Go serve yourself!
April 16th, 2008 | by
mbhunter |
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Check out yourself. Check in yourself. Pack it yourself. Lift it into the cart yourself. Check your balance yourself. Pump gas yourself. Find the answer yourself. Look it up yourself. Print it yourself.
And businesses are quite happy to let you do as much for yourself as they can get away with, thank you very much. It helps their bottom line. The more they can get you to do for yourself, the less they have to pay someone to help you. This kind of no-service service is insidious and ubiquitous. And probably not nearly fully implemented.
Financial institutions are always encouraging us to “go paperless” at the risk of getting hit with a hefty fee for keeping our paper copies coming in. (Paper’s expensive, but it only matters that it’s expensive for them.) Or check your balances online so that we can fire one or two of our tellers or “re-task” them. Or check out your groceries yourself at a self-serve checkout that works only half the time and actually takes longer than having someone pull them over a scanner.
They just want our money, and the easier it is for them to take it, the better. These unpalatable options are going to be more the norm for people who can’t, or choose not to, pay for better service. Like with most other things, you get what you pay for. Welcome to the middle class: stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Moreover, this trend is bad news for the prospects of service-sector jobs. Machines don’t call in sick or take breaks or mouth off, and they only have to be paid once! And with Social Security on the ropes, it’s highly likely that taxes — of which employers pay half of their employees’ obligations — will go up. Even more reason to buy some machines and train their customers to use them rather than be served by employees.
(Oh, speaking of self-serve, the ING $25 Bonus links are now self-serve, so please go help yourself! This really is faster than contacting me and having me send you an e-mail! Honest!)
| 2.5 |
5 Responses to “Go serve yourself!”
By traineeinvestor on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
Agree. Service standards have been declining at least in part for the reasons you give.
Of course, as we all invest in companies like these (either directly or through investment funds or pension plans) we also benefit from the cost savings in other ways.
By Rachel @ Master Your Card on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
I take advantage of this paperless system. I get high interest on my current account because I bank online and have lower bills because I get online statements. If you are not making any saving perhaps you should request one.
By Saving Freak on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
I have to disagree on the self service Check out. You see there is a curse on my family that always puts me behind a person who doesn’t fill out their check before hand or a person who picked up an item with no bar code. No matter what line I choose in the full service check out I am always in the slowest line. Self service allows me to avoid this hassle because there are at least 4 scanners for the one line. This makes more sense. Of course they could do that with the regular lines, but why be friendly to the customer?
By Little Miss Moneybags on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
I actually have to disagree on most of these stances.
Going paperless saves the amount of space I have to devote to saving bits of paper that I will likely never need. It reduces my risk of identity theft. It is better for the environment, especially because most paperless options also eliminate most of the advertising these same companies would send me.
Handling all my accounts online saves me time that I’m not spending waiting in line at physical institutions. I can check all my accounts in five minutes from my desk–this would take me at least an hour in person.
When I lived near a grocery store with a self checkout, I was always out faster than any of the regular cashier lines, and I used fewer bags for my groceries, since I don’t double-bag a single loaf of bread or package of toilet paper. Granted, when the machines break, it can be kind of a pain, but net-net I spent less time in the store when I had self checkouts than I do now.
Maybe I’m strange, but I’d rather take care of most of my business–banking, checking out at the grocery store, and even planning for my retirement–than have some person do it for me. No one’s going to care about it as much as I will, because it’s MY life.
By Jon on Apr 16, 2008 | Reply
I happen to like the self service checkouts. They don’t give you any dirty looks when you hand them a pile of coupons.