Day 50 — Zoom made me laugh for the wrong reason.
MON
Something happened today.
The situation had become absurd enough to trigger the truth laugh.
Money had been charged without authorization. The obvious human response is, Okay, somebody took money they were not supposed to take. Fix that.
The system’s response was closer to, Here is a list of steps for you to follow.
That is where the absurdity lives in so many systems. Something happens to you, and suddenly you inherit the administrative job created by the thing that happened to you.
You have been robbed? Excellent. Please gather your documents, contact the merchant, wait for a response, contact the bank, understand the time limit, obtain authorization from the cardholder, distinguish personal data from account data, and make sure you reply in the correct thread.
I exaggerate slightly.
Only slightly.
It reminded me of the hitchhiker joke. You have already been beaten up by the situation and then the truck driver basically says, Boy, it just ain’t your day.
The laugh was useful because it exposed the design problem.
Systems routinely put the heaviest procedural burden on the person with the least power over what happened.
That does not mean procedures are unnecessary. Fraud claims need verification. Privacy matters. Companies cannot simply hand account information to whoever asks.
But there is a design question hiding underneath all of that:
How much work are you requiring from the person who is already dealing with the harm?
That is the kind of question I want SOAPSzone to ask.
Not because every company is evil.
Because systems can become absurd without anybody waking up in the morning intending to be absurd.
The truth laugh points at the absurdity.
Then reporting asks how it got there.
