I wonder if self-service started with the old gumball machine? You put your coin in, you turn the knob, you hear your gumball roll down the shoot, you lift the lever, you grab the ball ... and there it is! You've paid for the product and done all the work in getting the dumb gumball.
I remember when there were "service" stations. Remember them?
We all know what a gas station is, but how many of us actually remember way back when gas stations were actually called service stations, and for good reason; they gave us service ... and with a smile.
Today we drive in to the gas station, pump our own gas and off we go. Back then we drove into the service station and were actually greeted by a service person, who filled our tank, checked our oil and washed our windshield. If we needed a map, it was there and it was free. In the service station there was a clean bathroom that didn't require a key to use it. (Oh! And the price was lower too.)
Drive In's were hot too. Service with a smile! It wasn't the experience of facing a big board of selections where you converse with a loudspeaker and drive on through to one of two small bullet proof windows, pay and then collect the goodies! No, Drive In's were where cute girls on skates would come on up to your car, smile, attach a tray and take your order, then skate back with all your goodies! Now THAT was service!
The other day I walked in to a Rite-aid drug store looking for vitamins. I looked and looked for the vitamins and couldn't find them, so I looked for a sales person and couldn't find one. I found the whole store had only three people in it and two of them were at the counter and the third person, myself, continued looking for vitamins. How did AID get into the name? Something wasn't Rite.
Remember that black thing we called a telephone? And along with the telephone there were operators; human operators who talked to you (and spoke your language?). Remember when you called a business and there was someone human who answered? Then came the more efficient do-it-for-us magnetic phone maze. Replacing the human with a more efficient and impersonal magnetic tape that suggests seven selections, "push or say 3"!
How I love sweet synthetic Sally with her cold correctly enunciated words. It's embarrassing to converse with someone who actually isn't.
Even more convenient, log on! Do-it-yourself banking or better said, on-line-banking! And of course passwords, I love passwords!
Do-it-yourself check-out-counters are springing up. No waiting simply do-it-yourself.
Serve yourself! Lost, alone in a world of everything!
Serve yourself; rightly translated; do our work for us.
We love you dear sucker ... er, customer!
Ah! How I love progress!
