This has kind of been true in some sections of society for a while now, hasn't it? In the places where corporations have gutted and displaced the humanity that

This has kind of been true in some sections of society for a while now, hasn't it? In the places where corporations have gutted and displaced the humanity that you used to be able to find. I've certainly seen and experienced the lack of humanity (a lack of empathy is probably the way that I'd describe it) explained away as, "Well, that's store policy, sir." for decades. I don't see that going anywhere in the future. I agree with the OP that we can just expect to deal with more and more of this in our lives. As an anecdote, just this past week, at our local Target, my wife dealt with a similar situation around getting an exceedingly minor situation resolved. As part of a larger online order, we needed to get some lotion for our (< 1 years old) twins. We received the right brand and type of lotion but not the child version of the product that we ordered. My wife realized the error at the car, before driving home, thankfully, and so she went back inside to get it resolved. "I can't do that. The system requires 24 hours to pass from such and such arbitrary moment in your transaction." or whatever. My wife had to stand her ground, arguing with the employee about the issue, about how she needs it _today_, because one of our girls has eczema, it's being exacerbated by the dry winter weather, and we ran out of the same lotion this morning. That she doesn't have time to run through the store to find it, wait in line to buy it, and then for one of us to have to come back tomorrow still to process a return for an incorrect item through no fault of our own. She did get it resolved, but it took corralling a small set of managers and then the store manager to do an override of some sort. Over 20 minutes of my wife's time on a work day, after work hours, and when we have these very young twins at home. We were trying to save time and instead it cost us. Because of "the system.", etc...