The Algorithm Scheduled My Lunch. It Chose My Colleagues

The networking app pairs me with colleagues for lunch, chosen by shared interests and career goals. It has introduced me to three people I would never have eaten with, all of whom are now friends. I am grateful, and I am furious, because I had stopped choosing for myself.

The app was HR's idea. It matches you with colleagues you have never met, based on your stated interests, your projects, and your working style. It books the table and sends the reminders. It is seamless, which is the modern word for you do not have to think.

The first match was a woman from finance who also reads old crime novels. The second was a man from IT who had opinions about the same documentary I had loved. The third was a person from a team I did not know existed, and we talked for an hour, and they are now a friend. None of these meetings would have happened without the app. That is the sentence I keep coming back to.

I used to meet people by accident. I used to eat lunch in the cafeteria and end up at a table with whoever was there, and sometimes it was awkward, and sometimes it was a stranger who became a story. The app has ended the accidents. It has made lunch efficient, and the efficiency is a gift, and the gift has a cost, and the cost is that I have stopped choosing for myself.

I have started to notice the shape of my days now. The app decides the lunch. The feed decides the news. The assistant decides the playlist. My life is a series of excellent decisions that I did not make, and the excellence is the trap, and I have started to eat lunch in the cafeteria, alone, on purpose, leaving an empty chair, waiting for the accident, the way you wait for a train you are not sure still runs. The app keeps offering to match me. I keep saying no. The empty chair is mine. I am keeping it.