And hire more people! At fair wages! Because the only thing worse than standing in a hideously long line is standing in a hideously long line when there are only two of 10 workstations open and the people operating them look like they are going to drop from exhaustion.
#ANOTHER SOULLESS SOUL HOW TO#
Seriously, if I read one more piece advising travelers how to avoid ghastly flight experiences - "give yourself" extra travel days get to the airport three hours early do not check bags fly nonstop build your own airplane and learn how to fly it - I will scream.Īvoiding ghastly flight experiences is not the responsibility of the people who paid for the tickets! Stop overbooking your damn flights, airlines.
![another soulless soul another soulless soul](https://mkpcdn.com/1000x/f4c3af00fd3397d57bec3331b65df9d7_837172.jpg)
It's a Tom Sawyer-like con job, without the Twainian charm not only is the consumer increasingly doing all the work, we're taking the blame when the system fails. Increasingly, this solution feels like it is serving no one but wily corporations, who have managed to shift the burden of labor to people who are paying them while funneling savings directly to their shareholders. Companies create a problem, then "solve" it with self-service. Sometimes long lines are inevitable, but too often they are simply a matter of understaffing. Well, yes, when there are a dwindling number of actual people to talk to. Honestly, is waiting in line to talk to a trained worker really more time-consuming than spending hours hunched over a screen searching/downloading/uploading/entering your credit card number online only to have what you thought was a completed transaction vanish into the ether? Not only does this raise lots of questions about borrowed IDs, but what's going to happen when those $17.99 blonde ales refuse to drop? Or when some poor soul takes too long punching the buttons? It's tough to imagine glitches involving unmanned beer machines are going to end well.Ĭashiers like this one, ringing up beers at Dodger Stadium, are being made redundant by self-service beer machines in the dubious name of progress. It isn't just stores Dodger Stadium recently installed ID-checking, self-serve beer machines.
![another soulless soul another soulless soul](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SUW7ZTr36QI/maxresdefault.jpg)
Having filled your basket yourself, you are now also expected to pull unpaid clerk duty, while being treated to regular demands that you put your item in or take your item out of the bagging area made in the chilling monotone of a Dalek announcing its intention to “exterminate.”
![another soulless soul another soulless soul](http://pm1.narvii.com/6035/b19e827f7476f4ed64f8a023e4bac41d828f5100_hq.jpg)
Though not as soulless and tiring as the dreaded “self-checkout." Grocery and big-box stores are increasingly filled with DIY registers. Especially since it supports apps that underpay their employees (please tip your delivery person). You can also order your groceries online and have them delivered, but even when you don't get bizarre substitutions (what exactly am I supposed to do with three bags of oranges?), it feels very soulless and most tiring. These days the closest you get to a house call is a telemed appointment, which is not the same thing at all. I can do without a housemaid and the class structure she represents, but imagine living in a world where doctors made house calls! Or where you took your list to a store and a helpful clerk brought you whatever was on it. Which may be why, subconsciously, I chose it. Miss Marple is, like her creator, a child of the Victorian era, and even in 1962, when the book came out, she still has a housemaid and a friendly doctor who makes house calls.
![another soulless soul another soulless soul](https://cdn.bagogames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20112040/soul-sacrifice-bagogames2.jpg)
These include a modern grocery store in which, Miss Marple is told, “You’re expected to take a basket yourself and go round looking for things … and then a long queue waiting to pay as you go out. In the middle of “The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side," Jane Marple commiserates with one of her friends about all the changes that have come to their beloved village, St. (Whitney Curtis / Associated Press)ĭuring my recent bout with COVID, I was doing what I always do when I am ill or exhausted or in need of mental comfort: rereading Agatha Christie. Louis, an employee assists a customer at the self-checkout lane - an innovation that doesn't always deliver the advertised benefits.