It's good to periodically test the bounds of what seems reasonable
Just a few days ago, I posted a bit of a rant about receipts being printed by one of our regional supermarkets.
This has been an issue for at least 6 months or more as far as I can remember but I honestly haven't been keeping track.
Each time I'd visit one of these stores and see an absurd tub of receipts, I'd raise an eyebrow but never do anything about it.
I'm not opposed to sending feedback about weird things. I don't do it particularly often but I put plenty of energy into other oddities so it's definitely not a question of effort.
Thinking about, I figured on some level that if the organisation decided to use receipt tubs instead of fixing their self-checkout machines, that same organisation probably wouldn't "see" it as an issue because, well, how can you not see that it seems insane in the first place!
Anyway, I had been mulling over that post since posting it and thought "Maybe this can be a niche hill for me to die on" to prove that better things are possible with a little effort.
Two days ago, on February 9th, I sent a feedback submission form to New World's regional headquarters that was essentially a shorter, more serious version of that original post.
I fired it off at around 10am and to my surprise, I received a phone call at 2:48pm from the Store Manager1 who was following up about my feedback.
If I recall correctly, their understanding was that because of an ongoing fuel voucher promotion, the machines were configured to always print a receipt.
I've never looked at the receipts too closely, because I don't own a car so I have no use for a fuel voucher but if I remember right from my own time in retail, there used to be two separate receipts printed: One for the actual purchase and a second with the voucher.
At some point, they probably combined the two and then were left with a liability: What if a customer says they don't want a receipt and then they lose out on the fuel voucher?
That said, I believe it was mentioned that it was being reviewed when a contract was being renewed so perhaps it was more of a legal requirement with the machines just doing what the lawyers requested.
I didn't take any notes or anything like that so I'm just relying on my already two day old recollection and some of this should be taken with a grain of salt compared to seeing real evidence.
My pleasantly surprising outcome reminded me of an article I read recently called How to be More Agentic by Cate Hall.
In it, she talks about agency, which is just your ability to make things happen that you wish would happen.
Over the years, as I’ve gradually grown dumber relative to my peers through a combination of aging and making smarter friends, one of the main ways I’ve compensated has been through dialing up my agency, which I think of as something like "manifest determination to make things happen."
In this particular case, I had rationalised myself into thinking I didn't have any agency by essentially thinking that no one else adjacent to this problem had any agency either.
More importantly, my model of reality: The things I thought were likely to happen and could happen was skewed.
As part of the article, Cate talks about this very idea and how you should test these assumptions periodically to ensure that they're still accurate.
Ask for things. Ask for things that feel unreasonable, to make sure your intuitions about what’s reasonable are accurate
She also talks about learning agency late but having dabbled with it a bit when she was younger.
I learned agency late. In my teens and 20s, I occasionally made agent-y moves
This actually reminds me of myself a lot! I've done a few oddball things here and there and looking back, they're probably some of the things that I'm most fond of and still to this day, I almost think they happened to someone else.
Sometimes I do wonder where some of that yet and perhaps the clearest picture is at the end of the article which reminds me that I did spend a decent portion of my late 20s just working a bunch and being kinda tired.
It took me almost 40 years to learn it, because my instinct is to think more hours mean more productivity as long as you’re really trying to be productive -- that’s just multiplication, right? No. The reality is that grinding, even if it temporarily increases output, kills creativity and big picture thinking.
I don't think of myself as much of a grinder2 but due to the nature of my role, there is definitely a lot of context switching. I tend to be in way too many Slack channels, marking notifications as unread way too often so it's no wonder I end up tired and ultimately lacking agency.
All of this actually calls way back to a much earlier post about holidays and how despite what we might think as a society, there doesn't necessarily have to be any connection between working insane hours and being successful.
Likewise, it may very well be the case that only those hours spent being agentic really count for most of the success.
Footnotes
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I think that's accurate. They mentioned their role but I was confused at first because the only phone calls I get are either scammers trying to offer me a part of Stripe's seemingly perpetually upcoming IPO or the NZ Blood service reminding me that I should do another donation. ↩
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I'd say there was a point where I was doing extended hours (of my own choice) to get to a point of feeling secure in my job, during my early 20s but past my mid 20s, I can't say I've done extra expecting it to "count". I might have done some extra here and there but only out of my own interest and because the skills being practiced are universal. You should never expect anything "extra" to "count" if it isn't explicitly in a contract. ↩