I tried renting a uhaul very last second a couple years back at the rental location. I was standing in the office, just me and the one single employee working that day.

As part of the rental process I had to give my phone number. At some point the employee says something like "You should get a text message with a link in a couple seconds, click the link and fill out the form and you'll be good to go."

To which I responded 'I don't have a smartphone, I can't click a link. How else can I fill out the form?'

Apparently there was no other way. He thought about it for a minute, then just took a picture of my license and handed me the keys. It's been 3 years and I never heard anything about it, so I figure I got lucky. I just know that if I ever find myself in that situation again karma will catch up with me and it will be a big issue.

What happened to the days of signing some papers on a clipboard?

I have been trying to register the warranty on a vacuum cleaner for over a week now. Every day I fill out the long-ass form and submit, but the “service is unavailable; try back later”.

I recently spent 10 days trying to move my WhatsApp chats from Android to iOS. Tried probably 40 different times, dozens of different ways. Even down to having Claude pull the encrypted chat backups via ADB, decrypt them and go through the database row-by-row looking for issues.

Gave up. Just left the old phone plugged in and added the iPhone as a companion device.

40 years of software development, this is the worst piece of dogshit software I've ever encountered.

> quit tech and live in the woods

I'm so curious about this; it is nearly universal that software engineers threaten this. I constantly tell my colleagues that I am quitting to start woodworking in a cabin in British Columbia.

My theory is that we are comprised of people who love building and making things, yet at the end of the day we don't have anything tangible to show. Like, my parents (nearing 80 years old) barely understand what I do or how software engineering works, though they are computer-literate. Going back 2 generations and it is incomprehensible magic. But, if I built a cabin or a cabinet or a wooden spoon, I could have a meaningful conversation about it with someone from the last Ice Age (language barriers aside). Maybe it is just staring at a screen 8 hours+ per day leaves the ancient part of the brain wanting.

Man I couldn't even log in to my Amtrak account for like a week. Not during a rush period, just the basic login flow did not work. I don't understand how websites can be this broken.

Or any software made by a natural monopoly in the states. ISPs in particular might be the most embarrassing. Healthcare industry is pretty bad too.