There's this handy M&S Supermarket next to my office in Central London. This place has been my provider of roasted chicken, mash and orange juice for the last three years.

My favorite character of those evening shopping experiences was this guy, a big smiling man in charge of one of the counters. Every single time, after putting the stuff in the recyclable bags, he said: do you want any cash-back? 40, 50, 60?. Always, with the very same tone of voice he repeated over and over the same numerical sequence: 40, 50, 60?

The fact that sometimes I said "yes, make it 40", was for him, a small victory.

Last Thursday I was trained in the same place to use the automatic counters, you move your pack of ready-made mash potato on top of the laser reader, you pay and it's done. You can even asks for cash-back. Easy, fast and clean.

The most of the counters had been replaced overnight by the do-it-yourself ones. Obviously, the big man and his easy-to-replace numerical sequence has gone too.

I work with technology, and I know that automatization has a direct effect on people's jobs, mostly on those who are less ready for whatever reason. I know also, that paradoxically the long-term effect of technology tends to be positive for the society as a whole, but this is another topic.

As a autistic and busy urban individual, sometimes I choose effectiveness and speed over anything slightly warmer and human.
Sometimes I miss the long waiting time for a good coffee at Lantana, it included a chat with the owner and the waiters, experiencing the smell of the beans and the cakes, reading a few pages of the Independent and seating on the wooden bench outside if the winter weather allows it. Now I prefer one of the infinite clones of EAT, any extra second of waiting is an upsetting waste of time. Quick digital coffee, new staff every week, not chats, not needed.

Time is so valuable that technology is trying to optimize its usage by helping us to "save time". Sadly time is not something you can put in a bank and use it when you retire. But we try to save it, anyway.

That simple numerical sequence, was a bit of a break on the dynamics of effectiveness that rule our lives. The paradoxical automatic but defective human behavior destroyed for a second the plastic package of my life. I always chose that queue, the same counter, because it was imperfect, slow, un-logic and alive. Did I heard that voice 40, 50, 60 times?

Our obsession for effectiveness is contra-productive, it changes the perception of time. Time runs faster; days, weeks, months accelerate its pace, we go so fast we miss ourselves, there's no past, neither present because you have to catch up with the future as race dogs chase a haze.

Art, music, sex, love, humor, a beautiful word, a long queue for a good coffee, defective numerical sequences in a supermarket: tactics for salvation, live-stoppers, reality.
Will we live for 40, 50, 60 years?