Recently, a New York City public works official admitted that the vast majority of “push-to-walk” buttons at thousands of intersections don’t work. Some are broken, but most were disconnected decades ago when new car-sensing technology was installed. No thought had been given to alerting pedestrians that pushing the button is futile.

Unfortunately, futility aptly describes many occasions when we interact with technology. I canvassed some co-workers for their most teeth-gritting technological frustrations to which I added a few of my own.

1 The bank machine still asking me if I prefer English or French, despite my having answered English consistently since the Beatles broke up. Hello… is there a computer with a little memory in there?

2 Voice menu systems that seem designed to crush the spirit, with a half-dozen options for each step. Every few minutes I must re-input my account number or PIN or password or the last three characters of my postal code… when all I want is a live person. Your best bet to get to a genuine vertebrate? Try the star or number sign key or press zero.

3 Forced advertisements while I’m on perpetual hold, especially when they admonish me to hang up the phone, go to the company’s Website to read the Frequently Asked Questions and solve the problem myself. Surely, these could be worded so they don’t feel like a slap on the wrist or made briefer, 10 seconds maximum.

4 Voice recognition software. If I say I’m calling about “apples,” robo-dude says “Oranges! All right!” I think this is a case of wanting to be first with something keen and nifty before the bugs are out. But cooler is not better; better is better. (I wonder if they’ve programmed in the Top 10 expletives? Recognize this.) Pig Latin usually befuddles the machine into giving me a live ear.

5 Call centre spin. “Due to exceptionally high call volume...” should be replaced, my colleague Denis O’Leary suggests, with “Due to exceptionally low staffing, we will let you wait.” He thinks senior execs of big firms should call their own call centres periodically to see what being a customer is like.

6 The music industry insists that I buy CDs when what I want is a service I’ve dubbed Everywhere Internet Audio. It can’t seem to get out of its old bundling mentality, which dates back to 50-year-old vinyl records. I know I can download single tracks, but they are way too expensive given the minimal costs involved. Affordable streaming audio is the answer.

7 Poorly placed card readers, usually more than a metre off the floor, so I have to fish out my card and wave it in front of the reader. If the readers were placed closer to hip height, the card could be read through a pocket, and our hands would be freed up to juggle all our other stuff.

8 Relentless use of PowerPoint every time three or more people gather. D-Day was planned without PowerPoint; Socrates didn’t need PowerPoint. Remember design guru Edward Tufte’s line: “Power corrupts; PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.”

9 Every program automatically starting when I turn on my computer, so 25 things in my task bar consume half my computer’s memory before I’m even working on anything. (Does QuickTime always need to run in the background, checking for updates?)

10 Adware. Sneaky and invasive, these small, pernicious software programs are almost impossible to get rid of. After a serious infection, you’re forced to buy a spyware remover – sometimes sold by the very company that created the spyware in the first place. (Spyware Blaster and Spybot Search & Destroy are free, independent and favourably reviewed.)

11 Pop-up ads make me crazy. So I install a pop-up blocker, and then I can’t voluntarily open a window within a site I’m deliberately visiting without answering the blocker’s multiple-choice questions about pop-up options: Allow now? Allow forever? Forbid eternally? Solution: Let’s get rid of pop-ups entirely.

12 HDTV for regular definition programs. Everyone on the screen is stretched fat. Default settings to regular proportions please.

13 Cellphone quality. Can you hear me? Are you there? We’re getting crystal clear pictures beamed back from Saturn’s moon, but I can’t hear a colleague phoning from downtown Toronto. There must be a better way.

14 Roaming charges or any service in which a provider charges for something it costs precisely nothing to provide. This goes for all cellphone charges, where the price of service far exceeds the long-run average cost of providing it, let alone the marginal cost. It will serve these guys right when VoIP, WiMax and Wi-Fi blow them away.

Too often the technology tail wags the user dog. End users of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your pop-up ads!

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Don Tapscott is a leading international consultant, author and speaker on information technology in society and business and the CEO of strategy company New Paradigm. Visit www.nplc.com or write to him at dtapscott@enroutemag.net.