Nothing on the level of inconvenience that man experiences, but the other day I went to the Argos to buy some stuff and they have a new system where they ask you to input your first name as an identifier for your order.

So I entered mine, which is "stassa", and ... I got an error message saying my "memorable word is invalid". I got a screenshot and all:

https://imgur.com/a/En4dBQO

The error message says "Sorry, your memorable word is invalid; please enter a different word".

So I entered "alice" and that was accepted. I guess, they originally had a message prompting the user for a "memorable word" not to enter their "first name". I didn't try it because I was in a hurry but I bet their system is setup to accept only dictionary words, but then they realised that most people will just enter whatever comes to their mind and often fail to match the dictionary that (I assume) the Argos developers have chosen as "standard".

So now they're asking people to enter their names... and that also fails because people often have names that are not in the dictionary. Like mine that just happens to be foreign (for the UK; it's a Greek name).

I just imagine the looks of confusion on people called Sandeep (not a British English dictionary word) or LaRonda (not one either) or Marek (also not) etc. "But, it says my name is invalid. What do I do?".

Automation, eh?

Edit: I wasn't buying what's partly showing on the left of the image, btw :)