What it is
A standing rule for errands: no drive-throughs, no kiosks, no mobile ordering. Park the car, walk inside, and order from a person. It works for coffee, fast food, the pharmacy, and especially the bank, where the walk-in teller will greet you like the drive-through ATM never has. Giving it up for a fixed period, the way you'd give something up for Lent, is a good way to start, because a deadline makes the awkward first weeks easier to push through and turns a vague intention into a specific commitment.
None of this is about efficiency, and it's worth being honest that you're trading it away on purpose. The drive-through is faster. That's exactly the point: the speed is what deleted the contact, and walking in is how you buy the contact back, one small interaction at a time.
Why it matters
Run the math on a decade of drive-throughs, self-checkouts, and mobile orders and it comes out to thousands of small human moments traded away for about ninety seconds each. That's loneliness compounding quietly underneath a life that looks efficient on paper, and nobody ever decided to live it; they just took the fast option every time until the interactions were gone.
Walking in reverses the trade, and it comes with two honest surprises. The first is that the system is now built around the people who didn't want to be there, so you'll sometimes be treated like a second-class customer for showing up in person while the app orders sail past. The second is better: when you do reach a human, the interaction is usually warmer and more personal than any speaker box, the teller is glad you came in, the barista remembers your order. Both things are true at once, and the second one is worth putting up with the first.
What to practice
- Pick a period and commit: thirty days, or a season, with no drive-throughs or kiosks
- Go inside at the bank; the tellers are some of the last small-talk professionals left
- When there's a cashier and a kiosk, choose the cashier even if the line is longer
- Order at the counter and wait there instead of mobile ordering ahead
- Notice the second-class treatment without letting it send you back to the speaker box
Go deeper
- Blog: Annoyance Is The Cost To Feel Human
- Blog: How to Avoid Humans
- Book: The Comfort Crisis