I walk into a restaurant. I immediately notice the handprints on the glass door and the dust on the ceiling fan. I see a spelling error on the menu.

I sit there for 5 minutes and notice 6 people trip over the same upturned rug corner. 

I Google them. Hours are not accurate. No photos on their Google profile. I find their website - built in 2008. Menus are wrong, prices are wrong. 

Their Instagram profile doesn’t have their address … or the city. Photos are blurry and inconsistent with 100 different fonts and colors. 

A quick search brings me to a Reddit thread where everyone complains the lights are too low - no one can read the menu; can’t see the food. 

My server is - fine. Pleasant enough, but doesn’t make me feel particularly welcome. Visibly annoyed I asked for an extra cup of ice. 

While I wait for my food, I go to the bathroom. The toilet paper is empty.  As I’m washing my hands, I’m staring at the 5 holes in the wall where an attempt was made to hang the soap dispenser. 

The food was fine. The service was lackluster.

On my way out, I trip over that damn rug and decide to never come back. 

None of these things alone will ruin dinner. But together? They’re the experience.

I move into an apartment building.

I tour an apartment. I like it. I sign a lease.

The tour was great, but I realize later I never saw the gym. Or the laundry room. I don’t really remember how packages work. A little one-page “here’s what you need to know” would’ve been nice.

I start planning my move. I have to ask where the moving truck goes. I find out move-ins are only allowed from 12–3, so I ask for an extension.

They tell me I need a certificate of insurance from my movers. Fine. I ask my moving company for one. They need information from the building to complete it.

Back to the building I go.

Doesn’t everyone who moves in need this exact same information?

Different emails start coming from different email addresses, at different times, with different pieces of information.

I’m told the locks will work through an app when my lease starts. I never get instructions for the app.

My lease starts. At 9am, I open the app. Nothing. I email them. My access starts at noon.

What if I was standing outside at 8am with all my stuff?

I’m told there’s a “deal” with a local internet provider. Cool! Except I get no information about how to sign up. I ask. Turns out I just contact the provider myself — and the price is the same price they offer everyone else in the city.

I move in. I don’t have a mail key.

How do Amazon drivers get in? There’s a code for the package room that I’m supposed to give them, but how do they get through the front door? Do they call me? What if I’m not home?

Move-in day comes and one of the two elevators is broken. No email. No heads-up.

I finally get into my apartment.

What if there was a little note waiting for me? My mail key. A welcome card. Nothing expensive. Just something that says, thanks for choosing to live here.

None of this is particularly complicated to fix.

One email. One PDF. Welcome to the building. Here’s everything you need to know.

The experience of living somewhere doesn’t start once you’ve unpacked - it starts before you get the keys.

I hire a moving company.

I’m moving to another city. I don’t want to drive a truck, and I like the idea of having a container for a few days so I can take my time loading and unloading it.

I enter where I’m moving. I get a quote. Great. I book it.

Then, after my container is already in transit, I find out moving into the city works completely differently.

There’s an additional fee of almost $500.

And instead of having my container for a few days, I get four hours to unload it.

Four hours.

Having time was one of the main reasons I chose this kind of moving service in the first place.

They knew where I was moving when I booked. Why didn’t my zip code trigger this information before I paid?

Then there are the dates.

I schedule one thing. I’m told another. I call and hear something different. Dates and times change, but there’s no single place where I can see exactly what we’ve agreed to.

I start wishing there was just a shared calendar in my account.

Here’s when my container is being picked up. Here’s where it is. Here’s when it arrives. Here’s my four-hour window. If something changes, change it here. Send me a notification.

And before I ever click “book,” tell me that my destination changes how the entire service works.

Not in the fine print. Not after my stuff is already on its way.

Right there.

I still got my stuff from one city to another. The service technically worked.

But “it worked” and “it was a good experience” aren’t the same thing.

I join a project.

There’s an account manager, a project manager, a creative director, a designer, a developer and a copywriter.

Cool. Who’s actually responsible for what?

Three people are following up on the same thing. Meanwhile, something else has been sitting untouched for a week because everyone thought someone else was handling it.

The designer is waiting on copy. The copywriter is waiting on feedback. The developer is waiting on designs. The client is asking for an update.

We have a meeting about it.

Then another meeting to recap the meeting.

There are notes in Slack. Feedback in email. Tasks in the project management system. A Google Doc someone made three weeks ago. Nobody is quite sure which one is the source of truth.

The project manager is QAing designs. The designer is talking directly to the developer about scope changes. Someone promised the client something without telling the rest of the team.

Everyone is busy. But is the work actually moving?

I’ve worked inside agencies for years. I don’t want to add another process just for the sake of having a process.

I want to know what we can remove. What can be clearer. Who actually owns what. Where communication is breaking down.

Sometimes making things work better means doing less.