Please Stop Making Me Download Your App
I would like to buy a sandwich.
That is all.
I don’t want to create an account, choose a password, verify my email, agree to notifications, tell you my birthday, or download an app that will apparently make my sandwich-buying experience more rewarding.
I just want the sandwich.
Somewhere along the way, ordinary things became administrative tasks. Parking the car. Ordering lunch. Looking at a restaurant menu. Even paying for something occasionally requires more commitment than I was prepared to make.
And almost all of it begins with the same suggestion: download our app.
No, thank you.
App Fatigue: I Don’t Need a Relationship With Every Store I Visit
There are apps that make sense. Banking, absolutely. Airlines, useful. Maps — I’d probably still be circling the same highway exit without them.
But the place where I buy a salad twice a year? I think we can keep things casual. I don’t need to collect leaves, stars, beans, or whatever tiny digital currency you’ve invented to get me to come back. And I definitely don’t need a notification at 10:17 on a Tuesday telling me I’ve “earned a surprise.”
I haven’t earned anything. I bought lunch.
Parking Has Become an IT Project
Parking used to mean finding a space and putting money in a meter. Now I stand beside my car squinting at a sign: download app, create account, add vehicle, enter zone, verify phone number. At some point I start wondering if it would be easier to just drive home.
And there’s never one parking app. Every lot has its own exclusive arrangement, which is why my phone now holds several apps whose only job is helping my car sit still.
Progress.
Can I Please Just See the Menu?
The QR-code menu made sense for a while. Then “scan to view menu” turned into scan, open website, reject cookies, close pop-up, enter location, consider joining our rewards program — while I’m sitting at an actual table with an actual human who will eventually bring me food.
I’m not against technology. I’m against needing Wi-Fi to find out if the restaurant serves soup.
Not Everything Needs My Attention
My bank can contact me. My airline can contact me. My family can definitely contact me. The frozen yogurt place does not need immediate access to my attention.
Yet there it is: Allow notifications?
No.
Are you sure?
Very.
If something truly groundbreaking happens in frozen yogurt, I’m willing to hear about it later. And neither does the app that wants a new password every three months — capital letter, symbol included — that apparently remembers it better than I do.
I Know Why They’re Doing It
Apps build loyalty. They collect useful information. They make ordering faster for regulars. For businesses I use all the time, I’m happy to have them.
But somewhere between convenience and customer engagement, we crossed a line. Not every transaction needs to become a membership. Sometimes I want to walk in, buy something, say thank you, and leave without establishing a digital identity first.
That shouldn’t feel old-fashioned. It should feel easy.
Let Me Be a Customer, Not a Member
Everything wants a little more from us now — our email, our phone number, our location, our attention. Individually none of it seems like much. Added together, it’s exhausting.
So here’s my proposal: if I visit your business every week, I’ll download your app, collect the points, maybe even allow a notification or two.
But if I’m standing in your parking lot trying to pay $3.50 so I can run in for twenty minutes?
Please. Just take my money.
We don’t need to make this a relationship.
