The way we treat kitchen appliances
“An oven,” wrote one restaurant engineer, “like horses and children, seems to feel if you are afraid of it and plays up (1) ________.” Had he been writing today, he might well have mentioned that machines are just the same. Like impatient customers, they do not (2) ________ well to force, and just as one way of (3) ________ with a stubborn appliance is to let it (4) ________ off, so quite often, if the appliance is giving trouble, the first thing to try is simply switching it off and doing something else; quite why the machine works (5) ________ when you switch it on again I have no idea. (6) ________ human emotions and feelings to inanimate objects is, of course, extremely unscientific; it’s only those who rarely maintain machines who believe that they behave like people. But I would (7) ________ that, although treating machines like people may be misguided, it is (8) ________, in general, to treating people like machines.