Behind The Counter
Why the counter stops serving before the door is locked
Closing time on the door and the last moment a transaction can start are two different times, for reasons…
· 4 min read
Zoya Rahman
Consumer editor, What Nobody Explains
18 articles
Small Print
Auto-renewal is a calendar, not a decision
Rolling agreements run on dates fixed at the beginning, and understanding the dates explains why cancelling…
· 3 min read
Paperwork
What a reference number is actually for
A reference is not a receipt and not proof of anything; it is an address, and knowing what it addresses…
· 3 min read
Behind The Counter
Opening hours are an arithmetic problem before they are a choice
Published hours are the output of a rota, and the rota is solving for coverage, breaks and demand rather…
· 4 min read
Paperwork
What pending, in progress and closed actually mean on a tracker
Status words describe where a case sits in a workflow, not how much work has been done, which is why a case…
· 3 min read
Queues & Waiting
The person at the door is doing triage, not greeting
A greeter in a service hall exists to sort arrivals into the right channel before anybody joins the wrong…
· 3 min read
Small Print
The clause that describes how the clauses can be changed
A variation clause decides whether the document you agreed to is a fixed thing or a moving one, and it is…
· 4 min read
Unwritten Rules
The armrest, the middle seat and the rules of shared seating
Fixed seating forces strangers to allocate a small set of shared resources, and the conventions that result…
· 3 min read
Behind The Counter
The person who can authorise it is not the person you are speaking to
Authority to approve is deliberately concentrated in a few roles, which is why a decision that takes two…
· 3 min read
Behind The Counter
What a note on your file is written for
Case notes are internal correspondence addressed to the next member of staff, and that audience explains…
· 3 min read
Paperwork
Why supporting documents have to be listed as well as attached
A list of enclosures turns a bundle of paper into a checkable claim about what was sent, which is the only…
· 3 min read
Queues & Waiting
Why a service running at full capacity always has a queue
Waiting time does not rise smoothly as a service gets busier; it rises gently for a long while and then…
· 3 min read
Small Print
A policy, a procedure and a guideline are three different documents
The three words are used interchangeably in conversation and mean quite specific and different things…
· 3 min read
Behind The Counter
What a deposit is holding, and what it is not paying for
One word covers three quite different instruments, and most disagreements about getting money back are…
· 4 min read
Paperwork
What happens to your file when a letter comes back undelivered
Returned post is treated as evidence about a record rather than as a failed delivery, and one envelope can…
· 3 min read
Queues & Waiting
What being sent away with a time actually does to your place
Deferral converts a position in a line into an appointment, and the two are held by completely different…
· 3 min read
Queues & Waiting
The queue you cannot see is rarely first come, first served
Work waiting inside an organisation is ordered by rules that have nothing to do with arrival time, and the…
· 3 min read
Unwritten Rules
Who goes first when two people reach a doorway at once
Threshold precedence is settled in about a second by a hierarchy of rules, and the awkward version happens…
· 3 min read