AGE DISCRIMINATION!

I've been mildly annoyed this week.

Not seriously annoyed. Nobody has wronged me. I haven't written a letter to the editor. Yet. Just a collection of itty-bitty annoyances that have made me wonder whether the entire modern world is being designed by 27-year-olds with perfect eyesight, excellent hearing, and phones permanently attached to their hands.

For example, why can I do something on an app on my phone, but NOT on the same company's website on my perfectly lovely laptop? I HAVE A BIG SCREEN FOR A REASON.

And unsubscribe buttons. Apparently there is a federal requirement that the word UNSUBSCRIBE be printed smaller than one-tenth of a grain of rice, preferably in pale gray at the very bottom of an email.

Then there are restaurants. I like restaurants. I like eating. I like talking to the people I'm eating with.
I just can't do all three when the background music is loud enough for a nightclub and 47 other people are shouting to be heard over it. Could we turn it down just a smidge?

While we're at the restaurant, could I please have an actual menu? I can use a QR code. I KNOW how to use a QR code. I just don't particularly want to spend dinner scrolling around my phone trying to figure out whether the salmon comes with asparagus. And could we turn up the lights enough that I can SEE the menu?

Other tiny grievances:
Why are instructions printed in microscopic type?
Why does everything need a password?
Why does my dishwasher need Wi-Fi?
Why does a light bulb need an app?
Why does it take a knife, scissors and possibly a chain saw to open a package of batteries?
Why do automatic faucets occasionally decide I don't have hands?

Why do websites use light grey type?

Why does “customer service” now mean spending 20 minutes arguing with a robot that keeps saying, “I understand you want help with your account”?  No. You don't understand. If you understood, you'd let me talk to Susan.

None of these things is legally age discrimination, of course. But sometimes it does feel as though the world is being redesigned around people who can see tiny print, hear conversations over background noise, remember 84 passwords, and consider a six-inch phone screen preferable to a 13-inch laptop.

I'm not asking civilization to turn back the clock. I LIKE technology. I use it every day. I would just like technology to occasionally remember that some of us have reading glasses. (And magnifying glasses). And hearing aids. And laptops.

And we still have money to spend.

So perhaps the next time somebody designs an app, a restaurant, a package, a website or an unsubscribe button, they could invite one person over 70 into the room.

We'll bring our reading glasses.

And opinions.