Unnerved By the Urge to Self-Serve
Hmmm, are we self-serving ourselves down a dangerous, dead-end road?
One of the double-edged benefits of technology is the increasing ways and means it gives us to “self-serve”. We’re supposed to perceive this trend as a good thing since it is more efficient and gets us on the way to our next errand faster.
I’ll readily concede that ATMs were a positive game-changer since they give us access to our money 24/7 instead of only during banker’s hours. But recently, I’ve seen evidence that the corporate world is funneling us into the self-serve mode wherever possible whether we want to go that route or not.
Personally speaking, I’m a bit unnerved by how far and how fast this trend is spreading. A few examples of the “self-serve” juggernaut:
My local grocery store has installed self-serve checkout lines. You scan the bar codes on the items you’re purchasing, pay by debit or credit card, bag your purchases and bob’s your uncle. There are two self-serve stations where full service checkouts used to be. I’ll bet a week’s pay that the self-serve stations will outnumber the full service checkouts in the not too distant future.
I went through the check-out line at Home Depot this week. The check-out person walked me over to the self-serve station – without my asking her to do so – to complete the transaction. I was pleased that I did not have to use my credit card as the machine accepts bills and kicks out change. But I was less than pleased at the not-so-subtle suggestion I was being given.
Airports now have self-serve stations for checking in for your flight. A couple of years back, when I flew to and from a U.S. city, it wasn’t a question of choice. I had to check-in via the electronic terminal.
It’s tough to find a gas station that hasn’t fully converted to the pump-your-own method. Now many of them have “pay at the pump” lines where you can bypass the station attendant altogether.
Aside from ATMs, I am personally boycotting “self-serve” technology. It is my small act of civil disobedience on principle.
It’s a no-brainer that, every time a self-serve line is added at the gas station or the grocery store or Home Depot, more hardworking people lose their jobs in the interests of higher corporate profits. I’ll wait in line at the full service check-out rather than support that money grab.
In my mind, that principle is reason enough to buck the trend. But it’s not my only reason. High tech machines and I don’t get along particularly well. I seem to exude some sort of bad technology karma that causes them to frequently malfunction when serving me. I would really rather not deal with them while the people-powered alternatives are still available.
And finally, I have reservations on a philosophical level. Increasingly, our interactions are person-to-machine rather than person-to-person. It’s one more way in which our world is becoming depersonalized. I’m convinced that, the more depersonalized our world becomes, the easier it is to adopt the me-first philosophy.
As I see it, “self-serve” is becoming – in subtle and insidious ways – a metaphor for “self-serving” and opening the door for us to behave that way with impunity. The day may come when I have no choice but to pay at the pump. But I’ll stand on principle as long as I can. I hope I’m not alone.
~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .
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