The New York Times carries an article about badly-designed (so-called "smart") machines and the people who must battle them to get on with their lives. You know the kind: automatic blinds which can't be adjusted by those sitting near them, VCRs and other gadgets no-one can seem to program, cell phones which hang up when your face touches them.

But I found the accompanying article even funnier: people learn they can finally wash their hands by defeating the "smart" sinks by placing a wet paper towel over the sensor, and the comments below ranged from comically sympathetic...

It’s the over-sensitive automatic toilets that are problematic for me. They seem eager to flush just after I place the paper seat cover but just before I actually sit down. As a result, I either have to start over or grab the seat cover before the water carries it away. No matter how I resolve it, it’s quite possible the toilet will flush again and carry my seat cover away. There I am, with my pants down, enacting a scene reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin.

... to those which illustrated the the law of unintended consequences...

In a washroom of a company I once worked for, the plumbing department installed automatic flushing toilets while concurrently the electrical department installed motion sensor lighting (it goes on when someone enters or moves in the room). The predictable result: when someone entered the room thereby triggering the lights, all the toilets would happily flush.

... to outraged indignation at this lavatorial affront to Mother Gaia:

This is probably one of the most irresponsible articles you’ve ever allowed. What is wrong with you people? The point of automatic water faucets is to negate water waste!! What, because the water’s dispensed in manageable and responsible aliquots, this is somehow a violation of your right to be wasteful when water conservation is a HUGE issue? Unbelievable. Rather than print something as useless as this, why not focus on something far more prevalent and problematic: the fact that hundreds of thousands of people don’t have the luxury of being so profligate. Great job. This is how I want my kids to behave.

(I hate to break it to her, but we're not really running out of water. Sure, water conservation is a "huge" issue in certain low-water states like Colorado and Arizona, where we don't get much rainfall, but ask any native of Buffalo, NY if they would like a bit less precipitation each winter, and I'm sure they'd agree.)

Any frustrating machines in your life?