Enough with the beeping machines! They are making our lives worse, not better

Recently, my high-end fridge started smugly beeping at me every two or three minutes. (We didn’t buy this fridge, I hasten to add – it came with the house.) After I finally found the manual, buried at the bottom of an overstuffed drawer, I read it from cover to cover. Well, I tried to read it, but such manuals appear to be written by functional illiterates who deliberately call everything by a different name to any that appears on your appliance.

Even when the fridge is not on the fritz, keep the door open longer than the fridge deems appropriate and it beeps. Credit: Getty

Nevertheless, despite the manual-writers’ best efforts, I managed to empty the overflowing ice tray and get the filter light to stop flashing. But nothing stopped the crazy-making beeping. It continued all day and all night, until – after attempting to contact the manufacturer (how assiduously they avoid talking to their customers) – we finally managed to book an independent repairman.

As I sat in my open-plan kitchen/lounge (what idiot thought that was a good idea?), wincing at the continuous beep, I reflected on all the machines that now beep at us. Dishwashers and dryers nag us to unpack them RIGHT NOW! And even when the fridge is not on the fritz, if we try to clean the bastard, or even put away a few groceries, keep the door open longer than the fridge deems appropriate and it beeps.

Our stove top beeps indignantly if you give it a wipe with a damp cloth – but how else am I meant to clean it, pray tell? I know many people who have smashed a smoke alarm off the ceiling with a broomstick after it started beeping at 3am because its battery was low (when I say “many people”, I may mean “me”).

And don’t get me started on the plethora of mysterious beeps, cryptic warning lights and impenetrable diagrams on car dashboards. I spent years driving a car that flashed a warning that I eventually learnt meant my baby capsule was not secured. This, despite the fact that I did not have a baby, let alone a capsule. And woe betide anyone who puts a handbag on a passenger seat!

Our stove top beeps indignantly if you give it a wipe with a damp cloth – but how else am I meant to clean it, pray tell?

If by some miracle, after much foul language and dogged perseverance, you do manage to contact the manufacturer of a beeping appliance, you have to know all sorts of obscure information – model numbers, batch numbers, manufacturing date, where you bought it and when, and damnable, hateful, ghastly passwords you did not even know you had – before you can talk to a human. And after all that they want us to prove we’re not a robot? The irony is exquisite.

Next, you have to pay through the nose, then wait days for them to even deign to arrive at your doorstep. These days, if an appliance goes wrong, it seems the manufacturer regards it as your fault for being stupid enough to buy it in the first place.

Then there are the banks, super funds, insurance companies etc with their verification numbers, authenticator apps and endless, endless forms just to get access to your own money! On the other side of the coin, trying to get an invoice paid requires hours of admin by the person or company that issued it – one university wanted me to get my invoice verified by a JP! Work that used to be done by the purchaser’s accounts department now gets outsourced to muggins – otherwise known as you and me.

I reckon all this beeping and outsourcing of responsibility and reallocated admin is adding enormously to the levels of rage and stress we are seeing across the community.

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Everyone, and I mean everyone, is sick of trying to call an organisation to solve an issue, only to be left on hold, sometimes for hours (because our time is worth nothing, apparently), while a recorded voice repeatedly tells us our call is important to them. Talk about gaslighting! I have twice been hung up on after holding for over 40 minutes because the organisation suddenly realised its phone lines were congested!

No wonder we all feel exhausted, irritated and ready to take a hatchet (or broom handle) to the next appliance that beeps at us. And when we finally settle down to watch some TV in a state of utter despair, we get asked to authenticate who we are via a QR code, or to fill in our password (which one is that?), to reassure some computer somewhere that yes, we’re still watching.

And what happened to my noisy fridge? The beeps stopped as mysteriously as they started … just before the serviceman arrived. Argh!

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