Rantfile

Author: Jules

  • The self-checkout that thinks I am a thief

    Unexpected item in the bagging area. There is no unexpected item. There is a bag, which the machine told me to place in the bagging area, and the bag has weight, because bags have weight, and the machine has decided that this weight is suspicious.

    I stand there like a criminal. A light flashes above my head. A teenager with a lanyard comes over, taps a code into the screen without looking at me, and leaves. I have been absolved by a child.

    I would, genuinely, rather queue for a human. The humans are faster. They do not ask me to confirm my age for a bottle of sparkling water. They do not say “please wait for assistance” in a voice that has clearly been told to sound patient. But the humans have been removed, so I am left negotiating with a scale that has trust issues.

  • On the phrase ‘reach out’

    Nobody reaches out. People send emails. The phrase “I’m reaching out” is a way of making an email sound like a hand extended across a chasm, when in fact it is a hand extended across a desk to take something from me.

    “I wanted to reach out about the invoice.” You wanted to ask about the invoice. “Reaching out to see if you had a chance to look at the deck.” You are asking whether I read the deck. I have not read the deck. The deck is forty-one slides and the title of the deck is Synergies.

    I propose we retire the phrase and replace it with the thing it means. “I am asking.” “I am reminding you.” “I am about to ask you for a favour that is larger than it sounds.” Honesty would save us all a tiny amount of time, which, multiplied across every email ever sent, is a civilisation.

  • Software updates that need me to ‘restart later’

    There is a particular dialog box that I have come to think of as a tiny bureaucrat living in my laptop. It appears when I am mid-sentence. It wants to restart. It offers two choices: Restart Now, which is a lie because nothing is saved, and Remind Me Later, which is also a lie because “later” turns out to mean “in eleven minutes, during the call”.

    I have never once wanted the update at the moment it was offered. Not once in my life. I would love an option that says “when I close the lid tonight, do your thing, and if it goes badly, leave a note”. That is how every other service in my life works. The plumber does not interrupt dinner to ask whether now is a good time to replace a washer.

    The worst part is the progress bar. It goes to 97 percent in forty seconds and then sits there contemplating its choices for nine minutes while I stare at a logo. Whoever drew that bar knew. They knew and they drew it anyway.

  • The bakery that sells out of everything by 8:40

    I want to be clear that I like the bakery. I like the people. I like the bread, when it exists. What I do not like is the way the entire stock evaporates between 8:30 and 8:40 as if a bus of competitive eaters pulls up every morning and I have simply never seen it.

    I have tried arriving at 8:25. The door is locked and there is a man inside who looks at me the way you look at a cat that has learned to open cupboards. At 8:30 the door opens and by the time I reach the counter the tray that held the seeded loaves holds a single crumb and a note that says “more at 11”. More at 11 is not a bakery, it is a rumour.

    Here is my modest proposal: bake more bread. I know. Revolutionary. I understand there is dough and proving and ovens and the whole thing is a schedule, but the schedule is wrong, and the evidence is the crowd of us standing outside at 8:41 holding nothing.

    I will be back tomorrow at 8:25. I will stand with the cat-man. We will say nothing to each other. This is the social contract now.