My Mother's Escape did the same thing. She complained at the dealership and they were able to shut that feature off. ..not sure if it was just a setting or if they had to plug in a programmer.
Do the balls on the zerks depress easily. If so, the coupler on your grease gun may be set too loose or too tight. I also hear a lot of people have has success with a needle fitting on their grease gun.
And climate alarmists are really good at labellng any data points that don't support their position as "anomalies" and then eliminating them from the data set.