Whatever happened to service?
When April retired she breathed a sigh of relief – no more workplace woes – but she soon found that daytime life in the suburbs is far from idyllic for older people and is getting progressively worse with global corporate measures designed to maximize profit by lowering wages using cheap immigrant labor and getting us to do tasks that were once part of the service we pay for and, in many cases, these service tasks are too arduous or technical or just plain insulting for older people to cope with and their health must suffer from this lower quality of life.
“My first rude shock was visiting the supermarket for the first time ever as a leisurely daytime shopper,” says April. “Previously, I’d do my supermarket shopping on my way home from work, dash in and dash out, and I really looked forward to the time when I could browse and read labels, do price checks at leisure and exchange pleasantries with shop assistants.”
“Well, the first few times I tried browsing at my local supermarket I was followed around by a surly faced woman who treated me like I was a thief or something,” says April, “and when I took my basket to the check-out and commented on the weather to the cashier, naively expecting an exchange of pleasantries, her face twisted into what I can only describe as hatred as she totally ignored me.”
“Shopping in the daytime became such a harrowing and unfriendly experience – totally anathema to living a happy, healthy life – that I went back to night shopping, and if I ever had to visit the supermarket during the day I’d be in and out of the place like a flash,” sighs April, “but there will come a time when I am too old to cope with night shopping and then what?”
“And don’t get me started about plastic bags and the many times I have been bullied by the supermarket gorgons into buying environmental bags whenever they decided they wouldn’t be providing plastics bags that day,” says April. “Imagine the effect on your health of being old and infirm and having to cope with this totally unnecessary and cruel bullying.”
“The daytime supermarket staff is nothing like the night staff – which is mostly young, bright and immigrant based – instead, it is mostly middle aged and white and without exception surly and rude, as thick as planks and totally devoid of service ethics.”
“Thank God they’ve brought in self-serve check-outs at the supermarkets now,” laughs April. “It means doing for myself another service task I pay for in over-inflated grocery prices, but at least I don’t have to face the gorgons any more. I do worry, though, about getting older and not being able to serve myself in this way. Home deliveries are expensive and the one time I tried it I was faced on my doorstep by a surlier man than the supermarket gorgons, very scary.”
“Garbage sorting is another service task we’ve been forced into doing for ourselves,” sighs April. “And if it isn’t bad enough that we have to wash out every can and bottle and jar we put into the bin, we get fined if a stray container gets put into the wrong bin or we put out too much. God help anyone with early onset Alzheimer’s!”
“What happened to the guys whose full-time job was garbage sorting – are they all sitting at desks now thinking up ways to sort us? And what do we pay council rates for?”
“Banking, of course, was one of the first so-called services we lost,” says April. “I haven’t been in a bank for years and yet they continue to charge me fees for services that I do myself at the ATM or online. God knows how I am going to cope when my eyes go.”
“Service station gas pumps have been self-service for ages, too, as has public transport ticketing – and to add insult to injury service reductions are always invariably followed by price increases!”
“I really can’t think of very many places providing essential services where we actually get the service we pay for,” sighs April. “Corporations and governments have become so mean and profit oriented that they feel no obligation to provide anything but the barest minimum, if that, for the money they take off us, and as for complaining, returning goods or getting them fixed, forget it, it’s not worth it.”
“These days we’re expected to pull our own teeth, diagnose and treat our own medical problems, and it won’t be long before they’ll expect us to dig our own graves, too,” adds April, “and I’m not just talking about poor people, I’m talking about everyone – lack of service is so endemic that even the filthy rich are having problems finding someone to do things for them.”
“It’s almost as if service jobs have become too menial to do – everyone these days thinks they are too good to serve others – and perhaps filling young people’s heads with silly ideas about their innate greatness and pushing them towards impractical degrees was a bad idea,” says April. “It wasn’t so long ago that just about everyone’s job was service oriented and was done with a smile. Remember milk and bread deliveries to your doorstep every morning, a conductor helping you onto the bus, and most workplaces having a washroom linen service, a telephone hygienist to clean your telephone, and a tea-lady to serve you morning and afternoon refreshments?”
“All of these service jobs have disappeared and the ethic of ‘service with a smile’ has been replaced in the remaining service jobs with ‘no-service, no smile’,” says April, “and importing immigrants to fill service positions was a terrible mistake because although they may start off with a good attitude it doesn’t take them long to resent their situation and then they’re worse than the indigenous service staff, treating you like white trash.”
“I cannot understand how this denouement in service came about – it must be related to globalization, bringing us into line with the Third World, making life for us in the western world as cruel as it is for them,” says April. “All I know is that retirement, these days, is not as pleasant as it was for the previous generation and I dread what lies ahead when I’m too feeble to maintain an independent lifestyle and will have to rely on indifferent others – like the gorgons from the supermarket – to take care of me (read, hasten me to the grave), and that’s why, I think, voluntary euthanasia has become such a hot topic. Better to go at your own hand than some gorgon’s, right? ”
“A civilized western world, I don’t think so.”
“My first rude shock was visiting the supermarket for the first time ever as a leisurely daytime shopper,” says April. “Previously, I’d do my supermarket shopping on my way home from work, dash in and dash out, and I really looked forward to the time when I could browse and read labels, do price checks at leisure and exchange pleasantries with shop assistants.”
“Well, the first few times I tried browsing at my local supermarket I was followed around by a surly faced woman who treated me like I was a thief or something,” says April, “and when I took my basket to the check-out and commented on the weather to the cashier, naively expecting an exchange of pleasantries, her face twisted into what I can only describe as hatred as she totally ignored me.”
“Shopping in the daytime became such a harrowing and unfriendly experience – totally anathema to living a happy, healthy life – that I went back to night shopping, and if I ever had to visit the supermarket during the day I’d be in and out of the place like a flash,” sighs April, “but there will come a time when I am too old to cope with night shopping and then what?”
“And don’t get me started about plastic bags and the many times I have been bullied by the supermarket gorgons into buying environmental bags whenever they decided they wouldn’t be providing plastics bags that day,” says April. “Imagine the effect on your health of being old and infirm and having to cope with this totally unnecessary and cruel bullying.”
“The daytime supermarket staff is nothing like the night staff – which is mostly young, bright and immigrant based – instead, it is mostly middle aged and white and without exception surly and rude, as thick as planks and totally devoid of service ethics.”
“Thank God they’ve brought in self-serve check-outs at the supermarkets now,” laughs April. “It means doing for myself another service task I pay for in over-inflated grocery prices, but at least I don’t have to face the gorgons any more. I do worry, though, about getting older and not being able to serve myself in this way. Home deliveries are expensive and the one time I tried it I was faced on my doorstep by a surlier man than the supermarket gorgons, very scary.”
“Garbage sorting is another service task we’ve been forced into doing for ourselves,” sighs April. “And if it isn’t bad enough that we have to wash out every can and bottle and jar we put into the bin, we get fined if a stray container gets put into the wrong bin or we put out too much. God help anyone with early onset Alzheimer’s!”
“What happened to the guys whose full-time job was garbage sorting – are they all sitting at desks now thinking up ways to sort us? And what do we pay council rates for?”
“Banking, of course, was one of the first so-called services we lost,” says April. “I haven’t been in a bank for years and yet they continue to charge me fees for services that I do myself at the ATM or online. God knows how I am going to cope when my eyes go.”
“Service station gas pumps have been self-service for ages, too, as has public transport ticketing – and to add insult to injury service reductions are always invariably followed by price increases!”
“I really can’t think of very many places providing essential services where we actually get the service we pay for,” sighs April. “Corporations and governments have become so mean and profit oriented that they feel no obligation to provide anything but the barest minimum, if that, for the money they take off us, and as for complaining, returning goods or getting them fixed, forget it, it’s not worth it.”
“These days we’re expected to pull our own teeth, diagnose and treat our own medical problems, and it won’t be long before they’ll expect us to dig our own graves, too,” adds April, “and I’m not just talking about poor people, I’m talking about everyone – lack of service is so endemic that even the filthy rich are having problems finding someone to do things for them.”
“It’s almost as if service jobs have become too menial to do – everyone these days thinks they are too good to serve others – and perhaps filling young people’s heads with silly ideas about their innate greatness and pushing them towards impractical degrees was a bad idea,” says April. “It wasn’t so long ago that just about everyone’s job was service oriented and was done with a smile. Remember milk and bread deliveries to your doorstep every morning, a conductor helping you onto the bus, and most workplaces having a washroom linen service, a telephone hygienist to clean your telephone, and a tea-lady to serve you morning and afternoon refreshments?”
“All of these service jobs have disappeared and the ethic of ‘service with a smile’ has been replaced in the remaining service jobs with ‘no-service, no smile’,” says April, “and importing immigrants to fill service positions was a terrible mistake because although they may start off with a good attitude it doesn’t take them long to resent their situation and then they’re worse than the indigenous service staff, treating you like white trash.”
“I cannot understand how this denouement in service came about – it must be related to globalization, bringing us into line with the Third World, making life for us in the western world as cruel as it is for them,” says April. “All I know is that retirement, these days, is not as pleasant as it was for the previous generation and I dread what lies ahead when I’m too feeble to maintain an independent lifestyle and will have to rely on indifferent others – like the gorgons from the supermarket – to take care of me (read, hasten me to the grave), and that’s why, I think, voluntary euthanasia has become such a hot topic. Better to go at your own hand than some gorgon’s, right? ”
“A civilized western world, I don’t think so.”
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