Accountability sinks

I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought.

It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is self serviced and you only interact with computers.

Eventually, when I inserted my boarding pass I had a printed piece of paper back that said that they had to change my seat from aisle to midseat

I then tried to find someone to talk to the entire way, but computers can only interact in the way the UI was designed, and no programmer accounted or cared for my scenario

The ground attendant couldn't have done anything of course because it wasn't part of the scope of her job, and this was the part of germany where nice was not one of their stereotypes.

Eventually I got a survey a week later about a different leg of the flight, so could I really complain there? that one was fine? I had a paranoid wonder if that was intentional

I had a similar experience in Germany about a year ago. Train stations are mostly self-service now. The ticket kiosk ate my €50 and promptly rebooted. It didn’t print a receipt or anything. The only human I could find was a security guard. He told me to call the number on a sticker on the machine. The person who answered couldn’t speak English. My €50 is out there somewhere but it would cost me more than that to track it down.

I had something similar happen to be on the tube in london. My ticket got demagnetised (combined intercity rail with travel card are/were still magnetic stripe tickets) and there were not staff at the station so I could not get the barrier open to leave.