Appliances’ safety obsession drives us over the edge

My day starts at 04:00 with my coffee machine telling me what to do. She either requires me to “add water”, fill her bean counter, empty her tray, or if feeling particularly spiteful, will demand that I “decalcify”. “Decalcify what?” I always want to ask, but never do, either because I don’t really want to know, or because I’m concerned what it will look like to Gatsby and Penny who have joined me in the kitchen, hoping for a treat.

It doesn’t improve from there. The fridge reminds me, gently at first and then more urgently, if I have left it open, as if the 30 seconds it takes to take out the milk, pour it into a cup and return it, is going to have an irreparable impact on the fruit salad. And the microwave, which clearly feels like the middle child, beeps incessantly once its 30 seconds are done and until I pay it enough attention. At 04:00 it’s only the old school toaster that trusts me enough not to remind me that whatever has been trapped inside it is about to set the house aflame. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.

My car unquestionably suffers from untreated anxiety. Apparently with safety being its number one concern, it nervously reminds me to fasten my seat belt before I have had the time to adjust the rearview mirror. It panics if it finds me wandering slightly out of the lane and keeps reminding me to look around me. And whereas I remember a time when the petrol light would illuminate at about 20km to empty so that we could play a game of “will I or won’t I” make it to the garage, it now starts the gentle “maybe it’s time to consider filling up” at 80km. I swear I could drive to Polokwane with that amount in the tank.

A study should be done on the link between our machinery and our anxiety. Flashing seatbelt signs, smoke alarms, and incessant notification pings, all not-so-subtle reminders of the things that have the potential to harm us. And yet, what they neglect to factor in is the impact that they have collectively on our already stretched mental health.

A conversation with a particularly smart friend who had left his watch at work the day before went as follows: “I’m not feeling great today. I didn’t have my watch to tell me how well I slept.” “But you said you slept!” I retorted. “Yes, but maybe I had too little REM or deep sleep. And now I’ll never know. I think that’s why I’m feeling anxious.”

My wife has her phone alarm remind her to hydrate, other have theirs vibrate when their watch decides they need to stand, and my (anxious) car tells me when it thinks I need to have a break because I have been driving for too long.

If all this doesn’t push us over the edge, nothing will.

To be fair, whereas no-one is impressed by the toaster that’s willing to burn the house down without so much as a hint, somewhere between that 1980s recklessness and 2025 anxious extreme must be the answer. And just to be clear, nowhere on that spectrum should any machine have the gall to tell us that we need to decalcify. No matter what it means.