I would prefer not to hang up the phone to go check out your website, even if you insist that answers to many commonly asked questions can be found there.
I would prefer not to call back later because you claim to be experiencing higher than normal call volume.
I would prefer not to answer a few more questions so you can route my call to the correct person. I would also prefer not to answer the same questions a second time, since my answers were not previously passed along.
I would prefer not to pay you with cash if I don’t have any. But I would also prefer not to not pay you with cash if I happen to have it burning a hole in my pocket.
But most of all, I would prefer not to download your app.
I suspect I’m not alone.
Chicken & coffee
The preceding rant was prompted by the following:
The fact that Dave’s Hot Chicken bought its way to the top of the Apple app store rankings, driving 343,531 new account sign-ups in a single day, by giving away free chicken sliders.
The fact that Subway brought back its old Sub Club loyalty program (buy three footlongs, get one free), but made it app-only.
And the free McDonald’s-for-life and Starbucks-for-life promotions, which once more require you to download an app.
But mostly, it was prompted by the fact that on a Sunday in New York City recently, I really wanted a cup of coffee. I happened by a Luckin Coffee shop—China’s fast-growing, supposed “Starbucks killer” that opened 3,008 stores during the third quarter of this year alone—and having never seen one in the wild, so I thought I’d give it a try.
Then I learned—or maybe remembered—that you cannot simply walk in and buy coffee at Luckin Coffee. Even standing at the counter with a credit card in your hand, you have to download the Luckin app first, create an account and hand over your personal info and payment details.
I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship, so I left.
But still
I recalled the ice cream shop I went into with my daughter recently in California that was the opposite of Luckin: a cash-only store.
Walk in there with a $5 bill and you can buy one small ice cream. So my daughter got hers, and I went without—which was maybe for the best—but still.
I write about this kind of stuff. I do the math. I understand why all companies want us to download all of their apps.
They lead to very cheap customer acquisition, and the strategy works because enough of us keep playing along. And that’s their prerogative.
But, sometimes I just want to walk into a place and buy something without negotiating the terms of our relationship first.
Meet people where they are
The kicker at the end to all of this was that my Sunday New York City trip was the tail end of a weekend with friends of mine from college.
As a last stop—we did go to a Jesuit university, after all—I opened an app that I once downloaded voluntarily, and found what time there were Catholic masses near Penn Station before I headed home.
So I went, and when it came time for the collection I felt a bit funny that I had no cash.
But, unlike Luckin Coffee and random California ice cream shops, this church was willing to accept my donation any way I wanted to give it: a website and QR codes posted in the pews, along with volunteers collecting cash using those old-fashioned baskets on the end of a stick.
I chose Venmo.
Meet people where they are, somebody once said. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson in there.
7 other things
The U.S. military has seized an oil tanker off of Venezuela’s coast, President Donald Trump told reporters Wednesday as his administration continues to escalate the U.S. military presence in the region. Trump did not provide details on the matter but said that it was an “interesting day.” Oil prices began steadily rising as reports of the seizure circulated throughout the day. (NBC News)
In a long, late-night social media post, Trump raged about stories in The New York Times and elsewhere questioning his health, calling them “seditious, perhaps even treasonous, and adding: “There has never been a President that has worked as hard as me! My hours are the longest, and my results are among the best.” (AFP)
Travelers visiting the United States from countries like Britain, France, Germany and South Korea could soon have to undergo a review of up to five years of their social media history, according to a proposal filed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, along with email addresses from the last decade, and the names, birth dates, places of residence and birthplaces of parents, spouses, siblings and children. (NYT)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered the U.S. State Department to use Times New Roman for all official government documents, apparently becuase the current typeface being used, Calibri, is too woke. (Gizmodo)
Madeleine Wickham, known for writing the bestselling novel Confessions of a Shopaholic under her pen name Sophie Kinsella after feeling aghast at the size of her credit card bill 25 years ago, has died aged 55. Wickham wrote more than 30 books, which have sold more than 45 million copies. In April 2024, she announced that she had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer. (The Guardian)
A driverless Waymo vehicle turned into a temporary birthing center when a woman gave birth to a baby inside the car before she reached a hospital, according to the autonomous vehicle company. The pregnant woman was apparently in labor and attempting to reach a University of California San Francisco hospital when the baby arrived. The mother and her new baby arrived safely in the Waymo at the hospital, according to the company. (KRON)
A symphony of woofs: 2,397 golden retrievers gather in a park in Argentina. (ABC News)
Thanks for reading. Photo by Rami Al-zayat on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this Inc.com. See you in the comments!
This (meet people where they are) is AWESOME Bill. Thanks for articulating it all so well. The relentless drive for cash suddenly only willing to take plastic- and our vitals - can be so frustrating. The analogy of a relationship is wunderbar. Some relationships are personal, some are business, some community, some long term, some short term, some only transactional. All take energy, and we only have so much energy to "spend". So we need to choose wisely where to invest our energy.
Cory Doctrow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the intentional degradation of tech products, but really it should apply to all things that started out great, good, or at least highly useful, only to be chipped away down to mediocrity or worse while increasing their price. Subscription-only pricing and app-only deals are certainly part and parcel to the ongoing slide into enshittification.