The Unseen Here and
Now . . .
Stuart
Revercomb
Stuart
Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four
children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be
a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.
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"Thursday's Fare"
NOV. 4, 1999
Is There Anyone Out There?
Have you noticed lately a face is hard to come by? I mean it -- an honest to goodness face -- one that smiles and says, "Yes, we have that" or "No, we don't" or "Thanks for coming" or "what can I help you with?"
Well, you're not alone. I can't find one either. I mean, sure, sometimes there's the guy behind the counter they've yet to figure out how to remove from the equation. But you can take this to the bank, or e-mail it, or download it, or whatever we do with it these days ... he ain't gonna be there long.
It started where it always does: some enterprising old country women. (Old women who live in the country run the world, you know.) She was likely tired after pulling too many shifts for too many years, serving folks at some truck stop off a major four lane. She had her sore stocking feet up on the counter waiting for the next flock of customers to come in when it hit her.
"Hey Tom," she said, "You could probably fire Edwina if you stuck all those salad fixin's on the table over there and let these people serve themselves. Hell, call it a salad corner or salad bar or something and they'll likely pay more to do it." Tom was listening. (Old men from the country always do.) "Say that again," he said.
It may have all started there, but the perfection of such marketing genius occurs, as all savvy businessmen know, at the corner gas station. "Pay-At-The-Pump" is, of course, the latest innovation in a long line of successes by gas station managers. Corporate America watches these guys like hawks because they know the next great application of technology, capable of reducing the number of required employees and shifting more responsibility upon the gullible customer, is likely not coming from the most recently hired Darden School MBA, but from one of these former hood poppers, who by hard work and diligence has made it out of the grease and into the cinderblock back office. It is there they scheme up better and better ways to apply the lessons they learn from old country women to take our hard-earned dollars from what were once our clean, non-gas reeking hands.
The Internet started this way too. Bill Gates had the good fortune as a young man to find himself on a bar stool next to a Gas Station Manager and a Waitress who were arguing over which was best: the new "Linear" networked telephone systems or the old "Party Line" networks. The Old Country Women was, of course, in favor of the Party Line method and when she concluded her argument with the statement, "Suppos' all these damn computer-ized cash registers at all Tom's Truckstops could yak at the same time," Gates was already in his mind a billionaire ... and we were well on our way to the humanless transaction.
I am actually a big fan of the "pay at the pump" method for fuel. I'm guilty of the need to rush on as we all are, and I'm liable to buy the 2-for-1 day-old doughnuts if I go inside, but it's when the technique is applied to every vestige of commerce that I began to question my allegiance.
Good ideas, especially as regards "technological progress," always seem to come with a price ... and usually it has to do with the tearing down of those basic values dear to everyone that smiles at a Norman Rockwell print.
Even though I pay most of my bills now with the swipe of a card or the click of a mouse, I suppose it wouldn't take much to convince me that there will always be someone out there. Problem is, pretty soon in lieu of looking me in the eye they'll be scanning it.