I feel we've lost some things by introducing computerized systems everywhere. Everything is now neatly boxed off and as soon as you want something nonstandard – no matter how much sense it makes – it's "computer says no" everywhere.
It's frustrating and humiliating for Terence, but also for John, who has to helplessly see someone in a difficult situation. Actually caring about Terence and the people like him he deals with every day would destroy John emotionally, so he does the only thing he can: not care. Which is "merely" corrosive, but at least doesn't destroy him.
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Last year I had a somewhat similar situation: after flying to Amsterdam I managed to just catch a train with a bit of a sprint. The bloke after me was in a wheelchair, but the train was about to leave and the conductor was on his own (with me, freshly arrived in the vestibule just on time).
There's a gap between the train and platform so wheelchair users can't "just" board and the conductor couldn't lift him on board on his own. I naturally offered to help, as most people would, but was immediately rebuffed by the conductor. Since the train was already late it couldn't wait for another employee to arrive, so it just left, leaving the guy behind – the next train was an hour later.
After the train left I chatted a bit with the conductor and he explained he couldn't accept my help for insurance reasons, and that it wasn't "responsible" to accept help from random strangers.
On one hand, I can understand that, I guess... But on the other hand: what the actual fuck? How is this now considered acceptable in our society? I can't help but feel we've created a system where our humanity has been systemically stripped from us, and that this has become so normalized we don't even realize it.
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This affects everyone outside "the happy path"; homeless people are another classic example. People say "get a job" but this isn't easy without a fixed address, and renting something without a job is often impossible (even IF you actually have money), and you usually also can't get paid without a bank account, but getting an account requires a fixed address, etc. etc. There's all sorts of catch-22s – sometimes special systems exist to deal with this, but they're bandaids on top of a broken system and certainly in some countries "homeless" is so narrowly defined that it excludes huge swaths of homeless people.