The support teams are not what they seem

The individual and global costs of rogue "support" teams - a case study.

Posted Aug 7, 2025 Updated Aug 7, 2025

By dr Galapagos

views 101 min read

Why - in certain circumstances - you should not assume that the concept of “support” as in customer “support” teams has anything to do with getting help solving your problems with a product by a helpful group of people eager to help you out. - An analysis of how organisations disguise their dark practices by weaponizing customer “support” teams and turn them into normalized scam centers, sapping customers’ funds on a global scale and why nobody is complaining.

Introduction

There is no shortage of problems in the world nowadays. Just open your favorite news outlet and pick a random article for a sample of things that are wrong with the world. There is a high chance that you will encounter major problems, existential threats, and various sorts of suffering. At first glance the frustrations experienced as customers requiring support for problems with products / services don’t seem to be the most pressing problems facing humanity right now. Nevertheless, it’s very likely that if you ever tried to: get a legitimate money refund for a product or service; make an insurance claim; cancel a contract or subscription with a service provider whether its a bank or some other entity; or solve any problem that requires a bit more attention-to-detail than what an average 14 year old person could provide. you experienced various roadblocks and a labyrinth of dark tactics to prevent you from achieving your goal. So, what are the common features and circumstances that give rise to unsupportive behavior from the people tasked with providing support to customers to solve the problems encountered while interacting with products? Are these issues really as irrelevant as they may seem at first glance?

Disclaimer: the issues described in here are inspired by first hand experiences. Due to the scarcity of publicly available and reliable data on the global prevalence of support-related sufferings the analysis heavily relies on best guesses and assumptions. It is acknowledged that over-generalizing from a few instances is risky and should generally be avoided. However, the risk of ignoring some very frustrating (true for sure) and potentially wide-spread and common experiences (the extent of which needs to be investigated) with real-world costs outweighs the risk of not being 100% accurate about the scale of the problem. The analysis also makes an attempt to clarify that unpleasant experiences are direct consequences of the fundamental principles of established systems and not random events. Nevertheless, the questionable parts of the analysis are mostly related to the scale of the issues while the existence of the issues is beyond reasonable doubt (i.e. even one instance contradicting a theory claiming that the support teams are in support of the customer is enough to falsify that theory).

Setting

Let’s start by describing the situation where we assume that both customers and support team members are humans interacting with each other to solve a problem facing the customer. All humans care about a complex set of concepts to varying degrees according to their personality, life history, aspirations, current levels of perceived need-fulfillment, etc. While the list of needs is potentially unlimited due to all the different ways they can be conceptualized, and because there is an unlimited number of ways you can combine concepts with objects of desire in the world. Nevertheless, several theories have been proposed to identify the most important / most universal set of attributes that people care about.

Human suffering and the relevance of problems

Perhaps the most well-known motivational theory is Maslow’s formulation about the hierarchical organization of needs. Physiological needs refer to desire for basic things such as access to clean air, water, food, shelter. Such needs arise from the desire to survive and they essentially represent physical objects of desire. People care about their own and their loved ones’ safety and security encompassing health, financial security, emotional and physical safety, privacy, protection from all sorts of threats. Belonging needs stem from the social nature of humans. People prefer to be surrounded by family, friends, and trusted peers where intimacy and acceptance can be experienced. Esteem needs refer to self-respect and being respected by others, the desire to be perceived (both by the self and by others) as competent, and a good, worthy person. Examples of esteem needs include fairness, trust, reciprocity, freedom of choice, etc. Self-actualization and transcendental needs capture desires to be part of a bigger whole, and go beyond the individual’s immediate short-term needs (i.e. to transcend oneself). While a potentially endless list of instincts, needs, desires, etc. can be created, it should also be possible to measure their intensity in some way. A measurement of their intensity would make it possible to rank desires, to make comparisons between options i.e. to model how humans make decisions.

Relative relevance of the problem for an individual

There are various concepts to capture a measure of desirability related to potential outcomes of a decision. Valance, (expected) utility, value, etc. are unit-free measures utilized in decision-theory and related fields to characterize the strength of a motivational force propelling decisions and actions. Several methods have been devised to assist in making optimal choices, which provide the highest level of satisfaction or utility among a set of options. With the help of a rational and transparent decision-making tool people are assumed to be able to evaluate options (e.g. which car to buy based on their features and based on how much one cares about those features) and find the best one according to their needs or preferences. The “Structuring Analytical Problems” chapter in Richards J. Heuer’s book entitled Psychology of Intelligence Analysis provides a great example about a method to assist decision makers in making “good” decisions (i.e. reflecting their real preferences).

The method can be adapted to assess the severity of problems according to one’s personal preferences or needs. The general procedure looks something like this:

Identify needs (attributes) that you care about,
Quantify the relative importance of each need (attribute) you care about,
Identify the problems that are relevant for you,
Quantify the relative extent to which each of the problems impact each of your needs (attributes),
Multiply the scores from Step 2. by the scores from Step 4.,
Quantify the number of times you encounter each of the problems,
Sum the scores from Step 5. for each problem and multiply them by the number of times you encounter the problem from Step 6. for each problem.

For the purpose of demonstration the following example will use only 5 attributes in Step 1. that a person might care about. A problem may have a negative impact on the following attributes that people in general tend to value:

1.1 Identify needs / attributes you care about, AND 1.2. Quantify the relative importance of each attribute you care about by dividing 100 points among them. The sum of the scores should = 100 / column.
1.1 Needs / attributes		1.2. Importance of each attribute

Health		22
Survival of offsprings		21
Belonging		20
Wealth		19
Feeling respected, reciprocity		18

Sum		100

1.3. Identify problems that are relevant for you
1.3. Relevant problems

Global warming
An unsolved issue by the support team
Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars
Contracting an incurable rare disease

1.4. Quantify the relative extent to which each of the problems impact each of your needs / attributes. For each need / attribute, take 100 points and divide it among the problems based on how much impact they have on that specific need. The sum of the scores should = 100 / row.
	Global warming	An unsolved issue by the support team	Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars	Contracting an incurable rare disease	Sum

Health	10	0.005	0	89.995	100
Survival of offsprings	95	0	0	5	100
Belonging	35	0.0005	0	64.9995	100
Wealth	5	0.01	0	94.99	100
Feeling respected, reciprocity	15	50	0	35	100

1.5. Multiply the scores from Step 1.2. by the scores from Step 1.4. for each attribute - problem pair
Global warming	An unsolved issue by the support team	Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars	Contracting an incurable rare disease

220	0.11	0	1979.89
1995	0	0	105
700	0.01	0	1299.99
95	0.19	0	1804.81
270	900	0	630

An optional step is to include the number of times a problem is experienced in a given time period:

1.6.1. Quantify the number of times you encounter each of the problems in a given time period (e.g. year, month, etc.)
	Global warming	An unsolved issue by the support team	Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars	Contracting an incurable rare disease

Baseline estimate	1	1	1	1

The last step combines the scores assigned in the previous steps to quantify the relative severity of the problems for the individual.

1.7.1. Sum the scores from Step 1.5. for each problem and multiply them by the number of times you encounter the problem from Step 1.6.1. for each problem
	Global warming	An unsolved issue by the support team	Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars	Contracting an incurable rare disease

Baseline estimate	3280	900.31	0	5819.69

The following graph shows a ranking of the problems as experienced by the individual:

Relative importance of the problems for an individual.

It is important to do a sanity check and sensitivity analysis at this point to identify potential errors, contradictions or other issues.

The problem “Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars” has a severity score of 0 as it does not have any direct impact on any of the needs included in the analysis.

“An unsolved issue by the support team” is the second least relevant problem, as one would expect considering the severity of the other problems in the set. This problem affects the least important need “Feeling respected, reciprocity” in a massive way resulting in a not insignificant total score for this problem.

“Global warming” is a pressing existential threat impacting very heavily the “Survival of offsprings” need which is the second most important desire in this setting resulting in a very high total score.

“Contracting an incurable rare disease” is fatal in the short term for the individual, so there is no surprise that this problem gets the highest overall score.

The results reveal how each of the problems contribute to negative experiences and the ranking of the problems enables one to prioritize actions to avoid or mitigate the most pressing ones if possible.

Relative relevance of the problem on a global scale

A question that may arise is whether we will get the same results if we wanted to analyze problems at a wider, global scale? If it was feasible to run the same process for every individual one would be able to generate a measure for the overall relevance of these problems at the global scale. Due to several limitations, it is more feasible to try best guesses and estimate the severities. The following extra steps can help with coming up with rough estimates on the global impact of the problems:

Quantify the population of the Earth,
Estimate the ratio of the population affected by each problem,
Estimate the relevance of the problem at the global level by multiplying the scores from Step 7 and Step 9.

Estimated number of humans that are potentially impacted by problems and sufferings:

1.8.1. Quantify the population of the Earth (# of individuals)
Population of the Earth

8,000,000,000

When estimating the ratio of the population affected by each problem one can use available statistics. For the purpose of demonstration the following numbers are guessed, except for an individual contracting an incurable rare disease^*:

1.9.1. Estimate / calculate the ratio of the population affected by the problem
	Global warming	An unsolved issue by the support team	Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars	Contracting an incurable rare disease

Baseline estimate	1	0.2	0	0.000000000125^*
^* 1 / 8,000,000,000 = 0.000000000125

Due to a lack of real-world global data on individuals’ preferences this step simply assumes that individual preferences are a good-enough representations of the preferences of the general population.

1.10.1 Estimate the relative relevance of the problem at the global level by multiplying the scores from Step 1.7.1. and Step 1.9.1.
	Global warming	An unsolved issue by the support team	Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars	Contracting an incurable rare disease

Baseline estimate	3,280	180	0	0.00000073

The graph below illustrates the results from the additional steps to estimate the global impact of the identified problems. The graphs are scaled such that the highest score in the analysis represents 100%, therefore all scores are relative to the max score in the given example.

Relative importance of the problems on a global scale.

Not surprisingly the problem “Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars” remains the least pressing problem since it does not have any direct impact on any of the needs included in the analysis and it directly impacts 0 individuals.

A person “Contracting an incurable rare disease” becomes the second least significant problem from the perspective of the world at large, even though it was the most severe problem for the individual experiencing the problem. Since one person represents only about 1 / 8,000,000,000 = 0.000000000125 th of the entire human population, a major individual problem becomes almost irrelevant at the global scale.

“An unsolved issue by the support team” becomes the second most relevant problem at the global scale even if it only impacts 20 % of the population, at 1 issue / individual.

As expected “Global warming” becomes the most pressing problem at a global scale, as it affects the entire population, but the effects are not so immediate as to impact shorter-term desires included in the analysis.

So far, all values were kept constant when analyzing the problems at the level of the individual and at the global scale. However, there are two key variables which are independent of personal preferences and which can be adjusted to better represent the severity of the problems. The number of times a problem is encountered / individual does not change for “Global warming”, “Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars”, and for “Contracting an incurable rare disease” due to the inherent nature of these problems. In the current setting these are dichotomous variables (yes / no, 1 / 0) at the nominal level of measurement, meaning you are either exposed to the effects of global warming or you are not, you either contract an incurable disease or you don’t, and you either suffer from the lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars or you don’t. However, the troubles experienced due to the unsolved issue(s) by the support team are allowed to take on any value ≥ 0 with no theoretical upper limit.

The variable measuring the ratio of the population affected by each problem also remains the same for “Global warming”, “Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars”, and for “Contracting an incurable rare disease”, since global warming affects the entire population, Lack of atmosphere on Mars affects 0 % of the population at the moment (and in the foreseeable future), while an individual contracting an incurable rare disease is by definition 1 person, therefore the ratio remains the same as in the previous examples. However, the number of people experiencing an unsolved issue by the support team can vary within a clear range: 0-100%. It might be perfectly possible that the previous 20% estimate is a very optimistic lower bound, while there is a hard upper limit of 100% if everyone on the Earth was treated badly by a support team.

Following these considerations and adjusting the numbers to 7 unsolved issues by the support team / individual,

1.6.2. Quantify the number of times anyone may encounter each of the problems in a given time period (e.g. year, month, etc.)
	Global warming	An unsolved issue by the support team	Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars	Contracting an incurable rare disease

Slight change from baseline	1	7	1	1

…then continuing the calculations with the updated estimate,…

1.7.2. Sum the scores from Step 1.5. for each problem and multiply them by the number of times anyone may encounter the problem from Step 1.6.2. for each problem
	Global warming	An unsolved issue by the support team	Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars	Contracting an incurable rare disease

Slight change from baseline	3280	6302.17	0	5819.69

1.8.2. Quantify the population of the Earth (# of individuals)
Population of the Earth

8,000,000,000

…where 53% of the population is affected by the unsolved issues and frustrations caused by the support team,…

1.9.2. Estimate / calculate the ratio of the population affected by the problem
	Global warming	An unsolved issue by the support team	Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars	Contracting an incurable rare disease

Slight change from baseline	1	0.53	0	0.000000000125^*
^* 1 / 8,000,000,000 = 0.000000000125

…the final severity score for unsolved issues by support teams rise dramatically, whereas the scores of the other problems remain unchanged:

1.10.2. Estimate the relative relevance of the problem at the global level by multiplying the scores from Step 1.7.2. and Step 1.9.2.
	Global warming	An unsolved issue by the support team	Lack of breathable atmosphere on Mars	Contracting an incurable rare disease

Slight change from baseline	3,280	3,340	0	0.00000073

Baseline estimate^*	3,280	180	0	0.00000073
^* Included for comparison.

It becomes apparent from the graph below that support related issues can easily escalate and surpass the perceived severity of Global warming even with only 7 issues / individual when 53% of the population is affected. It is not unimaginable that both numbers still underestimate the prevalence of the problem.

Relative importance of the problems on a global scale with increased estimates

In short, the emotional distress caused by the support team’s undesirable behavior at the global scale can surpass the short-term suffering experienced from global warming, indicating that the problem may warrant more attention than one would think at first glimpse.

It is worth noting that - since people have a potentially unlimited number of needs or attributes they care about, and there are a potentially unlimited number of problems - a complete and fully accurate matrix is not likely to be achievable. Nevertheless, the presented methods are still useful for modeling problems and to analyze the state of affairs. While it may be tempting to come up with various metrics based on some ratios derived from the analysis (e.g. How much more undesirable is global warming for the individual compared to contracting an incurable disease? or How much one would be willing to pay to avoid problems with the support based on the amount of effort exercised to prevent global warming?, etc.), the scores assigned to needs and problems as well as the final severity scores are all at the ordinal level of measurement at best, enabling only rank ordering the options and problems. Such relative quantifications are only meaningful within the context of the analysis and should not be used outside of their initial context.

To enable inter-contextual comparisons among needs and ordering of options based on their capability to fulfill various needs a common base is necessary. An ideal common base should be defined objectively, unambiguously and have the properties of a ratio scale when it comes to the levels of measurement. Time is a great candidate for a common base if we think about it in terms of the amount of time we spend in different modes of behavior, or the amount of time we spend experiencing various states of mind. One hour spent creating something meaningful is definitely more preferable than one hour spent in physical or mental pain.

And because time is money (at least in business), and money seems to have all the desirable features of a common base, one can go on and quantify options and problems by the monetary gains and losses associated with the available options and the unavoidable problems. Money gives a certain amount of freedom of choice to fulfill desires with various objects and to pay the price of avoiding something undesirable. Money in this sense acts as an instrumental goal as it opens up a wider set of options by indirectly making it possible to fulfill the more important terminal goals: how we spend our limited time. Therefore, the amount of money gained or lost is only relevant to the extent that it allows experiencing misery for a shorter period of time and to the extent that it enables experiencing a more pleasurable state for longer: for example by spending less time feeling hungry by having enough money to buy food.

So, for people who think that the quantification of abstract and hard-to-objectively-define phenomena like “needs”, “desires” or “emotional suffering” is subjective, ambiguous and problematic in so many ways, there is another possibility: one can quantify each problem in terms of the concrete and hard monetary losses by using real data or best-guess estimates where data is lacking. A procedure to estimate the costs caused by the support team may follow the following step:

Absolute relevance of the problem for an individual

2.1. Quantify the direct cost (e.g. USD) of the issue you are trying to solve (direct cost / issue)
Direct cost / issue

$ 20

2.2. Quantify the time spent on unproductive struggle with the support team (hours wasted / issue)
Hours wasted / issue

31

2.3. Quantify the potential earnings (e.g. USD) foregone / hour while struggling with the support team instead of doing something immediately productive (indirect cost / hour / issue)
Indirect cost / hour / issue

$ 20

2.4. Calculate the total opportunity cost (e.g USD) of the struggle with the support team by multiplying the numbers from Step 2.2. and Step 2.3. (total opportunity cost / issue)
Total opportunity cost / issue

$ 620

2.5. Quantify the full personal cost of the struggle with the support team by summing the numbers from Step 2.1. and Step 2.4. (full personal cost / issue)
Full personal cost / issue

$ 640

2.6. Quantify the number of times you encounter a comparable problem in a given time period e.g. year, month, etc. (issues / time period)
Issues / time period

1

2.7. Quantify the full personal cost (e.g. USD) of struggles with support teams over a given period (year, month, etc.) by multiplying the numbers from Step 2.5. and Step 2.6. (full personal cost / time period)
Full personal cost / time period

$ 640

Absolute relevance of the problem on a global scale

3.1. Quantify the direct cost (e.g. USD) of an "average" issue people may try to solve using some measure of central tendency like the mode, median, mean, etc. (direct cost / issue / individual)
	Direct cost / issue / individual

Upper estimate (conservative)	$ 30

Lower estimate (optimistic)	$ 10

3.2. Quantify the "average" time spent (e.g. hours) on unproductive struggle with the support team by the "average person". ("average" amount of time wasted / issue / individual)
	"Average" amount of time wasted / issue / individual

Upper estimate (conservative)	5

Lower estimate (optimistic)	1.5

3.3. Quantify the potential earnings (e.g USD) foregone / hour by the "average person" while struggling with the support team instead of doing something immediately productive, using some measure of central tendency like the mode, median, mean, etc. (indirect cost / hour / issue / individual)
	Indirect cost / hour / issue / individual

Upper estimate (conservative)	$ 10^*

Lower estimate (optimistic)	$ 10^*
^* Global Median Hourly Wage: There is no single authoritative figure due to wide variation among countries. The World Bank and ILO report typical annual / weekly earnings for certain regions, but not always by hour. Rough synthesis of global data for 2022–2023: Global median hourly earnings (all workers): Estimates range from 2–4 USD / hour (PPP-adjusted), High-income countries: 15–30+ / hr, Low-income countries: < $ 2 / hr. Source: ChatGPT summary of World Bank and ILO data.

3.4. Calculate the total opportunity cost (e.g USD) of the struggle with the support team for the "average person" by multiplying the numbers from Step 3.2. and Step 3.3. (total opportunity cost / issue / individual)
	Total opportunity cost / issue / individual

Upper estimate (conservative)	$ 50

Lower estimate (optimistic)	$ 15

3.5. Quantify the full personal cost (e.g USD) of the struggle with the support team for the "average person" by summing the numbers from Step 3.1. and Step 3.4. (full personal cost / issue / individual)
	Full personal cost / issue / individual

Upper estimate (conservative)	$ 80

Lower estimate (optimistic)	$ 25

3.6. Quantify the population of the Earth (# of individuals)
Population of the Earth

8,000,000,000

3.7. Estimate / calculate the ratio of the population affected by a comparable problem
	Ratio of the population affected by a comparable problem

Upper estimate (conservative)	0.2

Lower estimate (optimistic)	0.0032^*
^* Assuming that only 16 % of the global population living in high-income economies (World Bank, 2022) may be exposed to unsolved issues by support teams and only 2 % of them actually experience real issues: 0.16 × 0.02 = 0.0032

3.8. Calculate the full global cost (e.g. USD) of struggling with support teams by multiplying the numbers from Step 3.5. Step 3.6. and Step 3.7. (full global cost / issue)
	Full global cost / issue

Upper estimate (conservative)	$ 128,000,000,000

Lower estimate (optimistic)	$ 640,000,000

3.9. Quantify the number of times the affected population encounters another comparable problem in a given period e.g. year, month, etc. (# of issues globally / time period)
	# of issues globally / time period

Upper estimate (conservative)	1.5

Lower estimate (optimistic)	1

3.10. Calculate the full global cost (e.g. USD) of struggles with support teams over a given period (e.g. year, month, etc.) by multiplying the numbers from Step 3.8. and Step 3.9. (full global cost of issues / time period)
	Full global cost of issues / time period

Upper estimate (conservative)	$ 192,000,000,000

Lower estimate (optimistic)	$ 640,000,000

This basic model of human decision-making is sufficiently general that the same procedures could be easily applied (with a different set of needs / attributes and problems) to the humans within organizations and within “support” teams as well. However, there are additional factors that need to be taken into account. Namely, that members of the “support” team operate within the context of an organization with important implications for the further analysis.

Organizations and their multi-faceted relationship with humans

Organizations are interesting creations. They are often anthropomorphised due a set of features that are generally attributed to humans like goals, needs, strategies, visions, etc. But in contrast to the majority of living humans - who have a real personality, values, feelings, emotions, aspirations, and several (often conflicting) motivations - organizations are legal entities created for a very specific purpose: to generate income for the owners and other stakeholders. Certain organizations, especially limited liability companies are legally required to act in the best interest of their shareholders, where “best interest” is implicitly defined in a very narrow sense: financial interest, assuming that more money is preferred to less. In other words, the sole purpose of limited liability companies is to increase value i.e. wealth, for its shareholders. Corporate law grants limited liability companies a set of special statuses by defining them as legal persons. Some of the special rights that are granted to organizations:

having limited liability: the owners and shareholders of the corporation have a limited liability for losses, ensuring that the owners are legally separated from the organization. When things go wrong only the legal person i.e. the organization is liable, which means that only the organization is held responsible, not the humans behind the actions of the organization. Therefore, the shareholders’ only risk is to lose money, but they are not really liable for what the organization does on their behalf.
right to own property,
right to enter into contracts,
right against self-incrimination,
the right to privacy,

with some duties like paying tax.

Organizations can be also modeled as supra-individual entities with a life cycle, in which they may grow or shrink, they may even become cannibalistic, consuming other organizations, etc. As opposed to biological humans who have a limited lifespan, organizations are potentially immortal as they can be operated by successive generations of individually mortal humans, meaning that organizations have a potentially unlimited time to achieve their goals. These supra-individual entities tend to wear various masks, where a mask or a persona in the Jungian sense describes parts of the human personality that are shown purposefully and strategically in social interactions depending on the context, goals, and expectations. Organizations may put on a friendly, playful, attractive even childish mask to reel customers and prospective employees in. For end users, the mask radiates cheerfulness while streamlined, clutter-free, fine-tuned design elements are dominant to make the extraction of the user’s data as easy, rewarding and enjoyable as possible, so people do it more and more at their free will. However, there are less prominent and less friendly masks in the small prints and the impossible to read within a reasonable time and / or hard to comprehend end-user license agreements that most people just accept without reading (is it really a freedom of choice to have no choice but accept all unfavourable terms or be excluded from using a service?). A developer aiming to build an app and trying to access the system’s API is faced with another persona that speaks specialized technical language, and openly provides all sorts of details so that both parties can extract as much value from the interaction as possible. Investors and shareholders may meet yet another very different persona on the pages of the quarterly reports. Employees often meet a darker mask hidden from public view with NDA’s and contracts that put strict limitations on the activities one can do even outside of the organization and especially in situations where one becomes a witness to unethical or questionable behaviors within the organization.

Organizations have not only been likened simply to humans, but also to humans with serious mental disorders such as psychopathy (i.e. antisocial personality disorder). According to Brueckner “corporate psychopathic behaviour describes a form of corporate conduct, which meets the psychiatric criteria for human psychopathy; that is, a failure to conform to social norms and the violation of accepted ethical standards without remorse.” For the record, according to the DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic Criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder (301.7) a human qualifies for an antisocial personality disorder diagnosis when the person is at least 18 years old, shows evidence of onset of conduct disorder before age 15, and antisocial behavior cannot be explained by schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, AND: “There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest,
deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure,
impulsivity or failure to plan ahead,
irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults,
reckless disregard for safety of self or others,
consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations,
lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.”

Joel Bakan, author of the book and the accompanying documentary movie The Corporation claims that some corporations are psychopathic because of their narrow-minded pursuit of self-interest and their inability to have a genuine concern for others. They have a built-in compulsion to externalize costs, a lack of concern for human safety and the environment when such things seem like obstacles to their primary purpose. It is often more profitable for corporations to risk human life, break environmental regulations, pay fines in lawsuits or / settlements out of court, than to implement changes that comply with ethical or environmental regulations. According to Bakan, the “quasi-personification of corporations under corporate law is coupled with the concept of moral agency, which ascribes corporate entities the quality of being able to act intentionally and with independent volition. The investment of corporations with these anthropomorphic qualities gives rise to the argument of moral projection. This suggests that corporations should be held accountable to human moral principles, even though they are not real people. This projection principle fuels the contemporary debate surrounding deplorable corporate conduct, which emerged in response to corporations violating moral principles in the pursuit of economic return without legal constraint. In contrast, identical conduct perpetrated by a ‘real’ legal person would be subject to criminal law.” Since corporations act (by employing lawyers, analysts, etc.) as rational agents calculating the probability of getting caught and the magnitude of potential losses (both of which are highly uncertain, and the odds can often be manipulated by lobbying, bribing, or by delaying proceedings, thus avoiding accountability, etc.) it’s no surprise that taking the risk seems like the optimal solution. Recent advancements in the research field apply the human psychopathy concept not just to organizations but to the entire system that most organizations are embedded in questioning the sanity of the global capitalist system.

While it is definitely tempting to characterize organizations as living entities with human-like features, the usefulness of this approach depends on the purpose of the analysis and it should not be forgotten that any analysis is always restricted to dealing with an abstraction, or a model of reality. Whether it is a computer model, a mental model or some other model, a model is an approximation of the real thing. It is the basic nature of models that they are never fully complete (i.e. necessarily ignoring some parts of the whole), while (hopefully) accurately capturing the parts relevant for the purpose of the analysis. Since the meaning of the “best” (i.e. complete, highly accurate, lacking major errors, etc.) model for characterizing both humans and organizations is only relative to any other model, perhaps the search for the “Best” (i.e. most complete, most accurate) model only leads to futile and never-ending arguments about the similarities and differences between humans and organizations and how well each model approximates the overlapping and disjoint features of both. According to Ockham’s razor a theory (or model) which relies on fewer assumptions is preferable to another one which requires more assumptions to be valid given that their explanatory power is the same. While anthropomorphising organizations and comparing them to humans with certain psychopathological features is an effective rhetorical device, as a model it introduces several assumptions and interesting theoretical questions such as: would it make sense to expect morally appropriate behavior from a building that is inhabited by humans in the same way as proponents of the “organizations are psychopaths” model expect an appropriate moral code from non-human organizations? Are only organizations older than 18 years allowed to get an official diagnosis? What if the organization did not show signs of onset of conduct disorder before age 15? If certain organizations suffer from mental disorders, are they exempt from punishment? What if the diagnostic criteria used for humans is too vague or expert judgements on the same issue prove to be inconsistent and unreliable? Although the model has interesting implications, it may miss identifying the root cause(s) of problematic organizational behavior. When the organization is modeled as a human, perhaps the analysis misses the real humans in the control / board rooms making the actual decisions which are later attributed to the organization.

Therefore, it is always worth keeping in mind that organizations - despite their strong resemblance to living creatures or even to humans - are legal entities acting at the command and on behalf of humans (e.g. owners, shareholders). Based on this fact, it is also perfectly valid to claim that the concept of an organization is meaningless without humans, i.e. no organization has an independent existence from the people running it. The implication is that the organization’s behavior can be best understood by analyzing the motivations and activities of the people within the organization. Linking corporate behavior to actual individuals is a tricky task, but checking for the strength of relationship between the characteristics of key decision-makers - who, by the way, are to a large extent shielded from important consequences of their decisions - and the actions attributed to the corporation may get us closer to a more accurate model. Data is sparse on corporate - and several other key - decision-makers’ mental setup due to challenges with subjecting people to compulsory psychological assessments and the associated difficulties related to the validity of data obtained from such assessments. Nevertheless, some claims have been made based on empirical data showing that “12% of corporate senior leadership displays a range of psychopathic traits, which means psychopathy could be 12 times more common among senior management than among the general population”. Some of the traits highly prevalent among senior corporate leaders include egocentricity, predatoriness, recklessness, lack of empathy, manipulation, exploitation, deception, lack of morality, charisma, persuasiveness, creativity. There are dynamic interactions between humans and organizations whereby people with certain traits and features tend to get attracted to various organizations and into various roles, then a subset of these people get selected into certain positions, and a smaller subset of these people end up exerting a disproportionately large influence within and outside of the organization. Such people get rewarded by finding their “niche” i.e. a good level of person-environment fit for themselves, where their past decisions and actions were especially well-aligned with the primary goal of the organization and its shareholders. So problematic corporate behavior may indirectly be attributed to the competitive and unforgiving business environment which rewards antisocial traits and behaviors in pursuit of short-term business success.¹ But even if psychopaths are over-represented in senior leadership positions in certain organizations, it is unlikely that the vast majority of people working within organizations would score exceptionally high on psychopathic traits. Nonetheless, some of the collective activities of - individually well-meaning - people visible through the actions or “behavior” of the organization are objectionable, even harmful for others. So another question arises: how does collectively problematic behavior arise from the actions of independently non-pathological individuals?

By utilizing a person-situation (P-S) interactionist approach one acknowledges that human behavior is a function of both personal and situational variables. Within this view behavior is not explained only in terms of personal characteristics or pathologies, but the equally or even more important influences encoded in the situations that people are embedded in. This framework may start with the hypothesis that the majority of people within organizations share all the basic features with humans outside the boundaries of the organization (since they are drawn from the general population, although not completely randomly), but those features are altered by the roles, contractual agreements, job requirements, incentives, policies, duties, etc. according to some principles. In this view the organization is a key situational cue which regulates behavior by defining what is expected, what is allowed, what is encouraged and incentivized, and what is prohibited within the organization. Playing by the rules is rewarded, breaking the written or implicit rules is penalized. The benefit of the P-S interactionist model is that it opens up the opportunity to investigate both of the main categories of the antecedents of human behavior: personal factors (e.g. personality, values, motivations, etc) and situational factors (e.g. compliance, obedience, conformity, group pressures, etc.), uniting divergent research fields within psychology, behavioral economics and related fields.

Situations may be defined as part of the broader environment (i.e. natural, social, economic, business, political environment) or in a narrower sense where immediate transient influences are more dominant on shaping the fine-grained behavior (e.g. time pressure, orders from higher-ups, incentive system, prospect of a bonus, etc.). Perhaps the most important factors of the situation or the environment are the other parties involved in transactions with the organization like customers, employees, the natural environment. Since - as far as human activities are concerned - ex nihilo nihil fit or “nothing comes from nothing” most transactions result in a zero-sum game at best where a gain for one party equals the losses / costs for the other party directly involved in the transaction. However, transactions often have hidden features and hidden costs i.e. externalities, where the costs associated with production are offloaded / borne by society or nature. If such costs were internalized and included in the price, consumption would definitely decrease which would be unacceptable for the organization. When rational economic agents follow their narrowly defined self-interest, global consequences may lead to problems like the tragedy of the commons where the outcome of the collective actions of “rational” (i.e. pursuing short term self-interest) actors give rise to negative outcomes for all. The key observation is that interests may show several types of conflict: conflict between the short-term and long-term self interest of the same agent, conflict between the interests of parties not in direct transaction with each other, and conflicts between the interests of parties in direct transaction with each other.

The last type of conflict is especially relevant for understanding the kind of circumstances that may give rise to problematic and objectionable organizational behaviors which could easily qualify as psychopathic - were they presented by a human individual.

Value exchanges between humans and organizations

Before analysing the specific circumstances where interests of two transacting parties (the organization and the customer) are in direct conflict, it’s important to note that transactions are never exchanges of equal values. There would be no sense in making a transaction if only the same objective values were exchanged. Even when the same amount of money is exchanged in a transaction, the subjective value assigned to that very same amount may be different between two parties. Imagine a person with a 10 USD banknote in his pocket trying to use a parking machine which accepts coins only. There is another person who has 10 USD in coins in his pockets, who would be happy to convert them into a less heavy object: a banknote. Given that these two persons meet, a successful transaction might take place leaving both parties happy where everyone leaves the transaction with 10 USD in their pockets by exchanging 10 USD worth of coins for 10 USD worth of banknotes. The transaction takes place simply because the subjective value assigned to the same amount of money by the parties is different: one values the 10 USD in coins higher than in a banknote, while the other party values the 10 USD banknote higher than the same amount of money in coins. Exchanges only make sense if value is perceived very differently between parties (a transaction in a way represents an agreement about disagreement). When a customer values the artifact offered for sale by the organization higher than the amount of money the artifact is provided for by the organization, then the customer happily sacrifices a certain amount of money to extract the value from the artifact provided by the organization. The organization on the other hand values the customer’s money more than the value of the artifact offered for sale, therefore the organization is willing to sell it in exchange for the customer’s money. If perceptions of value were in total agreement between the parties there would be no reason to engage in any exchange at all. Similarly, an organization values the money it has to pay in salary less than the value generated by the labor of its employees, therefore the organization is okay with sacrificing a certain amount of money for a certain type of work performed by the employee. On the other hand, employees value the money they receive from the organization for their work more than the time they invest in the work, therefore they are willing to exchange their physical or intellectual effort for the salary offered by the organization. Both parties have a sense that they made a good deal because the organization buys labor at a cheap price and sells the product at a higher price while the employee sells his / her effort at a higher price than the perceived value invested in the work.

Transactions and value exchanges are directly related to the “stuff” created by organizations as generally they represent the objects of desire that customers may find useful. Apart from errors and mistakes (which may become more prevalent and more difficult to detect with the ever greater reliance on AI systems) almost everything at large, mature, international organizations is designed with a clear purpose. Intelligent design in this sense refers to purposefully creating some artifact (e.g. products, services, internal documents, policies, business strategy promotion materials, logos, slogans, ads, contracts, design elements, software codes, etc) that serves a clear goal so that each cog can contribute seamlessly to value creation. The artifacts represent a will to achieve a goal. Will and purpose are not meaningful without humans, therefore - with the exception of unintentional errors and mistakes - everything created within an organization serves a human purpose. This purpose may be shared by all, or most of the people within the organizations or the purpose may exist only in a single individual, but somewhere behind any artifact there must be at least one human and a human will. From the organization’s perspective the artifacts (products or services) for sale represent instrumental goals (just like money for humans) helping the organization to achieve its terminal goal (accumulation of wealth). Successful organizations tend to provide stuff that (at least some) people find useful by satisfying some of their needs making them willing to enter into a value exchange with the organization. From the customer’s perspective only the stuff is relevant, whereas the amount of shareholder value generated by the organization is irrelevant. Therefore, both of the following two conditions are necessary for an organization’s legitimate existence: the founders’ and shareholders’ desire to create value / wealth for themselves, AND at least one thing that successfully satisfies a need of some customers which makes them (the customer) willing to pay for the stuff. However, if the terminal goal of the organization is wealth accumulation and organizations are only meaningful in relation to human needs and desires, and money is only an instrumental goal for humans (including the owners and shareholders of the organization and its customers), which opens up more degrees of freedom to spend time in different states of mind (the terminal human goal), then a circular system becomes apparent, in which there is nothing more, nothing less than transactions involving time as the fundamental currency. What also becomes apparent through this lens is how the organization satisfies the higher human need for self-transcendence (i.e. to become part of a bigger whole i.e. the organization, which may have an infinite lifespan, a reach surpassing any human individual’s capabilities, etc.) uniting mortal individuals by a shared goal which serves as the fundamental reason for the existence of the organization (i.e. to have more time at disposal to continue the game). In this sense objectionable and harmful organizational behaviors may be seen as aberrations of the underlying human need which overrides all other important considerations.

Since all these analyses lead to humans as root causes of the actions of organizations, it is safe to say that organizations are made up of humans whose interests are united through the framework of an organization, and that organizations represent a strong alignment between human interests for value creation (i.e. the generation of wealth). Based on all these considerations the main thesis of this analysis is as follows: humans are multifaceted creatures with a potentially unlimited number of needs, desires and sufferings. Organizations represent unified human needs / desires. Therefore, organizations are meaningless without including human needs, desires, and wills in the analysis. The fundamental reason for the organization’s existence is the unified human desire to generate value or wealth for themselves which turns out to be only a substitute for the real thing: a collective need for self-transcendence and a need for having more time to spend in existence. To achieve this goal organizations act both as filters on the multitude of human features (restricting the manifestation of the features unnecessary for reaching the primary goal), and also as amplifiers (perhaps to even pathological levels) on certain features which are beneficial for reaching the primary goal. Therefore, the extent to which the unique features of human individuals are relevant for understanding the behavior of the organization depends on how each feature contributes to achieving the organization’s primary goal. The alignment between human intentions and the organization’s goal is the most relevant factor for understanding the influence of humans in organizational behavior expressed through the organization’s decisions, actions and strategies visible to the outside observer.

No doubt that certain organizations in certain circumstances can display questionable, objectionable and downright harmful behaviors and often they don’t really seem like the entities to be trusted with any of the things people care about. Customers are indeed aware of the risks involved in the transactions with the organisation and have tried to defend themselves from unfair practices by establishing consumer rights (protection) organizations. Nevertheless, people in general seem comfortable with trusting corporations as providers of their foods, drinks, medicine, platforms for all kinds of online activities including the ones for keeping in touch with others, managing personal finances, etc. And as long as business goes as usual the organization’s problematic or psychopathic nature may remain more or less hidden, but when something hits the fan and issues arise (irrespective of whether the issues are due to the organization’s failure or the customer’s) its best to be prepared for some hard time trying resolve conflicts, and sorting out those personally important issues.

Just as on a certain level of analysis all organizations are quite alike due to a very small set of sufficiently strong shared features - the purpose to increase shareholder value above all else through the activities of the organization, which is a key governing principle and the single most important internal purpose unifying directors, board members, executive officers, shareholders and other key stakeholders associated with the organization - there are a few basic principles that when present give rise to objectionable, unfair even psychopathic organizational behavior. The main features include the external requirement placed on the organization to take responsibility for something, to fix an issue and most importantly to spend time or money on something which would be reasonably expected during a fair deal, but does not directly create wealth in the short-term.

There are general events which usually trigger a subset of the customers who experience problems with a product or service to initiate contact with the “support” team as (paying) customers of an organization. Some triggers may be a part of the normal business and a fully expected behavior from customers like when one has been diligently paying for a health or property insurance for years, and when an illness or lightning strikes, one submits a claim to the insurance company to cover the costs as agreed by both parties in the contract between the customer and the organization. Another kind of trigger may be when the organization changes a policy that is not in the best interest of the customer. There may be errors which are more or less unintentional (but sometimes planned) like a defective product or a non-functional service, overbilling, payments not registered and other kinds of errors on the service provider’s side. Note that in all instances the loss is already incurred by the customer so he / she is already placed at a disadvantage to make up for the losses adding to the stresses already present from the initial problem. A kind of inequality is already present, since the best case for the customer is to break even with significant effort at the mercy of the company policy and the “support” team. And these are the crucial moments where the organization has a chance to act fairly or reveal the psychopath hiding behind all the various masks discussed previously. It is very easy and often more convenient (i.e. less costly) to abuse the imbalance of power and raise roadblocks in front of the customer to prevent them from achieving their goals: make up for a loss, break even from a loss at best, get fair treatment, etc. It is also precisely these circumstances that one can get a glimpse of how the organization actually values customer relationships by observing the organization’s choices: is it going to avoid a short-term loss (pay for the mistake now) at the expense of potentially losing a customer on the long term, OR is it going to act fairly making sure that issues are sorted out (especially if they were the fault of the organization!) by compensating for the customer’s losses ASAP, thereby strengthening the trust for a mutually beneficial relationship in the long-term?

“Support” teams as secret organizational weapons in disguise

The naive view of customer “support” teams would suggest that such teams are primarily tasked with helping customers with legitimate claims and with solving problems experienced by the customers with a product or service provisioned for sale by the organization. One would assume that “support” teams and members of the wider “support” team are rewarded by the organization based on for example how quickly they reach a satisfactory solution for each customer, what percentage of customers report high levels of satisfaction with the support received, how the number of problems solved contributes to loyal paying customers in the long-term, etc. Well, in such a system that aligns with the customer’s interest (and the organization’s long term-self interest as well by the way), certain features and behaviors would not be allowed as they will be demonstrated through an exemplary case. The presented case is definitely a negative example from the perspective of customer satisfaction, valuation and long term trust, but it may not represent an exceptional case even if hard statistics on the prevalence of similar issues is lacking at least from the public view. Even if global public statistics are scarce or non-existent, one can get stronger-than-anecdotal evidence about how organizations deal with problems using various sources like the ratings provided on various platforms, court cases against certain companies, forums and blogs related to consumer rights violations etc. Real world experiences from such sources suggest that negative experiences with “support” teams and consumer right violations are widely prevalent and are not exceptions to the rule suggesting that negative experience represent a carefully designed strategy from the organization to avoid accountability and most importantly to avoid taking action in hopes to keep some money, whatever small that amount may be, which makes the whole practice even more pathetic and truly psychopathic. To be fair with organizations it would be great to include cases that contradict the prevailing views, by collecting a huge number of cases that get solved in a satisfactory way with minimal friction. But this would require organizations to publish their internal statistics both on unsolved (money kept in) and successfully solved in favour of the paying customer (money paid out) cases. Such a level of transparency would allow the observers to draw a more accurate picture of the organizations given that they were willing to share their data. Such a move may also set the norm for other organizations as well. It is perfectly imaginable that the patterns we see in a small scale are the reflections of the patterns at the larger or the largest scale resembling the concept of scale invariance. Based on patterns observed in micro-issues (i.e. the organization tries everything in their power to deflect responsibility and to avoid a small immediate loss), one would expect the same behavioral pattern at play for issues involving more serious violations or bigger costs, potentially invoking even finer tactics and more hideous tricks serving the same underlying purpose: avoid any costs.

An exemplary case

Automatic refund process from Google Ads payment profile to bank account triggered by closing one of the payments profiles associated with the active advertiser account. The legitimate refund initially failed due to the missing option to select “COMPLETE REFUND”, which was mentioned in the first notification e-mail about the refund. This document shows an attempt to get help from the “support” team.

Start date of process:

2025.02.28.

Date of latest update to this document:

2025.05.23.

Duration of process so far (based on Date of latest update to this document):

84 days

Structure of document:

EVENTS are sorted by ascending order of date (i.e. latest update at the end of document).
SCREENSHOTS of events where a reply is sent to an e-mail are sorted by a descending order of date (i.e. latest reply to an e-mail is at the beginning of the screenshot).
E-mail MESSAGES are followed by the attachments sent with the e-mail (if there’s any).

Number of e-mails sent and received in connection with this case:

Current status:

Unsolved, the support team failed to process a simple legitimate refund process with various dark tactics and strategies within more than a reasonable time (84 days).

Previous statuses:

Unsolved, the support team keeps preventing the completion of a legitimate refund process with various dark tactics and strategies.

Events

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🔄 Show / hide events

The support teams are not what they seem

Introduction

Setting

Human suffering and the relevance of problems

Relative relevance of the problem for an individual

Relative relevance of the problem on a global scale

Absolute relevance of the problem for an individual

Absolute relevance of the problem on a global scale

Organizations and their multi-faceted relationship with humans

Value exchanges between humans and organizations

“Support” teams as secret organizational weapons in disguise

An exemplary case

Events

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Event 31.

Post-mortem autopsy of the exemplary case

Key assumptions of the autopsy:

Tactics employed by the “support” team based on the evidence presented in the “An exemplary case” section.

Summary of the autopsy

Solutions available for customers

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