A WEEK IN APPS

FRIDAY

I am a princess and my fried chicken is four minutes away. It’s Friday night, it’s raining and there shall be no walking up the street to fetch my own takeaway. Instead, someone called Pavel is driving it to me in his Hyundai so I can stay on the sofa, tracking his progress on my phone and trawling Apple TV for a recent release that will pair well with gourmet hot wings. Ubereats is the first app I download, on the basis that making food come to me via minimal screen tapping is probably a gateway purchase to more hardcore app use. And it certainly is – chicken arrives as if by magic! – but even though Pavel is saturated and may or may not be shivering when he hands over my order, instead of feeling sorry for this freezing cold human cog in the gig economy, I feel the first stirrings of my latent brat. I do not like that the bag is wet.

SATURDAY

The day begins with two soluble aspirin and a green juice (my last bricksand-mortar purchase for the next week) because of a queasy stomach/ pounding headache situation that has nothing to do with eating too much chicken and everything to do with downloading the Jimmy Brings app, which promises to bring booze to your door within 30 minutes (as long as you live in a metropolitan area – something that will turn out to be a repeated theme this week, and repeated bummer for regional customers,

but fine for city-based me). From hitting buy to pouring the pinot took, all in all, 43 minutes. So the first-world scourge that is forgetting to buy liquor on the way home from work or running out at a dinner party has been eradicated in our lifetime.

SUNDAY

It’s supposed to be a day of sleep and self-care, but more often Sunday is a frenzy of PAMS (personal administrative matters). However, this week, before I’m even out of bed, I’ve ordered an engagement gift for a friend on the (old-school looking, but new-economy functioning) Peter’s Of Kensington app. The package arrives within 48 hours which, because of my rising sense of entitlement, feels long. But at least I’m in bed and not trying to park at a shopping centre. Next is a Pilates class I last-minute book with the Anyclass app, which pulls in classes with availability from every gym in town, and a coffee afterwards, ordered five minutes ahead of time on the Hey You app. It feels like there’s an unacceptable level of kerfuffle to setting up a Hey You account – hooking up my Paypal details, finding a cafe that supports it and tapping in my order – but because I have so quickly lost my grasp on how long things should reasonably take, it may have been three minutes max of thumbwork. And my piccolo is waiting for me when I walk in, cut the line and exit feeling like a more winning human than everyone still waiting with their sweaty handfuls of change.

MONDAY

I was supposed to buy stationery yesterday for a work thing and didn’t, because of a visceral loathing of warehouse shopping. I could duck out at lunch, or I could stay at my desk eating a burrito and another burrito that Deliveroo brought me – the minimum order requirement means I have to purchase twice as much food as I can personally eat, then eat it – while searching the App Store for anyone to bring me a whiteboard. Bingo. Officeworks app! With next-day shipping. I hadn’t realised traditional retailers had caught up with the app boom, but now I know, I plan never to enter a real-life Officeworks again. Let the discount thumbtacks and liquid paper come to me.

TUESDAY

Because it is all about me and my many wants now, I forget my best friend’s birthday. But she’ll never know because, from the back seat of an Uber, I order her a thoughtful gift from The Iconic app, selecting its three-hour delivery option. And it feels like, if the truck is coming anyway, I might as well get something nice for myself – except when I check my ANZ Gomoney app, it seems I’ve been spending more than I usually would on treats-for-meg this week, something that’s so easy to do when the only hard-work part of shopping is for your thumb. Also, bankruptcy alert, sometimes all those Paypal transactions don’t clear for days and you are actually very poor but don’t realise.

WEDNESDAY

“MY PICCOLO IS WAITING FOR ME WHEN I WALK IN, CUT THE LINE AND EXIT FEELING LIKE A MORE WINNING HUMAN THAN EVERYONE STILL WAITING WITH THEIR SWEATY HANDFULS OF CHANGE”

IKEA’S app doesn’t offer delivery.

THURSDAY

The weekend is approaching and I need two jobs done that, in some ways, fall under the same umbrella... I need my lawns mowed and an intimate wax. I could probably book both on Airtasker, but I’m not sure I want a gigging beautician with no reviews arriving at my front door with her portable wax pot. Or his portable wax pot. Shudder. So I just post a job for a landscaper and, after scanning the responses that come back straight away, I choose “Jeremy” (own mower provided). By mid-afternoon, he’s razored my lawn, removed the clippings and, because I pay through the app, I never lay eyes on the man. Which is handy, because I’m still tied up trying to find a reputable waxer.

The first beauty services app I download is unacceptably labourintensive and, in the end, wouldn’t let me click through to the pay button, which angered me because I now have no tolerance for frontend dickery. Then I find LUXIT, which is all over the home beauty appointment. But when it comes to booking, I realise I really don’t want a stranger coming over and doing me on my own dining table. As much as I’ve enjoyed the stream of services to my door, I still want to do some stuff at a place. Still, the next time I need a waist-up beauty service, I’m in. And maybe one day, I’ll have them dispatch a doctor to administer Botox in the privacy of my own kitchen, as Luxit can and will. And since I’m a princess, I may eat fried chicken as they do it.