Don't get me wrong. I love face-to-face interaction, and prefer it above all other forms. But do we really need to create naff systems and procedures to coerce each other into real conversations?

As an intercultural trainer, I have been fascinated by my return to Scotland after years in Germany. As I quickly learnt, very little here works the way it's supposed to. I first came across this from the Department of Work and Pensions, who sent out two letters addressed to me on the same day, which directly contradicted each other.

Over the coming months, as I settled down, I began to formulate a model based on my observations of what was going on around me.

Scotland is a high context culture. This means that what is said and done has meaning imposed upon it by surrounding circumstances. In a low context culture, such as Germany, no means no and yes means yes. When the deal is done, it's done. When it's not delivered, you complain, vehemently. Germans do complaining very well.

Let me give you the example I've just experienced walking into my mobile phone provider shop in Glasgow.

I wanted to purchase a top-up voucher. They have an in-store machine for customers to do this effectively and efficiently, leaving staff to concentrate on customers with more complex needs.

So, I went up and inserted the required amount into the self-service machine, to get back a voucher to input into my phone. But the voucher didn't come out. It was stuck.

So, a member of staff came over, apologised that this often happens, and tried extracting the voucher from the slot with his pen. He quickly gave up, pulled the front of the machine open, which he pointed out should have been locked, and handed me the voucher.

So, let's look at this. A transaction that was designed for zero interaction with a sales person, fails, and I get:
my voucheran unnecessary (because the machine should have worked) friendly interaction with a sales personan insight into the poor quality of manufacture of his machine, and the shop's poor attitude towards the machine's security.So, I sat down with my voucher in the shop and activated the company's app on my smartphone for loading the voucher code. I clicked the tab for topping up, and it returned an error message saying my phone couldn't access the page, whilst I was sitting in the shop with full internet access. So, I switched to activating the code by telephone access. Picking up on my frustration, the  same member of staff came back over and I explained the issue with the app, which he tried with the same result. After apologising now for the app, he then completed the activation for me using his preferred method of the phone.
I get: my code activateda second unnecessary (because the app should have worked) friendly interaction with a sales personan insight into the poor quality of the app created by my provider, designed to take money from me, the customer.This is Scotland. Nothing really works the way it's supposed to. But why?
THE VPO EFFECT
My theory is that, on a deep unconscious level, we in Scotland just don't like doing things without a good blether. Our call centres, complaint centres, civil services, businesses, are rotating around the unconscious incompetence we build into our systems, to force subsequent face-to-face interactions.
The VPO effect stands for The Village Post Office. Imagine something you posted has gone missing. You go into your village post office to report this. You are rightfully angry because you have added to the mysterious tonnes of missing mail that evaporate from our three dimensional universe every day. Maybe what you sent was of sentimental, monetary or important business value. Can you be angry at the lady behind the post office counter? 
Of course not. She may be a fully paid representative of the Royal Mail, but its not her fault. It's "nobody's". It's "the system". 
So we both stay on a friendly level, she knowing that The Royal Mail can blissfully carry on being incompetent and that you won't get angry at her because of the great Scottish cry of defeat, "och, you mustn't feel like thaaat...." You know that being anything less than charming and circumspect could damage the longer term relationship you need in order for both of you to sustain the built-in incompetence of "the system", the challenging of which would be futile at best, and a one-way ticket to social ostracism at worst. Your patience is tested as she hands you a form to fill out. You know where this is leading. Resigned, you leave, waiting for the next system failure to bring you to the next charming interaction with a professional representative of the service you threw your money away on. You'll probably do what I've done, and subsequently purchase "track and sign" at vastly more expense, designed to bring more people into a process that should have worked just fine in the first place.
I can think of countless other examples in the past year where a simple transaction became a lengthy series of blethers ending in hopelessness, resignation and if I was lucky, gratitude for the outcome I should have got in the first place. 
Incompetence is profitable. It's culturally sanctioned self-sabotage. Bringing Scots face to face, or phone to phone with each other, keeps everyone emotionally in check, in touch with our collective small town culture, and reminds us all of the rules that keep our economy mediocre, propped up with defeatist humour and ticking along.