[georgebarnett]

It's not just that - it seems there's this idea that we should actually be optimising these interactions out of our day, which I disagree with.

Perhaps if you think about all the mom and pop stores in many us cities closing and being replaced with generic chains its possible to understand some of this behaviour.

"I want to walk into any Starbucks and they must know my name and produce my chosen beverage".

This seems like a perfectly reasonable response to wanting to 'personalise' a large chain now that all the small and personal mom and pop places are gone.

From my perspective though, I can't wait to get back to my home city where I don't have to go into Faceless Mega Brand stores. I want to go back to my favourite coffee place simply because they know my name, what I like and we get to chat. For me, having my coffee shop try to predict what I want so it can optimise out 30 seconds of my day where I chat to the owner and have some human interaction will actually make my day worse. No thanks.