To Serve or be Served?
Self Serve Vs Full service
This morning I nearly dropped my free McD’s coffee all over myself as I went to my seat. I always start my day with coffee and something else, somewhere in Whitby. Sometimes PJ’s breakfast diner, sometimes Sunset Grill, or any number of places where I can sip some caffeine and focus on what my painting day will look like today. It’s a very necessary part of my process.
As I walked into my local McD’s for this morning’s focus session I noticed the brand new, very shiny and brightly lit self serve kiosks standing near where the (soon to be eliminated) full service real people currently serve me. Oh boy! The sight of that stirred more than my coffee let me tell you!
So sure, I get it…self serve is supposed to speed up service and save you money by keeping costs down. Right, I understand. Now wait just a minute here. Let’s think about the save you money part: we’ve all used self serve gasoline stations, but to be sure when we do choose it we know that the full serve does cost more, usually a good 4 or 5 cents a litre more. So there is a clear choice, right? Now let’s go back to McD’s, choose self serve or full serve and the price is the same. Let me think about this for a second…be served or serve myself for the same price, no advantage one way or another, same price, no discount for serving myself, nope! No discount for relieving them of the work and expense, in fact, you pay the same either way.
Have you been to the grocery store where they have now had self serve check out for a couple of years? How do you feel about that? You are opting to use it and perhaps somewhere in your mind they have made you feel that you might be saving yourself something? NOPE. Not happening. Not a chance.
Now let’s imagine ourselves in the shoes of the current serving staff who are forced to work next to those self serve kiosks, how do we suppose they feel? Working next to a machine that is most certainly aimed at replacing humans eventually.
It’s not just the service or lack of it that get’s me going, it’s the glaring fact that these multi Billion dollar corporations, who have deep pockets and the where with all to resist such greedy job illuminating technology in the first place. When I was toasted (let go, downsized, outsourced, what ever you want to call it) from my last corporate job in favor of cheaper labor replacement options the opening line from the top managers was this: “ We want you to know how much we really appreciate the hard work you all have been doing…”. Knowing full well they aimed to replace us all with workers or technology that could and would do the same work for 1/3 less.
It comes down to this for me…to self serve or be served? I choose to keep the people employed and also I choose, for my hard earned money, to be served. Especially if it’s the same price either way. Preserve the jobs, serve the customer, keep our economy strong.
What’s wrong with that, eh?
R.M.
Comments welcome.
This morning I nearly dropped my free McD’s coffee all over myself as I went to my seat. I always start my day with coffee and something else, somewhere in Whitby. Sometimes PJ’s breakfast diner, sometimes Sunset Grill, or any number of places where I can sip some caffeine and focus on what my painting day will look like today. It’s a very necessary part of my process.
As I walked into my local McD’s for this morning’s focus session I noticed the brand new, very shiny and brightly lit self serve kiosks standing near where the (soon to be eliminated) full service real people currently serve me. Oh boy! The sight of that stirred more than my coffee let me tell you!
So sure, I get it…self serve is supposed to speed up service and save you money by keeping costs down. Right, I understand. Now wait just a minute here. Let’s think about the save you money part: we’ve all used self serve gasoline stations, but to be sure when we do choose it we know that the full serve does cost more, usually a good 4 or 5 cents a litre more. So there is a clear choice, right? Now let’s go back to McD’s, choose self serve or full serve and the price is the same. Let me think about this for a second…be served or serve myself for the same price, no advantage one way or another, same price, no discount for serving myself, nope! No discount for relieving them of the work and expense, in fact, you pay the same either way.
Have you been to the grocery store where they have now had self serve check out for a couple of years? How do you feel about that? You are opting to use it and perhaps somewhere in your mind they have made you feel that you might be saving yourself something? NOPE. Not happening. Not a chance.
Now let’s imagine ourselves in the shoes of the current serving staff who are forced to work next to those self serve kiosks, how do we suppose they feel? Working next to a machine that is most certainly aimed at replacing humans eventually.
It’s not just the service or lack of it that get’s me going, it’s the glaring fact that these multi Billion dollar corporations, who have deep pockets and the where with all to resist such greedy job illuminating technology in the first place. When I was toasted (let go, downsized, outsourced, what ever you want to call it) from my last corporate job in favor of cheaper labor replacement options the opening line from the top managers was this: “ We want you to know how much we really appreciate the hard work you all have been doing…”. Knowing full well they aimed to replace us all with workers or technology that could and would do the same work for 1/3 less.
It comes down to this for me…to self serve or be served? I choose to keep the people employed and also I choose, for my hard earned money, to be served. Especially if it’s the same price either way. Preserve the jobs, serve the customer, keep our economy strong.
What’s wrong with that, eh?
R.M.
Comments welcome.
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