Standards
Here's a real entry, labeled. That's most of what you need to know.
2I pulled up to the pump on the wrong side again
3It's a rental. It's raining. I'm backing out with three cars waiting.
— Business traveler, 1988
5James Moylan, a Ford designer, pulled a company car up to the pump on the wrong side in the rain and got soaked. Back at his desk that day, he wrote up a suggestion: a small arrow by the gas gauge pointing to the side the cap is on. Ford approved it seven months later, and other carmakers followed.
6Noted: the little arrow by your gas gauge has a name, the Moylan arrow, and nearly every car has one.
7+ Sources (5)
April 1986: wrong side of the pump, in the rain, in a company car
Wrote a suggestion memo the same day
Solved 1989: first on the Ford Escort
Other carmakers followed
It’s called the Moylan arrow, after Ford designer James Moylan
- 1Its number. Permanent, and also its address. Older problems get lower numbers.
- 2The problem, in plain words.
- 3Someone who had it, and when. Their real words when we can find them.
- 4The record: when it started, where it stands, who fixed it and what the fix was.
- 5The story: who fixed it and how. On open problems, why nobody has.
- 6One more thing worth knowing. On open and patched problems, the best thing you can do for now.
- 7Where we checked. Every fact has two sources. Tap to open.
See this entry on the ledger →
Where it stands
File one
The ledger grows because people file what gets in their way. Most entries started as somebody's bad afternoon. Yours can be next.
The clerk reads every filing and answers every one. If it qualifies, it gets a permanent number and goes on the ledger. If it doesn't, you get the reason, and usually how to fix it. Your name goes on it only if you want it to.
Got something wrong? Tap "Tell the clerk" on the entry. We fix it and note the change.
The fine print
Solved, exactly: available in at least one large country, affordable for an ordinary family, and something you can use yourself or get from an ordinary doctor or pharmacist at an ordinary price. A law that doesn't change what you can do in the moment doesn't count. Statuses are rechecked on a schedule.
The line in italics may exaggerate feelings, never facts. Everything else is checked against at least two independent sources, older records first.
New problems from old fixes get their own entry, linked: the refrigerator solved spoiled milk (No. 00450) and gave us No. 09340.
Counts: on open and patched entries, tap “It happened to me” to be counted. The count is public, so anyone fixing things can see what bothers people most. The first open friction to reach 100 gets filed with whoever could fix it: the company’s official complaint channel, or for public problems the agency that handles complaints about it. We publish what we sent and any reply. One per device, no account. We store an anonymous device ID, the entry number and the time. Nothing that names you.
Numbers are also addresses (thefrictionlog.com/08600). Once published, never changed or reused. 10000 and up are reader filings.
We won't log reviews of one company’s product, complaints about a named person, political arguments ("renewing a passport takes six weeks" is a friction; "the system is broken" is an argument), anything that needs medical, legal or financial advice to describe, or anything graphic, sexual, hateful or cruel.
Kept by the clerk. Filed by everyone.