Looking at the other side of self-service culture

The sun is shining, the fire threat is low and for the first time in 25 years, no part of California is experiencing drought.

- Mary McNamara, Tribune News Service

A cosplayer dressed as Boba Fett uses a self-checkout machine during New York Comic Con 2022, in New York City.

(Tribune News Service)

Except of course in the hope and joy department. It's the middle of January, which means the holidays are well and truly over and whatever fanciful shine the prospect of a “new” year held as it approached has already dimmed into grim reality. Of course I want to face this year determined to be a happier, kinder, more empathetic and more just person. But just as it's tough to honourably pay one's taxes knowing millionaires and billionaires are weaselling out of theirs, it's hard to gin up personal-improvement energy when every news cycle brings proof that an alarming number of people are perfectly willing to believe that black is white, science is fake, we should all be cooking with beef tallow and failure to stop when an unidentified ICE agent tells you to is, apparently, punishable by death. Also all that water everyone has been telling us to drink may be full of microplastics.

See, now I'm just getting upset again. Which is just too 2025 to bear. Mercifully, I have just discovered a cache of surviving holiday mint M&M's (which may or may not contain beef tallow) and, equally important, I have a plan to make life better for everyone. (At least until the midterms, when we will discover once and for all if this democratic experiment has any hope of lasting another year.) It's very simple, really: We need to demand the resurrection of customer service and put large numbers of well-paid and trained employees back in charge. Seriously. I know it’s fun, and purportedly “convenient,” to be able to accomplish our banking/shopping/ travel/bill paying/ticket buying/food ordering/ health monitoring/everything else through a series of apps, websites and self-checkout kiosks. But the lack of trained and helpful humans is getting out of control.