BigBallinStalin wrote:Dukasaur wrote:I think it was George Carlin who said, "If this is supposed to be a service economy, why is the service so bad?"
First they do away with the bag boys and make you bag your own groceries. Then they stop giving out the bags and expect you to bring your own. Now they do away with the cashiers and they want you to scan your own. Maybe they should do away with the shelves and make us go out to the loading dock and take our food off the truck. Or maybe we can grow our own food and just send the grocery stores a cheque for what we think we should have spent.
It's the same with everything else. First the telephone operators stopped giving wake-up calls. Then they stopped telling you the time. Now they've done away with telephone operators entirely and even stuff like collect calls is automated.
You have to search for miles now to find a full service gas station, and even when you find one, half the time their idea of "full service" is just to pump the gas, not to do things you normally expect from a full service station like washing your windows and checking the oil.
Two-thirds of the fast food places I can think of now just give you an empty cup when you buy a drink and expect you to fill it yourself. And even fancy restaurants are doing away with busboys and other auxiliary services.
If it isn't automated, then it's "do it yourself." So where the hell is the service in this service economy?
In the land of the free and home of the brave, I can choose either paper or plastic cuz America is awesome.
You're lucky. Here in Canada it's been at least 10 years since paper bags vanished, and now there game is afoot to ban plastic bags as well.
Full service gas stations are a waste of money. If you want someone to check your oil and clean your car, then only you should pay for that service. It shouldn't be mandated (which it is in New Jersey), so that everyone who doesn't need it must pay.
I didn't say anything about mandating anything. If there were more rational people like me who are willing to pay for decent service and fewer cheapskates who will go down the street to the NO SERVICE guy just because his price is 1 cent cheaper, then there would be more places that serve. Of course, if there were more people working at the full service place who have a work ethic and actually do what the name implies, there would be more people coming back. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
BigBallinStalin wrote:What's great about the substitute-seeking and DIY methods is that (1) it lowers costs, and in a competitive market, would (2) lower the price. So, you're looking at one side of the coin. You're only looking at costs to oneself while overlooking the benefits, which aren't readily apparent.
Yeah, I'm not economically illiterate despite your repeated attempts to paint me as such. I know that laying off cashiers and bagboys lowers the price. And yes, it's not the store manager's fault; he's just responding to a market where cheapskate pricks will abandon a store that gives good service and go to the competition just because they charge 3 cents less for a box of Cheerios.
I mean, seriously, people! Is it really worth saving 50 cents (maybe) on a load of groceries for the hassle of having to scan it and bag it yourself? Jesus H. Christ, are people really that stupid and cheap?
Still, if I blame it on the store managers, that's only about 100,000 people I have to hate and want to beat the shit out of, whereas if I face reality and blame the cheapskate prick customers, that's about 5,000,000,000 people I have to hate. So, by closing my eyes to reality and blaming it on management, I can reduce my hating workload by a factor of 50,000. That's a pretty rational economic decision, you must agree.
