People who have an AI habit use it by default. I have watched someone ask ChatGPT the weather for tomorrow rather than simply open the weather app. Another time, they asked AI the question even after I had shown them the website with the same information. It's a crutch.

— Ibster (@ibster.bsky.social) 9 March 2026 at 09:46

At a recent tech event, I bumped into an old friend and invited him out for dinner the next evening. He proudly showed my the AI bot he'd built which responded to WhatsApp messages. "Remind me at 7pm tomorrow to go to Chalmun's Cantina for dinner with Terry."

"OK boss! That's locked in! I'll remind you tomorrow. Enjoy your dinner!" the digital sycophant replied.

I was flabbergasted. There was a perfectly good calendar app on his phone. It has an easy to use interface. There are clearly demarcated boxen to fill in. A swish time-picker, calendar scroller, and notification reminder all built-in.

Our conversation reached an ideological impasse. I couldn't understand why he was burning tokens and wasting time with a chatbot. He didn't understand why I wasn't embracing the future.

I've noticed this with a lot of technology and I think I've come up with a three-part hypothesis.

First, some people don't care for structure. Whereas some of us carefully shelve our books in Dewey Decimal order, some people just chuck a book on any shelf it'll fit. You craft a detailed personal knowledge graph in Obsidian, I have a series of increasingly erratic text documents. My blog is fully semantic, yours is just div-soup.

We all have different things we care about. You'd be aghast that I don't track my calories and I can't stand the way you store all your files on the desktop. Yes, some systems are obviously superior to chaos, but for lots of people the tedium of organisation isn't worth the effort.

Secondly, talking isn't as hard work as writing. Speaking is faster than writing - hence the popularity of voice notes. Speaking requires less mental effort than writing - you don't have to worry about spelling or grammar. Similarly, forcing yourself to organise your thoughts in the structure demanded by a form can be tiring. My calendar has event title at the top, but I think in terms of time first. So voice-chatting with an AI requires substantially less effort on your part. Just lob some words at it and it'll do the structuring for you.

Which gets me to the third and, I think, most distasteful aspect. People want servants. The long standing joke about Silicon Valley products is they're all trying to recreate having a mum to look after you. Uber to drive you, Just-Eat to bring you cooked meals, Task Rabbit to wash your pants, Tinder to be a matchmaker.

Being raised on a diet of Downton Abbey, Bridgerton, and a hundred other lives-of-the-rich-and-famous shows does a number on you. Why don't I have a social secretary to arrange my day? Don't I deserve a tireless chambermaid? Where's the smart-arse butler who can cater to my every whim?

"Jeeves! Book me a taxi to the club. Usual time."

That's the dream, isn't it? Yes, you could mash some buttons in the taxi app or - heaven forfend! - call them yourself. But isn't it much more sophisticated to have a servant?

I'm guilty of this, of course. I yell at my Alexii to turn on the lights, pre-heat my bed, and remind me when dinner is ready. My doorbell alerts me when a visitor calls so I don't have to make the arduous trip to the front door. My kitchen robot washes my clothes - next year it'll be able to order more washing supplies when I run low. I can basically chuck stuff into the machine without thinking about it, and everything comes out perfectly clean.

Is it useful for me to know how to properly wash clothes? Probably not. Do I struggle when I visit a house which only has physical light switches? Not really. Are some people going to suffer if they outsource all their thinking to servant machines? I guess we'll see.

Stressful, annoying, and - until relatively recently - commonplace.

When services like Just-Eat and Deliveroo came in, I suddenly was a lot happier ordering from local restaurants. Online ordering offers a highly predictable interaction.

I can take everything at my own pace. I can see the total cost as I go. I can be confident that my address has been understood. My card is automatically charged.

It is bliss.

Many interactions are unpredictable. For example, ringing up for a doctor's appointment (will I get through? Will the receptionist laugh at me?) or buying clothes (do they have my size? Will the shop be open late?).

Thankfully, it seems that the world is slowly drifting towards an embrace of predictability.

Yesterday, I needed to book a boiler service. I looked at half-a-dozen local companies and picked the one with an online calendar. Normally I'd ring up an engineer (with their arms halfway up a flue) and try to negotiate a mutually agreeable date and time. Then spend the day worrying about whether they'd accept card payments. Instead, I flicked through their calendar, selected a slot, and paid online.

The engineer doesn't waste time looking through a diary. I don't have to spell out my address over the phone. We each gain a little bit of calm.

The journalist Marie Le Conte has a different perspective:

… humans need friction. Convenience is alluring but it is dangerous, because getting used to it means forgetting that being alive isn’t meant to always be easy. We should run our errands in person and queue at the Post Office and eat in restaurants because it is good to remember that sometimes we have to wait around, or go to several shops because the first one didn’t have what we needed. Resilience is one of the most important traits a person can and should develop, and it works like a muscle. Glide effortlessly through life and, when something bad does happen, because it always will, you won’t know how to react.

The introverts are winning

And, surprisingly, I agree! There's nothing quite like wandering through a new city, peering into the restaurants, and going on a culinary adventure. But imagine if you went into a restaurant and they told you they only take payment in obsolete Deutsche Mark. Not predictable and not fun!

I don't think a desire for predictability is about being antisocial. Nor is it about dividing people from each other (I have an unfounded theory that many of the people who bemoan having to place a restaurant order by app are generally those who made wait-staffs' lives hell). But it is a recognition that complexity and unpredictability are delightful in context.

We should have unpredictable experiences. But our lives are greatly enhanced when interactions are highly predictable.

Of course, not everyone is the same. For some people, unpredictability is an enrichment activity. People with relatively simple and predictable lives seem to derive benefit from uncertainty. They enjoy the complex interactions, ill-defined challenges, and uncertain outcomes.

That's great for them! I'm happy for them to call for restaurants and plumbers. They can spend all day wandering around hoping they get to their destination.

But, for lots of us, unpredictability is pain.

Taking the road less travelled is only exciting when you choose to take it. Otherwise, you're just lost.

Here's what I want the caption to say:

OK, one more time: Get here at least 30 minutes early because the queue barely moves and you'll inevitably be stuck behind someone trying to pay for their season ticket using pre-decimal coins. The person behind the counter either won't understand your accent or will have an accent you can't understand - so be sure to repeat everything a couple of times. No, sorry, we don't speak your language so you'll just have to hope your phrasebook is good enough. No, we don't have anyone who understands sign language either. Get given several flimsy bits of paper with tiny writing on them that you'll have to squint to read. One is your receipt, one is your seat reservation, one is your ticket - but they all look basically the same. Oh, and they'll demagnetise as soon as you put them anywhere near a phone or wallet, so don't put them in a pocket. But if you lose them you won't have any proof of your reservation or ticket. When the train is late, you won't get an automatic refund - so be sure to keep the ticket and post it to us if you need to make a claim. That's assuming the ticket barriers don't eat it.

Oh, we're out of £10 notes. So you'll need to take your change in assorted shrapnel.

Just what part of "helpful and less confusing for people" don't you get?

Here's the thing, I've been using ticket machines at train stations since the early 1990s. People have had over 30 years to get used to them by now. They aren't new and confusing. And they're usually pretty well designed (my gripes about the non-QWERTY layout notwithstanding). Modern ones even let you video-call someone if you can't figure them out.

We visited Berlin a few weeks ago. Rocked up to der Bahnhof and needed to buy a ticket for a train that was departing in 30 seconds time. I hit the large 🇬🇧 button on the screen, followed the instructions, selected the ticket, tapped my contactless card and I was done⁰. Quick and easy - even for someone who was tired from a long flight, in a new city, and didn't speak the language.

I'm a fully paid-up member of the O'Malleyist agenda - in that I think we should close all of the train ticket offices (actually read the piece before arguing in the comments, please). But, more than that, I hate that some people feel the need to always romanticise the past at the expense of the future.

Do you want to go back to slam-door trains, with smoking carriages, and paper tickets? Do you want easily misplaced railcards, ticket sellers who deliberately sell you the wrong fare if they don't like the look of you, and being stuck behind someone buying the most complicated route possible?

No.

So stop with the phony nostalgia for a bygone time which wasn't nearly as bucolic as you remember.

But then I started reading about how Blumenbach literally invented the concept of distinct human races. And about how the discredited "Science" of race is making a comeback. And then about the Philosophy of Race weaves its pernicious influence. And I found it illuminating.

Of course, theorising is a different experience to lived reality.

I visited Kuala Lumpur recently. As I registered for various apps and websites, I kept being asked the same question - "What is your ethnicity?"

Here are the options I was commonly given:

One app went a little further:

I was very literally being othered.

By contrast, here's the "What is your ethnicity" form presented to me by a recent NHS survey in the UK:

Race, ethnicity, background, tribe. They're all important in context. The number of Latina/Latino people in the UK is negligible compared to the USA⁰. I doubt there are many Irish Travellers in Malaysia. There are large numbers of Japanese and Korean people in the UK - but they all get lumped under "Other Asian".

Here's how the England and Wales Census records ethnicity:

It is important to understand that race is a social construct.

For example, the Census questionnaire in South Africa asks if you are "Black African, Coloured, Indian or Asian, White, Other". What is "Coloured"? If you identify as such, which box would you tick on the UK census?

The US Census has ethnicity categories for "American Indian or Alaska Native" and "Hispanic or Latino". Where do people in those categories fit in with, say, the South African census?

The New Zealand Census has 180 different categories for ethnicity!

Do all these "races" exist? If one of your grandparents is Japanese, one Coloured, one White Irish, one Bumiputera - what box do you tick?

It is important to make sure you aren't discriminating against people. And it can be useful to know the demographics of people who are interacting with you. And, sure, you probably want broad enough categories which are relevant to your culture.

But... Are you measuring something which meaningfully exists?

I'm not sure if I agree. I feel completely divorced from most forms of company culture. I find the way that these books talk about changing people is pretty creepy and disingenuous. That's my problem, not theirs. I prefer to look at processes and systems.

Here's an imperfect analogy. What's more effective - teaching people the perils of driving too fast, or building a car which cannot break the speed limit?

We have decades of evidence that people regularly break the speed limit. We have advertising campaigns, driving lessons, tough penalties, automatic enforcement, warning signs, and dozens of interventions. And still we have huge numbers of deaths on the road where speed is a factor.

I'm sure that some people's attitudes have changed due to the above - but the culture change simply hasn't taken root in a large number of the driving community.

One of my previous cars had a nifty feature. Through a mixture of GPS and computer vision, it always knew the current speed limit of the road I was driving on. The dashboard would show me my current speed and the road's speed limit. If I exceeded the speed limit, it would start making an urgent pinging sound. And it didn't stop until I dropped to the posted limit.

So I built a system. Every time I drove into a new speed limit zone, I'd hit the "speed limiter" button. It's kinda like the opposite of the cruise control button. It prevented me breaking the speed limit.

Imagine if every car on the market had this as a mandatory feature. If it were physically impossible to speed - that would be more effective than trying to change people's attitude and culture.

A system can do what a culture cannot.

Culture Vs Systems

As Peter Drucker (never) said "Culture eats strategy for breakfast".

But I think systems create meaningful change faster and better than culture can.

In 2015, a sexual health clinic send an email to 800 people without using BCC. That means hundreds of people had their HIV status exposed without their consent.

Cultural Change might have reduced the risk of this happening. Make sure people are trained, stick up posters reminding people what to do, keep confidentiality high on the agenda. But eventually someone would have slipped up. Everything is high priority - and we can only remember so much.

But a Systems Change would have prevented this error. It could have been an email front-end that disabled the CC function, or a mail server that forced all external mail to BCC.

A culture can't stop people from making mistakes.

Systems can be overridden

The purpose of a system is that it makes it easy to do the right thing, and difficult to do the wrong thing. Sometimes, it is necessary to do the wrong thing. For example, if a ravenous tiger is chasing after you, or you urgently need to get to hospital, it may be appropriate to speed. In my car, I could hit a button to disable the limiter.

I don't mean training users to mindlessly click "OK" a couple of times to bypass a system. I mean creating a structured and auditable way to justify going outside the system.

Systems as Culture

You can argue that this is culture. A culture where people trust a system and that system is designed to support and protect them.

Sure, building a culture where people surrender autonomy to a system might be difficult. Helping people understand why a system is designed the way it is, is also important. And not everything in compatible with a rigid system.

I see the argument that culture is critical to success. But there's no substitute for creating systems which help people consistently perform well.

Get out of my way

We want to build a culture where people can "fail fast" and "move fast and break things". I agree with that sentiment. But the only way that culture works is if systems are in place to prevent people from failing in their legal duties and stops them breaking critical infrastructure.

The power to experiment and play only works if you're in a safe environment.

A safe environment cannot come about by culture alone. We need systems which let people fail without hurting others.

Thoughts from others

Clare Moriarty

@ClareMoriarty

Replying to @edent@edent Indeed. My favourite definition of leadership: making it possible for other people to do their best work

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FJ!! https://tech.lgbt/@fj

@fj

Replying to @fj@edent b) Selling that vision and strat to stakeholders—usually by speaking their language that Return On Investment into non-fail systems is higher than more and more training and responsibilities, and that your systems will not thwart initiative.

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You’re British. Your parents are British. Your partner, your children and most of your friends are British. So why do people keep asking where you’re from? We are a nation in denial about our imperial past and the racism that plagues our present. Brit(ish) is Afua Hirsch’s personal and provocative exploration of how this came to be – and an urgent call for change.

Yes! This is the book I've been longing to read. The American experience of race and identity seems to dominate both literature and the general discussion of such issues. Afua Hirsch captures the quintessentially British experience of our mangled approach to race.

It's a deeply personal book - expertly straying between emotional autobiography and dispassionate statistics. That works brilliantly and drags the reader through some uncomfortable territory.

With books like this, I always find it hard to separate the experiences I think everyone has, with the racist experiences the author has. She recalls being nicknamed "Shaggy" after the only other black person her peers knew. I was called "Trent Darby" for a spell - after the only other "Terence" known to kids in my class. I don't say this to make the experiences sound equivalent - but to point out that kids are equal opportunity bastards and will pick on anyone and anything. Her schoolmates were being racist - but they would have taken any cheap shot.

The quest for identity isn't something I can relate to. I don't know if that's because I'm suffused in it or because I find it a suspicious concept. The book points out the brutality of the English culture being defined only in opposition to the change unfolding around it.

The book also skewers some of the self-serving myths around the UK's tolerant past - and present. Overall, a compelling and timely read.

Sure, there were rarities and out-takes, but we wanted more. We wanted Ultra Rare tracks. That one song no one had ever heard since it was first recorded.

Digital music is now done. There is nothing more which can meaningfully be added to it. We have multi-channel, lossless, audio at higher fidelity than the human ear can perceive. It can be compressed with imperceptible losses. But, most importantly, it is instantly and freely replicable.

Once a digital file exists, it is shareable. And once shared, it can't be un-shared.

Trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet.

Bruce Schneier (2006)

There is no such thing are a rare track any more. Once it has been leaked on YouTube, it's out in the world for good.

You never give me your money

Profit in capitalism is generally predicated on scarcity. If you have 5 apples and 6 buyers, you'll make more money than if you had 6 apples and 5 buyers.

Digital information is non-rivalrous. If I buy your apple, I could grow a whole orchard from it. But it would cost me dearly. If I get a digital file from you, it costs me nothing to reproduce.

This upsets a lot of people. The only thing they like about the digital world is the hope that it could prevent you reselling something you've purchased.

They want to return to a world where scarcity is value.

Blockchain as a way to enclose the commons

If you want to understand why Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are in vogue, it's because they promise a return to the traditional ideas of scarcity. It's nothing to do with fantasies of untraceable currencies, or decentralising control, or get-rich-quick schemes - although that's how they're sold - but about scarcity.

"We are the only ones who can grant access to this resource! We are the one true chain! You have to join our network to succeed."

Except, of course, it's bollocks.

I don't just mean that anyone with sufficient computing power can mine a coin. What I mean is that anyone can create a new cryptocurrency. There are over 3,000 different cryptocoin schemes in existence. Anyone can boot-up a database. It takes virtually no cost, and even less skill, to do so.

Of course, in much the same way as anyone can start up a new social network.

Network effects

There are, of course, a few flies in the ointment. The power of network effects, and the cost of switching. If the majority of people are using one system, there's a cost to switching to a rival.

Most of us use the same DNS standard to translate IP addresses into human-readable domain names. The history of DNS is complex but, briefly, it started out as a common good which was then privatised.

Recently, plans were announced to sell the registry of .org domain names to a private equity company who hoped to make billions of dollars.

If the cost to renew your domain name suddenly doubled, tripled, or centupled - would you switch to a different top level domain? Well, you're in luck! There are now over 1,500 top-level domains. One's bound to be cheaper.

Or, are you trapped, because the your users won't visit a different URl?

When the feeling's gone and you can't go on

Which brings us back to the tragedy of the commons. Unless we have private ownership and financial incentives, so we are told, the whole environment goes to shit.

It seems to be true - up to a point. And then monopolies come along, and it goes to shit anyway.

Fight back against false scarcity

For the entirety of human history, our understanding of the world is based on scarcity. With the possible exception of the air we breathe, everything we need or want is scarce. It isn't just our economic system, our whole psychology has evolved to fear the loss of precious resources and to jealously guard our stockpiles.

Solar power promises more energy than we know what to do with.

We produce more food, with greater nutrition, at a lower cost, than we need.

And the public domain means more entertainment and educational opportunities than were available to the richest king a hundred years ago.

This is the new promise to humanity. We may be stuck on this rock together, but we can have everything we need to fulfil us. We don't need to create more scarcity.

A poem for your song

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back

Anonymous poem from around 1764 - as per James Boyle, The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain

I enjoyed Rogue One - the newish Star Wars film. It's not a perfect film, but it was heaps of fun. My only real problem was with Donnie Yen's character - Chirrut Îmwe.

As soon as I saw a Blind Asian Monk, I knew that he would be a kick-ass warrior with almost supernaturally good sword skills. Even if you've never heard of Donnie Yen before, it is such an obvious trope that I felt cheated. He is Zatoichi, Master Po, Stick, Master of the Flying Guillotine, the Blind Fist, and any one of a hundred characters from Kung-Fu movies.

I know Star Wars movies exist as remixes as popular culture - but this is such an obvious character. There's no subtly, no homage, just a straight forward rip-off which everyone thinks is a cliché - right?

...and yet...

To the ten-year-olds in the cinema, this was brand new! They'd never seen a WW2 Suicide Mission movie and they'd not spent decades watching poorly dubbed Wuxia.

When I saw A New Hope for the first time, no one could have convinced me that the X-Wing scenes were just cheap copies of Fighter-Ace movies, or that a dark wizard holding a princess captive in a fortress wasn't exactly an original plot.

It isn't a cliché if it's your first time.

If you hang around message-boards long enough, you'll start to see the same questions being asked repeatedly. Whether it is technology, politics, or engineering - we do a terrible job of inducting people into our knowledge.

How do we do it for "online culture" - if there is such a thing? Sit kids down with a stack of Cory Doctorow books and a copy of The Cathedral & Bazaar and say "Look, we've had lots of these arguments about digital culture before - and this is as far as we got with our conclusions."?

We have formal ways of teaching philosophy, history, ethics, science, and maths. Where's the training course for netiquette? Telling Internet neophytes not to talk to strangers and not to share details online seems unrealistic.

We can't just dump WhatsApp on a civilisation and expect them to adapt overnight. Humans are more complicated than that.

How do we build a culture that understands the potential and pitfalls of cyberspace?

My 7-year old brain popped. WTAF is a nickel? Or a dime for that matter? We don't have those coins in my country! We don't spend in ¢ either. There was no way to get around the cultural knowledge required by the test. There were several questions like that - all assuming the test maker and taker were from a cultural homogeneity.

A few days ago, I had to complete a CAPTCHA. One of those irritating little web tests which is supposed to prove that you are a human. Here's what I got:

Guess what, Google? Taxis in my country are generally black. I've watched enough movies to know that all of the ones in America are yellow. But in every other country I've visited, taxis have been a mish-mash of different hues.

This annoys me. Will Google's self driving cars simply not recognise London's Black Cabs? Will any yellow car in the UK be classified as a taxi by the infallible algorithm? Will Google refuse to believe I'm human simply because I don't know what a Twinkie is?

Before sticking a comment below, riddle me this - if something costs a half-a-crown, and you pay with a florin, how many tanners will you get in your change?

Fronk have decided that women are under-served in the wearables market. Their (male) CEO, (male) chief designer, (male) head of strategy, and (male) CTO have the secret to getting women to wear fitness trackers - gold plate them, cover them in crystals, and sell them as though they were jewellery.

OK, fair enough, I'm sure their market research bears that out - but what are they really selling? That was the rather blunt question I asked them.

"Wellness!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"We sell wellness. We let a women know when she is feeling stressed, what times of the day her heart rate spikes, and we provide a support system to help women cope with the rigours of everyday life."

"Ah," I said, almost without thinking, "You mean 'Women are broken - let's fix them.'"

There was a sharp intake of breath. Then a little disagreement. Not all of it friendly.

"No!" They contended, "We believe that modern women face a multitude of challenges - and they are primarily concerned with their Wellness."

"OK, but what is Wellness?"

"Women feel that the stresses of modern life can have a negative impact on their Wellness. We want to help them feel better about themselves, and feel more confident that they understand their bodies."

"Women are sad - buy our tracker and feel happy?"

"It's more than a feeling - we want them to understand what their body is going through. Our new Fronk-Bracelet helps a woman understand her hormonal cycle. An essential part of Wellness."

"Oh! So it's a medical device?"

"No no no - it's a Wellness device."

"But surely measuring fertility and giving advice based on that would make it a medical service?"

"It's a Wellness service. We don't make any medical claims."

I looked around their open-plan co-working space. A space I'd wandered into without being challenged by security. Where several employees had gone to lunch and left their computers unlocked. Where passwords and server configs were written on whiteboards.

"Where do you store this medica... excuse me! Where do you store this Wellness data?"

"It's encrypted!"

"OK, so this encrypted data - which contains heart rate, stress details, sleep cycle, body temperature - and which is emphatically not medical data - what do you do with it? How does it promote Wellness?"

A pause, while they decided whether to reveal their top-secret plans to me.

"It will recommend Yoga studios in your area. We've partnered with several popular chains and arranged great discounts. Of course, we also take a percentage. And the app will recommend great equipment that you can buy!"

"Right... So this £15 wearable wrapped in £200 of gaudy jewellery is just a vector for you to sell yoga supplies?"

A polite chuckle.

"Not at all! If we detect that you are stressed, we can recommend NLP Podcasts which you can buy with in-app purchases. If your sleep cycle seems off, we can sell you a detox juice which is delivered through your letter-box. If your period is irregular, we'll send you some healing crystals which you can wear with your Fronk-Band."

"Does any of this work? Is there any evidence for it?"

"It makes them feel like their Wellness has improved!"

"So, to recap. After buying this overpriced piece of tat which makes no claims as to its accuracy, you'll tell women all the ways they are broken and then sell them irrelevant Wellness solutions?"

"We feel that Women want to improve their Wellness. And often, they don't even know that they have poor Wellness!"

Very little of this conversation was embellished. The product is genuinely under $25 from Alibaba, the company have set it in some fairly expensive jewellery, written an app, and set up a whole raft of deals. All very impressive - but somehow deeply depressing.

The underlying assumption of this, and many other start-ups is that Women Are Broken. That their feelings are fundamentally negative and that purchasing faux-solutions is a sensible way for them to manage their lives. And if the woman doesn't think she's broken, make up some flaws and constantly remind her of them.

It's little better than going to a "psychic" who tells you that you are cursed and - coincidentally - can be cured for a very reasonable fee.

There are two fairly serious points I'd like to make in this otherwise lighthearted piece.

1. Start-ups can't be trusted with health data. Seriously, if Dropbox can't keep your passwords safe, do you want to trust the intimate details of your life to a loft in Shoreditch?
2. Women aren't broken. Preying on people's fears, creating new neuroses, and selling a fix is a scuzzy way to make a living.

Or, as Mitchell and Webb put it:

• age
• being or becoming a transsexual person
• being married or in a civil partnership
• being pregnant or having a child
• disability
• race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
• religion, belief or lack of religion/belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

That's a pretty good set of principles! Ok, so what can a prospective employer discriminate on?

Star Sign

The traditional Zodiac is based on when in the year you were born - so technically it's not age discrimination. I'm not sure if the Chinese Zodiac may also be acceptable in terms of discrimination as it is based on the year of your birth.

Smoking

Who wants a smelly smoker on their team? Always taking breaks, more likely to be ill, and with addictive tendencies. Yuck!

(Incidentally, in the UK, you can't force workers to breathe second-hand smoke.)

Cat Person or Dog Person?

Obviously, if someone needs a Guide Dog, you can't discriminate against them. But if you just don't trust people who like cats - go right ahead and kick them to the curb.

Chirality

That is, whether a person is left or right handed.

The Christians' Bible is very clear that left hand people are sinners - as are many other religious texts.

Even if you're not convinced in the wickedness of their sinister ways, the cost of having to adapt your office and buy stationery which suits their perverted "lifestyle choice" is probably too much to bear.

It is OK to discriminate against lefties - it is not a real disability.

Beer or Wine

If someone doesn't drink due to their religion - or pregnancy, disability, etc - it is not OK to refuse to hire them.

If, however, someone doesn't want to spend their evenings after work hanging out in a bar near the office - you're totally fine to dump their application in the bin.

Vegetarianism

Look, Friday is Pepperoni Pizza day in the office. That's just the way it is. Maybe we can order a chicken pizza for those keeping Kosher or Halal - but our team really bonds around the eating of meat. Those plant-loving weirdos just won't fit in to our office, sorry bro!

I suggest making one of your quirky interview questions "what's your favourite pizza topping?" - that'll help uncover any crypto-herbivores.

Sports Team

If you are a rabid Accrington Stanley fan, and the person interviewing you goes for Melchester Rovers - tough shit. Your cultures are going to clash and you won't be hired.

Culture Fit

All these reasons are utterly ridiculous, aren't they? What sane business would use these as hiring criteria?

What are you doing when you say that you hire for "culture fit"?

Unless you are in an extremely niche business, your customers are going to be a diverse group of people. A homogeneous workplace just isn't conducive to understanding the wide and diverse needs of all your stakeholders.

Yes, you have to work with someone 8 hours a day and it can be a little bit annoying if they don't get your awesome comic-book references, or like the same songs as you, or want to spend their evenings drinking craft beer with you. It's OK for you to change to accommodate them! Like any ecosystem, your team benefits from diversity.

It might shake things up in your cosy little team but, guess what, the real disruption comes from within!