Last week, because of a combination of bad planning (my bad) and endless delays (Deutsche Bahn’s bad), I arrive very late in a hotel in Berlin. I had to ring the doorbell. The guy at the reception started giggling the moment I came in, which irritated me at first (did my hair look so funny, after all these hours on the train?). But he quickly reassured me that it wasn’t about me. It was about the fact that he had pressed the button for the daily closing of the system about ten seconds before I rang the door bell (it was just after 3am). It meant that the computer was busy for a while and it would take a few minutes before he could check me in. He apologizes profusely – and we started chatting.
First, the obligatory complaints about the notorious lateness of German trains, then he told me about his job as stand-in nightporter, in which he often had to travel but travel time got counted as work time. He told me about his aunt in a village in Brandenburg and how the local train problems there had led to the installation of a permanent bus line, which the local inhabitants really appreciated. In between, he checked the status of the computer system, cursing it for its slowness, and then, when it worked again, telling me about the kinds of tricks and workarounds he had learned in the many years on his job. It was a far more pleasant and informative human interaction than so many check-ins I had had in the past months, when the system had not just been in shot-down mode.
Human beings talk to each other when things don’t work, or do not go as quickly and smoothly as they should – that’s what went through my mind when I finally got my key card and pulled my bag down the carpeted corridor. The next day, when waiting at the train station to catch my train back, something similar happened when a young woman – panting, mobile phone in hand – told the passengers waiting on the platform that she had just run up three stoors of stairs with her heavy backpack, because she wanted to catch a connecting train, and the app had not been updated to announced that it was delayed as well. She was so angry and amused at the same time that she had to get her emotions out. We all sympathized, some mentioned similar things that had happened to them. It was a kind of “we against the system”-moment of solidarity, before we jumped onto our different trains.
Little moments of interpersonal connection, happening when something doesn’t go according to plan. But of course, these kinds of failure are exactly what companies try to avoid. They want their customers’ life to go smoothly, fearing bad ratings and loss of sales. The smoother, the more convenient, to be sure – but what it takes away are those moments where one is forced to wait, or lacks information, and feels a victim of bad luck (of of the incompetence of the company in question), togehter with others. And because misery loves company, those are moments in which even in our smartphone-obsessed world, it becomes natural to talk to each other, no matter who it is who happens to stand next to you.
I am currently reading Tom Feiling’s Alone in Japan, a journalistic-sociological exploration of Japanese society. One thing that stands out – from the chapters I have read so far, which are all about city life – is the combination of comfort and loneliness. Life can be very smooth there, apparently, with lots of opportunities to cover all one’s daily needs without having to interact a lot with other human beings. And many people are, apparently, lonely, with rising numbers of singles and famously low birth rates. Feiling explores Japanese society because he sees these tendencies as something many other societies will also experience, sooner or later.
What I am trying to get at, I guess, is about how it is precisely the frictions of everyday life that can bring people together – whereas there is no need for communication or connection when things go smoothly. But in market societies, many companies try to earn money precisely by removing everyday friction: by delivering things to people’s doors so that they don’t need to leave the house, by taking over unpleasant logistical tasks; by offering digital solutions for all kinds of challenges. To be sure, not all of these things come at the costs of activities that would otherwise bring people together. And yet, there is a tension here, if only because it seems to become somehow less legitimate to ask others for help if one could just as well go for a paid solution. It’s just too weird to ask your neighbors to borrow some eggs if the supermarket around the corner is open 24/7.
I, too, value punctual public transport, believe me. And yet, I’ve had some conversations with strangers triggered by delayed trains or flights or busses that I really would not want to have missed. Maybe I just need to develop the guts to chat with people when things go according to schedule as well – but I’ve often gotten weird stares when trying, which did not at all happen in moments of friction. Maybe our social norms need to change as well, then? If one assumes that everyday social contact is, after all, good for the kinds of creatures we are,* and talking to each other outside of our little bubbles is something that helps keep society together, showing solidarity and helping each other out with a word of encouragement or a bit of information, then a society without any everyday friction is quite a dystopia.
* See also this recent study on remote work, which can have a negative impact on (mental) health, especially for those living alone.
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