A story about cookies

It’s morning - the first rays of sunshine filter through your window, casting a warmth on your face as you stretch and work your muscles preparing to get out of bed. You swing your feet onto the floor and start heading towards the kitchen to pour a glass of water and make the first cup of coffee. You decide a trip to the bathroom is in order, so you walk across the house. When you get to the door, your assigned stranger steps in front of you and stops you. “I need to watch you and share your activities in this room with 600 additional people for marketing purposes. Is that ok?”

“No,” you say, a little surprised. “Why do 600 people need to know how, when, and why I use the bathroom?”

The stranger considers for a moment, then slowly speaks. “In order to use this room, we must have these 25 people monitor your usage so that we can study where and when you went in the room so we can improve your bathroom usage experience in the future. That is non-negotiable. The remaining 575 people are grouped into the following 10 categories. I’ll let them watch unless you say not to, but if you do I can’t guarantee that the first 25 won’t tell them what you did in there.”

You blink slowly. “Why do 600 people want to know how and when I use my bathroom and what I do in there?”

“The first one is our color coordinator. He watches your eyes to see how they are affected by the different colors in different positions in the room and which ones entice you to use more soap. The second one is our hand washing expert - she watches to see if you wash your hands, and flags if you choose to not, regardless of the reasons why you went in there…”

“But I’m brushing my teeth. Handwashing isn’t part of the reason, or even necessary….”

“That’s OK. She’ll note that you did not choose to wash your hands prior to leaving the bathroom. She does not care why you were in the bathroom. The 4th person is our usage type monitor. They will monitor your overall activities and group this visit into 1 of 7 different bathroom usage type categories that we have come up with after careful study of all bathroom visits that we monitor. The 5th monitor is our timer - he stands at the door with a stopwatch and starts it when you enter, and stops it when you leave. The 6th…”

You interrupt the stranger sharply - “Ok, stop. The 25 are non-negotiable, right? Stop telling me about them, since I can’t do anything about it. I guess I’ll just accept that 25 people are watching me every time I go into the bathroom. But what about these other 575? Why are they here?”

The stranger smiles. “Oh, those are my friends. If I let them join my 25 watchers and make their own observations, they will pay me $0.02 for every time you visit the bathroom. The first one is a marketing agency; he watches everyone and takes pictures. When he has enough pictures, he has one of his friends analyze them all so he can decide what you might like to by based on what they see. It’s a great system - if they see you are low on toothpaste, they’ll send you postcards telling you all about the best kinds! Even after you choose one to buy, they’ll keep sending you postcards, because obviously you use toothpaste so you’ll need to know about more eventually, right? The second one is a company that sells mattresses..”

“Mattresses?” you ask. “Why does a mattress company want to watch me in the bathroom? At least the toothpaste kinda makes sense.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” says the stranger. “Apparently they found some correlation between people who use a specific kind of shampoo and the price they are willing to pay for a mattress marketed as ‘hotel grade’ instead of for normal use. I didn’t really ask - they just answered my advertisement when I was looking for people to watch you.”

“WHAT?! You’re actively soliciting people to watch me use the bathroom??!!”

“Oh, of course. We’re incredibly kind and don’t charge you the rates that we could be in order to use the bathroom attached to your home, so we need to make additional revenue wherever possible. You didn’t believe we’d let you use your own bathroom without paying for it somehow, did you?”

If that makes you feel icky, then good - it should.

This has been a story about cookies…