One dead chip reader away from being stuck" hit hard. I got burned last month at a farmers market stand, same deal. No ATM for six blocks and the vendor's Square was just dead. I ended up doing a mobile check deposit to my buddy's account just so he could pull cash for me. Felt like a whole banking operation over a $9 tamale. Weird part is, the vendor was cool about it, let my tacos sit there while I ran around like a headless chicken. You're right though, the second the tech fails, the whole system falls apart.

Wish I could tell you I've beaten the system, but honestly, my old diet app still emails me "great job on your streak!" every single day, even though I deleted it and gained 10 pounds out of spite. I asked them to erase my food logs once and they sent back a survey about how happy I am with their privacy tools. It's like they think "service improvement" means holding my failed kale smoothie phase hostage forever. So no, you're not alone, but I'm starting to think the only way to truly delete data is to get a new phone number and a fake name.