But First You Must

It’s time to go log in to the system to do the thing. You’re ready, you’re focused, and you have things to do. After logging in, the system insists you do something else first. Take a survey. Change your password. Update your income. Agree to new Terms of Service. What was supposed to take a minute or two is now going to take five. Maybe ten.

Maybe you’re on the phone with someone, and need to work with them, and now they have to suffer through this along with you. Maybe you’ll forget what you had set out to do in the first place.

Whatever the excuse, interruptions like this are generally unwelcome and often disruptive. No one wants to take your survey. Password rotation is dumb (and encourages bad passwords). No one reads terms of service, you just want to cover your ass. It’s showing, by the way.

The bigger transgression is the trespass on time and attention. I have been on the phone with a support representative from a system I was trying to log in to when interrupted like this. It added 10 minutes to the call, with the representative apologizing profusely — I was the tenth person they helped so far today whose support experience was interrupted by this and they hadn’t even taken their lunch break yet. In ADHD terms, this isn’t a side-quest, it’s a detour that creates side quests.

Unnecessarily interrupting the people using your system while they’re trying going about their task is disrespectful at best. Don’t do it.