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Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman started her career as a researcher for Newsweek, and moved on to become a reporter for the Detroit ...
Read more about Ellen Goodman.
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman started her career as a researcher for Newsweek, and moved on to become a reporter for the Detroit ...
Read more about Ellen Goodman.
No Rest for a Weary You in Our Self-Service World
Ellen Goodman
BOSTON -- I finally drew the line at a dinner invitation. My husband
wanted to try a much-touted restaurant where they present you with a
platter of raw foods and a hot pot. The prospect of this adventure in
dining didn't exactly thrill me. If I want to cook my own food, I
answered rather testily, I'll eat at home.
Until then, I had drifted along with the do-it-yourself economy. I bused my own lunch trays. I booked my own movie tickets. I checked myself in at hotel kiosks. I even succumbed when an upscale seafood restaurant expected me to swipe my credit card through a handheld computer as if I were in a supermarket.
But maybe it was the election-year rants about the offshoring of American jobs from steelworkers to computer programmers that finally got me. The outsourcing of work to other countries has produced endless ire. But what about the outsourcing of work to thee and me?
For every task shipped abroad by a corporation, isn't there another one sloughed off onto that domestic loser, the consumer? For every job that's going to a low-wage economy, isn't there another going into our very own no-wage economy?
I'm not just talking about do-it-yourself gas pumping, which is by now so routine that the memory of an actual person washing your windshield has receded into the mists of AARP nostalgia. Back when gas cost $2 a gallon, self-service was offered at a discount. Today, gas is more than $4, and, in most parts of the country, full-service -- a retronym if there ever was one -- is available only at a premium.
What's happening on land is happening in air. We are now expected to book our own itinerary, print our boarding passes and do everything at the airport except pat ourselves down for liquids.
In this self-service economy, we also serve (ourselves) by having intimate and endless conversations with voice-recognition machines simply to refill a prescription drug or check our bank balance. We are expected to interact with "labor-saving technology" without realizing that it's labor-transferring technology. The job has not been "saved," it's been taken out of the paid sector, where employees have a nasty habit of expecting salaries, and put into the unpaid sector, where suckers 'r' us.
I am tempted to say that customer service has gone the way of the house call but that reminds me that even medicine has been outsourced to patients who buy do-it-yourself kits to test and track everything from HIV to blood pressure. The Internet ad for a do-it-yourself eye surgery kit may be, I pray, a hoax. But in an era when every operation short of brain surgery is done on an outpatient basis, nursing care has already been outsourced to family members whose entire medical training consists of TiVo-ing "Grey's Anatomy."
The axis of this evil isn't really globalization, it's privatization. Consider all the major jobs that have now become part of our personal portfolio. We've become our own computer geeks as help lines become self-help lines. We've become our own pension planners and financial analysts left to manage our 401(k)s. We are even expected to be health care analysts, determining which star in the galaxy of drug prescription plans covers the ever-changing cast of pills in our medicine cabinet.
All of this is framed in the language of free choice. As opposed to, say, free time.
An MIT economist assures me cheerily that many Americans are willing to accept less service for lower cost. In a society built on the value of self-reliance, I am told, we may even feel virtuous when we put together our own bookcase or install our own hard drive.
But I have yet to find an economist who has figured out the human cost of "lower cost" or tallied up the transfer of labor from companies to customers. I've yet to find a consumer who has added, subtracted or multiplied the amount of time we are now spending on the second shift of life management.
Remember back when women were asking "Can We Have It All?" The answer turned out to be that we could have it all only if we could do it all ... and all by ourselves. Now men and women have both won equal opportunity in the do-it-all-by-yourself world. We have officially become our own nonprofit centers.
Welcome to the self-service economy where we are never without work to be done. Let's celebrate by dining out together. Bring your carrot peeler.
========
Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com
(c) 2008, Washington Post Writers Group
This news arrived on: 07/17/2008
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Posted Comments:
07-25-2008 08:46
Jesse wrote:
Dear CJS,
....if you are a customer service rep you should applaud this article since it is jobs like yours that are becoming obsolete with the self-service technologies that are becoming part of our daily living!
07-22-2008 20:17
CJS wrote:
Stop whining!
If this column was well thought out she'd realize you are MUCH safer running your own credit cards than letting them disappear into the kitchen!And in my town half the stations ARE full service garages at the same price.
But why nothing about the self service grocery aisles?THOSE should be abolished immediately.
She sounds like the kind of difficult customer that those of us who work in customer service dread.It only takes one of those to ruin your day.
But why nothing about the self service grocery aisles?THOSE should be abolished immediately.
She sounds like the kind of difficult customer that those of us who work in customer service dread.It only takes one of those to ruin your day.
07-18-2008 16:24
Jim wrote:
Wonderful piece Ellen!!
I remember reading at an earlier age, quite a tender age, as I am 72, the Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire and I use to cogitate about what the Decline and Fall of America would be like. In my wildest imagination, I could not foresee what the Decline and Fall of the American Empire is becoming. All around us, the evidence is there and it is being hustled by the fat cats making the big money with all their schemes, the politicians with little care for for sustaining the American life we so treasured...outsource it all, and there is nothing left but the shell of a once glorious nation. HOw soon will it be here? I'm in my declining years, but I pray my 8 grandchildren will be strong to survive the new holacaust! What a well written piece. Can we awake before it is too late??????!!!!!!!!
I remember reading at an earlier age, quite a tender age, as I am 72, the Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire and I use to cogitate about what the Decline and Fall of America would be like. In my wildest imagination, I could not foresee what the Decline and Fall of the American Empire is becoming. All around us, the evidence is there and it is being hustled by the fat cats making the big money with all their schemes, the politicians with little care for for sustaining the American life we so treasured...outsource it all, and there is nothing left but the shell of a once glorious nation. HOw soon will it be here? I'm in my declining years, but I pray my 8 grandchildren will be strong to survive the new holacaust! What a well written piece. Can we awake before it is too late??????!!!!!!!!
07-18-2008 15:13
Texas Katie wrote:
Customer Service?
Right on, Ellen!
I certainly do remember customer servie! Every time I drive in Oregon it comes back to me in a flash because it is against the law for us to pump our own gas---AND, they do still clean our windshield, believe it or not!
I certainly do remember customer servie! Every time I drive in Oregon it comes back to me in a flash because it is against the law for us to pump our own gas---AND, they do still clean our windshield, believe it or not!
07-18-2008 11:53
phyllba wrote:
customer service?
I couldn't agree more. I push 0 on the phone when I hear that automated voice. I complain loudly when I know my voice is being taped. It does no good.
On Monday I have to have a computer geek come over and, at 75 dollars an hour, fix my aging computer, but it's better than my less than electronic brain trying to fix it. but I've waited until I was told by a PC internet co. that I have 24 things wrong with my computer (They scan my computer), and I only have a dim idea of their language. They don't repair it, merely isolate the problems.
At 4'11'' and older than hay, I can't repair anything, and so after I try, I find a repair man to do it, for lots more than the "thing" is worth.
Yet all the customer service jobs have gone overseas, to India, to Philipines, to Mexico.
There is so much wrong with this global economy that the only people who love it are the fat cats, the CEO's. I have almost given up on the country.
If Obama loses, in fact, I'm about to visit Canada for good.
On Monday I have to have a computer geek come over and, at 75 dollars an hour, fix my aging computer, but it's better than my less than electronic brain trying to fix it. but I've waited until I was told by a PC internet co. that I have 24 things wrong with my computer (They scan my computer), and I only have a dim idea of their language. They don't repair it, merely isolate the problems.
At 4'11'' and older than hay, I can't repair anything, and so after I try, I find a repair man to do it, for lots more than the "thing" is worth.
Yet all the customer service jobs have gone overseas, to India, to Philipines, to Mexico.
There is so much wrong with this global economy that the only people who love it are the fat cats, the CEO's. I have almost given up on the country.
If Obama loses, in fact, I'm about to visit Canada for good.
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