Newbie come to town
I’m happy to report that lunch today at CiCis was more than adequate. Not so happy to report that a good meal is continually overshadowed by a general lack of luster in local service industries from cell phone companies to city government. When available, smiles seem only to disguise dubious and distorted self-interest. Spoiled by the American tradition towards altruistic tip-jar philanthropy, service industries nationwide seem to have traded the fundamental quid pro quo essence of traditional customer service for a more relaxed .less is more. do-it-yourself convention. Have you walked into a hardware store lately and had someone suggest that you swipe your own bar codes? Do I thank the machine or the omnipresent guardian of the self-check kiosk whose sole contribution to my shopping experience was clearing a hiccup in the payment portion of the POS calculator algorithm? Suffice it to say that service personnel are by and large socially detached from their human counterparts on the other side of the cash register and while it seems inevitable that such indifference can be deterred to some degree by consumer subsidies it would do everyone some good to remember that the customer is always right — and gratuity means thank you!
Inevitable indeed!
I’m torn, G — I’ve thought before: Why should we work to preserve such jobs in the face of automation and other “efficiencies”, when in fact these roles are simulations, fully as robotic as any machine — the jobs are in fact mockeries of the kinds of real human exchanges they used to represent and require of us, but have long since replaced? They’re worse than cheese-adding-machines, because one feels, as you did, even more depressed at the pretense of exchange.
“Do you want cheese with that?” The person who asks has no stake in the response except as it affects which button to push next, and in fact debases our contact or its possibility with the read-off-the-laminated-sheet questions and sunny responses. And yet so often the defense of these service roles invokes “humanism” (!), the people, livelihood.
Hardware store employees are being paid to steer you toward their robotic replacements! Bank employees are (effectively) punished for not helping you disengage with them and the other humans at your branch!
Your post makes me think of Jonathan Franzen’s essay on the private and public sectors, “The Imperial Bedroom”, which I’ve just finished and enjoyed along with a couple of Amstel Lights in a can.
And yet and yet. What are you gonna do? Nationally, service has taken what it can of all the displaced 1) agricultural work 2) industrial work and even 3) informational work. We haven’t found the alternative to cheese-adding and its attendent, gratuitous rewards.
-I.
Curmudgeons all! While I do agree that some members of the service personnel found in the large, overwhelming chain stores can be cranky and seemingly irritated by the prospect of having to provide any type of service, I do not agree that it is the norm. And I strongly believe it is up to us to keep it from becoming so. If we value good service then we should demand it.
I try not to shop at those big grayish superstores. Instead I go to smaller community shops like Tidal Creek where I know most of the people working and shopping there on any given day. I simply refuse to use those automated kiosks at the large grocery store especially since I ALWAYS manage to set off the automated alarm in one way or another. At the bank, my friendly service provider, Georgia, is always delighted to see me when I go inside to deposit my paychecks (although her friendliness may be induced by shear sympathy when she sees the amount on the check)…
I could go on and on, but the point that I am very ineloquently trying to make is that we create our own monsters—our blasé service demons, and only we can cure them by saying no to them. Don’t give up on this human experiment yet.. All hope is not lost.