I Don't Believe it!

There’s a moment in life when you realise you haven’t become unreasonable. The world has simply stopped agreeing to do things properly.

This usually happens during a phone call.

You ring up to sort out a small, finite problem. Not a crisis. Not a philosophical puzzle. Just a thing that used to be handled by one human being with a pen. You know the answer exists because the question is obvious. You even know roughly what the answer will be. All that’s required is for the system to acknowledge reality and move on.

Instead, you enter the maze.

You are asked to confirm who you are, repeatedly, by a voice that cannot hear you properly. You are told your call is important while being demonstrably ignored. You are given options that do not include the thing you rang about, then punished for selecting the least wrong one. Eventually, a human appears, already tired of you, and explains that although you are correct, nothing can be done because “that’s not how the system works”.

This is the point where something subtle happens. The system stops being wrong, and you start being the problem.

You ask a follow up question. You point out the contradiction. You mention that the letter they sent says the opposite. The tone changes. You are now “challenging”. Possibly “aggressive”. Certainly “difficult”. Accuracy, it turns out, has become a behavioural issue.

Victor Meldrew understood this perfectly. He wasn’t angry because he was old. He was angry because the world kept insisting that obvious nonsense was normal, and that noticing it was a personal failing.

The joke, then and now, is that he was usually right.

Modern systems are full of this polite insanity. Everything is wrapped in friendliness and process, but nothing actually works. Forms exist to be completed, not read. Emails are sent to prove communication happened, not to convey information. Policies exist to prevent thought. And everyone involved behaves as if this is not only acceptable, but preferable.

The truly maddening thing is that nobody is in charge. You can’t even shout at the right person anymore. There’s no clerk to glare at, no manager to summon. Just layers of procedure, all insisting they are neutral, all quietly absolving themselves of responsibility.

And if you object, you’re told to calm down.

There was a time when complaining was part of maintenance. You pointed out the loose step so someone fixed it. You mentioned the missing file so it was found. Now complaining is treated as a moral defect. A failure to “be kind”. As if systems improve through encouragement rather than correction.

So people stop complaining. They lower expectations. They adapt. They develop workarounds. They tell themselves it’s not worth the effort. This is framed as maturity. As wisdom. As choosing peace.

It isn’t. It’s surrender.

And that’s why the Meldrew figure still resonates. Not because he’s rude, or shouty, or resistant to change, but because he insists on a basic idea that feels almost radical now: that things should broadly make sense, and that saying so shouldn’t be controversial.

The danger, of course, is that when competence is consistently rebuffed, irritation curdles. You stop trying to fix the system and start resenting the people around you. The fault shifts sideways. It’s easier to blame neighbours, foreigners, broadcasters, young people with odd hair, than it is to admit that the structures we rely on have become hollow and defensive.

That’s when justified annoyance turns into something uglier. Not because the instinct was wrong, but because it was never given anywhere useful to go.

So the trick is to stay sharp without becoming sour. To keep pointing at the loose step without deciding the entire staircase is an enemy plot. To retain standards without retreating into permanent grievance.

Victor Meldrew was funny because he hadn’t learned that trick. He was also tragic for the same reason.

The rest of us have to manage better.

Because the problem isn’t that we’re turning into Victor Meldrew.

It’s that he’s starting to look like the only adult left in the room.