My wife and I were driving in our car. I was an IT contractor, and working with a client migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

My team would hire someone, and this would involve getting a variety of network permissions, and equipment for them. The new hires would always have to sit around doing nothing, because their permissions hadn’t come through yet, and we didn’t have the equipment to give them if they had.

“You know what these guys need? They need to use Gantt charts, figure out how long the different paths take, and then tell new hires to show up on the day everything’s ready for them… Instead of having them lurk about. Fun as that can be, depending on the person.”

Ulrika looked at me. She then echoed Joan Kroc’s reported answer to Ray Kroc when he told her he’d bought the Padres (“Honey, what’s a Padre?”) — “Honey, what’s a Gantt chart?”

“You know. A Gantt chart. Stacked horizontal lines? Used to manage a project? You use Office… They’re in Excel, I’m pretty sure.”

“Well, you’re driving, so don’t try to show me just now.”

Now, normally, this would just be a very minor anecdote… except for one thing:

I started seeing ads for Gantt charts in both GMail and Facebook. Ulrika started seeing ads for Gantt charts in both GMail and Facebook.

It’s been four years since I was on that contract, and Facebook still shows me this:

We both have Android phones. We weren’t using them at the time.

It’s really unlikely Ulrika would have been a target audience, given that she didn’t know what they were until that conversation. And it’s a very specialized product.

Don’t tell me the phones don’t listen.