“That’s Just How the System Works”

When people are forced to adapt to software, rather than the other way around

Some seemingly trivial moments reveal far more than we might expect. One of them happened to me while I was spending some time abroad. The hotel was very large, with hundreds of rooms and a breakfast hall serving a constant stream of guests every morning.

At the entrance, an employee simply asked for each guest’s room number. She checked on her computer that breakfast was included and, a few seconds later, a small printer sprang into action. It printed three almost identical receipts. One was handed to the guest. The other two went straight into the bin.

The same scene repeated itself dozens, then hundreds, of times every morning. What struck me was not so much the receipts as the bin itself. It had not been placed there by accident. It sat directly beneath the printer,...

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