderly gentleman who mentions computers is quite likely to be treated as a retired engineer.

An older woman is rather more likely to be asked whether she knows where the power button is.

And a pretty young woman?

Well, she probably just needs a nice clever man to explain everything to her.

I have spent a lifetime watching these assumptions at work.

And I have learned that there is very little point in arguing with them when one can put them to such excellent use.

Age, after all, has its compensations.

You may find yourself making involuntary noises when getting out of a chair. You may discover that the print on medicine bottles has become unreasonably small. You may occasionally walk into a room and forget what you went there for.

But you also acquire a lifetime of knowledge, experience and the ability to recognise bullshit at twenty paces.

And perhaps most importantly, you learn that there is no particular advantage in announcing everything you know.

Sometimes it is far more satisfying to sit quietly, smile sweetly and allow people to discover it for themselves.

So, to all the young men working in technical support, I offer one small piece of advice.

The next time a little old lady rings up and tells you that her computer has gone all peculiar, do be kind.

Do be patient.

And whatever you do, don’t assume she doesn’t understand the technology.

She may have been writing code before you were born.

And she may have spent the last twenty minutes deciding whether you know what you’re talking about.

Now then, dear. About that error log…

Or: The Customer Is Always Right, Unless There’s a Form

I am a terrible snob.

Not the sort who insists on being addressed by her title, drinks champagne at breakfast or sends the soup back because the spoon is facing the wrong way. No, my particular form of snobbery is considerably less expensive. I make judgements about people based on their names.

There. I’ve said it.

I spent my formative years in a rather prosperous suburb of the capital, where certain people could tell which side of the railway tracks your grandparents lived on by the way you pronounced a vowel.

I have since been transplanted to a small village in northern Sweden, where people are considerably less interested in one’s pedigree and rather more interested in whether one knows how to stack firewood.

It has been a beneficial change of environment, although certain unfortunate habits have survived the move.

Which brings me to Angèliqüé.

That is not her real name, I hasten to add. I have changed it to protect an entirely innocent woman from my imagination.

Angèliqüé works in customer service for a large electrical retailer. I have never met her. I have no idea how old she is, what she looks like or whether she spends her weekends rescuing abandoned kittens.

For all I know, she is a delightful young woman who volunteers at an animal shelter, remembers her grandmother’s birthday and always returns her shopping trolley.

Nevertheless, the moment I saw her name at the bottom of an email, an entire person materialised in my imagination.

This is deeply unfair.

It is also, I’m afraid, quite automatic.

There was a time when a certain sort of mother, having read one too many historical romances, decided that her daughter simply could not be called Anna.

Anna was what you called the girl next door. Anna wore sensible shoes, passed her mathematics exams and eventually became an accountant.

Her daughter was destined for greater things.

Her daughter would be Angélique.

The novels about Angélique, that ravishing seventeenth-century heroine who spent a remarkable amount of time being desired, abducted, imperilled and generally inconvenienced by aristocrats, inspired a particular enthusiasm for names with a Continental flavour.

And if Angélique was good, surely Angèliqüé was better?

Why settle for an ordinary spelling when you could scatter accents across a name like hundreds and thousands on a birthday cake?

The resulting child would spend the next eighty years spelling her name to receptionists, correcting official documents and explaining that the accent over the second vowel was absolutely essential, despite serving no discernible linguistic purpose.

But her mother would be delighted.

She had given birth not to an ordinary Swedish girl but to a heroine.

Unfortunately, the heroine would still have to attend compulsory school, queue at the pharmacy and eventually find employment.

Possibly in customer service.

Which brings us back to my telephone.

My telephone, a perfectly respectable smartphone which had until recently performed its duties without complaint, has suffered what I can only describe as a catastrophic nervous breakdown.

It will not start. It will not respond to reason. It displays its manufacturer’s logo, grows alarmingly warm and refuses to proceed any further.

In this respect, it bears a certain resemblance to my husband when confronted with flat-pack furniture.

I contacted the retailer, explained the problem in some detail and pointed out that I was making a complaint under consumer protection legislation.

Angèliqüé replied.

She asked me to describe the problem.

Again.

She also wanted to know whether I had performed a factory reset, despite the fact that the telephone was about as responsive as a brick and considerably less useful, since a brick can at least be employed to prop open a door.

There was a form.

Of course there was a form.

There is always a form.

The form offered me a choice between declaring that I had already reset the telephone and authorising someone else to reset it, potentially at my expense.

There was no box marked:

The bloody thing won’t switch on.

Nor was there one marked:

I would prefer not to have all my data obliterated merely because your computer system cannot accommodate a third possibility.

I wrote back, politely.

I explained that the telephone was entirely unusable, that I was exercising my statutory rights and that I did not consent to chargeable work or the destruction of my data without prior agreement.

Angèliqüé replied.

She needed me to complete the form.

At this point, I began to suspect that Angèliqüé and I were conducting two entirely separate conversations.

I was discussing a defective telephone and consumer legislation.

Angèliqüé was discussing a form.

Somewhere in the depths of the company’s customer service department, I imagine there is a training manual containing the words:

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES DEVIATE FROM THE SCRIPT.

A customer might report that their washing machine has burst into flames, their television has swallowed the cat or their refrigerator is making threatening remarks in Norwegian.

The correct response would presumably be:

Thank you for contacting us. Have you tried restarting the device? Please complete the attached form.

I should make it clear that I do not blame Angèliqüé for this.

She almost certainly has targets to meet, procedures to follow and a supervisor who measures productivity in closed tickets rather than solved problems.

She may well be perfectly capable of understanding my complaint but entirely unable to do anything useful about it.

That is the particular genius of modern customer service. Companies employ human beings and then go to extraordinary lengths to prevent them from behaving like human beings.

And I, who have spent much of my working life identifying problems and finding ways around them, find this almost physically painful.

I want to reach through the screen, take Angèliqüé gently by the shoulders and say:

“My dear girl, forget the form for thirty seconds. Read what I’ve actually written.”

Instead, I make another cup of tea and compose another impeccably polite email.

Because that is the other thing about being a snob.

One must, at the very least, maintain one’s manners.

It is perfectly possible to be furious with a company without being unpleasant to the unfortunate person employed to represent it. Indeed, I make a point of distinguishing between the two.

Angèliqüé did not manufacture the telephone. She did not break it. She did not design the form.

And, most importantly, she did not choose her own name.

That last responsibility belongs entirely to her parents.

Who, for all I know, may have been perfectly sensible people who simply liked the sound of it.

But I shall reserve judgement until the telephone is repaired.

In the meantime, somewhere in northern Sweden, a middle-aged woman with a questionable upbringing, an increasingly cold cup of Earl Grey and a completely dead smartphone is preparing her next email.

And somewhere else, Angèliqüé is probably preparing to ask her to fill in the form.

Again.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.