Open at every hour

A woman in Alexandria sells children's clothes from her flat. For three years, customers sent a message in the evening and had an answer by morning, and nobody minded.

Then a bigger seller in the same city began replying within minutes, at any hour, with delivery the next day. Nobody asked her customers whether they wanted that. They simply got used to it.

Now a mother who writes at two in the morning about a size expects a reply before she falls asleep. When it does not come, she orders from the seller who is awake. So the woman in Alexandria keeps her phone on the pillow.

Nothing about her clothes changed. The stitching is as good, the price is as fair. What changed is the hour at which she is expected to exist.

The same thing happens inside a job. A manager who fears the rival that never closes, or who has noticed that someone else's availability costs him nothing, starts sending messages at midnight and reading the silence as a lack of commitment. The person on the other end never agreed to be reachable at all hours. It arrived anyway, one reasonable request at a time.

This is not anyone's plan. It is what happens when a market competes on speed, convenience and price, and none of the three ever stops improving. Somebody has to absorb the difference, and it is usually the person with the least room to refuse.

The customer wanted something quick and cheap. The bill for it arrived as somebody else's sleep.