It started because of a chocolate bar. I had ordered a dark chocolate almond and sea salt bar through the app and when I picked up the rest of my order last night, it wasn’t there.

I went to the app to report the chocolate bar missing, and found it had been cancelled. Sometimes, you can have an item shipped to you. Sometimes, you can select an alternate option. This time, there was nothing, not even an apology.

I felt annoyed. I batted the feeling away. Then, I noticed the value of an offer I had applied had been reduced proportionally. My annoyance increased, not at all proportionally. I told myself it was not worth thinking about.

I thought about it. I told myself I had more important things to think about. I told myself to Let. It. Go.

I did not let it go. Twenty four hours later, I had managed to think about more important things, but the annoyance popped back into my consciousness when I picked up my iPad after dinner.

“Maybe I will feel better,” I thought, “If I just let them know that I noticed this, and that I don’t like it.”

I opened the app, found the place to leave a comment, and composed the following:

It wasn’t easy to explain what had happened in 500 or fewer characters. It was impossible to explain it in 500 or fewer characters without sounding like a crank.

After submitting this deranged rant, I thought about it some more. Shopping on the app is a gamified experience. It takes some effort to select the offers and apply them effectively, i.e. to play the game. I like to play and I like to win, but it’s not that I’ve lost that turns me into a crank. It’s that they’ve flipped over the board just as I was about to slide into the Candy Castle.