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To serve or be served?

2/29/2016

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.

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News Media Struggling to survive!

2/24/2016

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Print and Broadcast News:

News Media in trouble

I am a lifer!
What do I mean by that? I know, to some it means a person who has been convicted of a nasty offence and is sentenced to a life term (or more) for the dirty deed.

I have never been convicted of a nasty offence, at least not yet anyway. I could be convicted, however, for something nasty. I could be convicted for the nasty crime of having been a nightly viewer of the evening national and local news cast. A crime because it’s almost a crime to subject ones self to the nightly barrage of the most depressing and saddening list of stories anyone could ever imagine sitting through just moments before I close my eyes to sleep each night!

It is obvious that the editors of all the news outlets I experience, do make some effort to include light hearted stories that take some of the edge out of the list murders, bombings and political fraudsters that we can’t seem to get enough of, or maybe we have? Maybe we have had enough?

The news media, both in print and broadcast have been taking hits of their own of late. Print is going the way of the Dodo bird, and that’s sad because I do enjoy browsing through the pages from time to time. Broadcast news, both on Television and on radio has been seeing ratings plummet as news seekers can and do time shift/download their own pick from the worlds multitude of sources, and this leaves the live media with a problem: how to generate revenue when no one is watching the commercials?

Day after day we are learning of yet another news room that is closing up shop. Sad, I am a firm believer in what good investigative reporting can do. No, not the kind that rehashes a murder mystery with disregard for formal court procedures. I’m taking the kind of reporting that goes the distance in revealing when we are being taken by corporations, government and the like.

What’s gone wrong?

In this humble artists point of view, I say we are all getting pretty sick, after a day long of commuting, working, family stress, financial stress to sit down and listen to the Barbie doll anchor tell us about todays bloody murders, complete with mind numbing graphic images to boot, only to quickly pose a smile as they tell us about Kim Kardashian’s wardrobe slip…!

I never minded watching Lloyd Robertson of Harvey Kirk, with their grey hair and wrinkles tell me the news of the day. In those days there were no warnings of graphic images. Just the news.

The envelope has been pushed. I don’t know how news anchors can handle reading such stories night after night, one would think that they are as in need of P.T.S.D. treatment as anyone else!

I’m sick of it. I stopped watching. I suggest that many many others have already beat me to the punch. That, my friend, is the reason why the News Media is in trouble.

R.M.

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To serve or be served?

To Serve or be Served?

News Media Struggling to survive!

Print and Broadcast News:

The Artists Journey

The Pine Tree Painter.

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