A few weeks ago, I was too lazy to do a reading my professor assigned. So, instead, I had the clever idea that I'd listen to it. I made the mistake of installing the most popular text-to-speech app. Ten pages of onboarding screens, with god knows how many voices I don't care about, later, I quit and read the document.
Another time, I made the mistake of wanting to play a game exclusive to a not-so-popular marketplace. After buying the game, I finally tried to download it. The download froze 15GB in. "No problem," I thought: "restart, and make sure I update the client." Same error. So, I looked it up online, and the only thing I could find was sympathy. "I am not like other people. I am technologically inclined. It's probably just the cache," I assured myself. So, I deleted the download cache and retried. And, what do you know? Same 15GB brick wall. Defeated, I just refunded the game.
Here is another fun one. Last year, I had the delightful experience of my bank blocking my credit card on a random summer afternoon during international travel. "Okay, so it's blocked. That's fine. Software breaks. I'll unblock it online," I told myself. "Oh, the website doesn't work at all. Hahaha, banks - Fine, nobody uses the site anyway, but the app will work," I declared as an ever-optimist. Some frustratingly long loading spinners later - "Ah, I give up. It's not working. Okay, let me call support," I said exasperatedly. "Please visit a branch to unblock your card," said the manager. "I'm on another continent," I replied. A few hours of back-and-forth later, they unblocked my card. "Ah, things are finally resolved," I told myself confidently (*insert the I was then shot 57 times meme*). The next day, the card was blocked again.
Much of the software we interact with daily is surprisingly hard to use. Some even fail to do the basic things they're supposed to. This makes me wonder how long we'll keep hitting "retry" on what was supposed to save us time