One of my favorite Australian humorists, Richard Glover, is at it again.
This time he tackles the rise of self-service in business, particularly self-checkout counters in supermarkets. He points out that it's nothing new, just the latest method of making customers do the work.
Of course, the customer-as-worker is an old lurk. Service stations were first in, when they removed the attendants and decided people could pump their own fuel. Maybe that was fair enough when the stuff cost 50 cents a litre, but at present prices I'd like it served by the bottle on a silver tray by a waiter in a monkey suit. "The unleaded today, sir, or a rather cheeky 98 octane?"
Next came the fast food restaurants, who decided the customers should clear their own tables and leave the trays neatly stacked. Over the road, the local pub went the other way - they were willing to clean up afterwards, providing you cooked the stuff yourself, using the "cook your own steak" grill.
It will be up to Woolworths to go the next step, creating a restaurant where you cook the meal, clean up afterwards and then process your own bill. They'll use their expertise in weighing machines to make it all possible. You'll be weighed as you walk in, weighed as you leave, with any additional kilos whacked onto your credit card, charged as fillet steak.
Bulimics should love it.
. . .
Where, exactly, does this stuff stop? I'm booked for the hairdresser next week and am waiting for Shane to hand me the clippers and a mirror and suggest I have a crack myself. Maybe that's what happened to Van Gogh - an early victim of the do-it-yourself hairdressing movement.
The self-serve customer is like the self-milking cow: a great convenience for business but you do have to wonder what's in it for the cow.
*Gigglesnort!*
Go read the whole thing.
Peter
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