Passing the Buck

As if we don’t have enough on our ever-shrinking plates. Business, in all its wisdom, has decided in lieu of hiring their own staff, just use us, and why not, we all seem to have a large S emblazoned on our forehead. Used to be a joke, put an L there, not so funny anymore.

It started, somewhat innocuously, with things like self-checkout. How convenient, get out of there quicker, no more waiting in line for the union waged checkout clerk.

Gateway, a term handed to various substances, is the start of something that will soon turn evil. Might be appropriate. Some, wiser than us, took notice. Hey, why not get those, our customers (once anyway), deputize them, adjunct employees, and convince them it’s for their own good? Genius?

There are many examples, filling in your forms before the doctor's appointment, doing everything for the insurance company, sitting on the phone for hours because they don’t want to help, let’s not talk about the phone companies, the list, endless.

The trigger for this little rant, was a recent stop at a family restaurant, ‘Eat Happy’ their motto. The days of the little red buzzer alerting you your food is ready, are numbered. ‘This is your code’ he tells me as he highlights it. ‘Scan the QR code on the table then enter this code so we’ll know where you are’. Really? What’s next, ‘please (always polite — more bees with honey) go into the kitchen…’

Don’t say I didn’t alert you.