I headed into Monday with an air of determination. For there was plenty on my plate.
There were the usual work tasks, of course. The litany of meetings and assignments to keep me on my toes.
And there were the weekly out of work responsibilities. The errands to attend to, the meals to cook.
But this week, there was even more on my plate. All of which would require my health insurance card.
There was an allergy appointment and a dentist visit on my calendar. And I also needed to schedule an MRI and find a chiropractor.
As I started down this gauntlet of to-dos, I immediately hit several snags. The allergist called to cancel my appointment at the last minute. The doctor refused to order an MRI without an office visit. The chiropractor I booked an appointment with was out of my insurer’s network.
I had to change up my schedule on the fly — moving around work meetings for the rest of the week, calling doctor’s offices and filling out paperwork.
By the end of the day, I was thoroughly exhausted. My calendar had swapped out about twenty times. And I still hadn’t gotten my MRI scheduled.
Getting medical care shouldn’t have been so hard. And yet, it was.
About a month before my medical ordeal, I took a short vacation to visit my family halfway across the country. I packed my suitcase, put my Out of Office message on my work email and prepared to leave home behind for a few days.
But just as I was about to head off to the airport, I got the most unwelcome of messages.
Your flight has been canceled.
I scrambled to find a new travel option, only to find that the airline had already booked a new one for me. It seemed convenient – until I saw the words Overnight Connection in small print.
Yes, my new flight itinerary would require me to spend the night in the Kansas City airport before continuing my journey the next day.
I much preferred sleeping in my own bad to spreading out on a dingy airport carpet. But I couldn’t change the itinerary online, since the airline had finalized it.
So, I spent two hours on the phone trying to reach a reservations agent. By the time I finally did, my only option was to fly out the next morning.
I cut my losses and accepted reality. Nearly 18 hours after I was originally supposed to leave town, my plane finally took off.
As the trip neared its nadir, my return flight was canceled. Once again, I had to rebook for a flight the following day — this time cancelling work meetings in the process.
Fortunately, my trip itself was successful and enjoyable. But getting there and back was an abject disaster.
Traveling shouldn’t have been so hard. And yet, it was.
My medical and travel ordeals were distressing. But sadly, they weren’t all that out of the ordinary.
Indeed, it seems like things are harder than ever these days.
Of course, complaints about how difficult life is are as old as time itself. According the old cliché, our ancestors had to trudge uphill both ways in the snow to get to school.
But there is something more to this particular version of the complaint.
Everything from financing a car to buying furniture has gotten more challenging in recent years. There are many reasons for this — such as a volatile economy and strained supply chains. But the primary culprit is our on-demand world itself.
These days, we seemingly have every option we would ever want at our fingertips. And yet, those options remain just beyond our grasp – leaving us suffer in solitude.
In today’s world, I can request a same-day medical exam or board a nonstop flight to anywhere in the country. I can order custom shoes and a new sofa without setting foot out of my front door.
These are all capabilities my ancestors could only dream of.
But seeing those requests fulfilled — that’s a different story. A tale that’s as maddening as it is sad.
For there are complex mechanisms powering the wonder that is our infinite choice world. And when those mechanisms break down, so does the entire system.
There is no master maintenance log for systems that are supposed to “just work.” So, we are forced to fill the gap.
We expend far too much energy troubleshooting these issues. And as we do, our exasperation crescendos.
Add it all up, and we find ourselves on a road to nowhere. One that we can’t divert from.
Or can we?
Restaurant chains.
They’re an American staple. Many families and friend groups celebrate special occasions at these establishments. And many adults get their start in the professional world there.
Working at a chain restaurant has an air of ubiquity to it. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
A server at the Cheesecake Factory has a much more challenging job than one at Chipotle, for instance.
The Cheesecake Factory server must memorize a 15-page menu and ace a test on it as part of training. Once they’re trained, they must spend hours taking orders from entire tables and bringing the finished products back to the dining area.
By contrast, the Chipotle server stands behind a pane of glass under a menu board with only four items on it. They take one order at a time and build it into a basic dish, before handing the finished product across the counter to the customer.
The Cheesecake Factory model offers more variety. But the Chipotle model offers better reliability.
And in a world where Murphy’s Law lurks around every corner, reliability is something we could use more of.
So, let’s do what we can to make the processes in our lives more Chipotle and less Cheesecake Factory. Let’s opt for simplicity where possible, even if it forces us to settle for second best.
This won’t smooth over every process we encounter. (There’s no simple way to buy a home these days, for instance.) But it can certainly reduce the bruising we take from the gauntlet we run.
Life is an uphill climb. Let’s do what we can to make it a little less steep.