ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 1996 TAG: 9610290028
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: ELLEN GOODMAN
SOURCE: ELLEN GOODMAN
IT IS 8:30 in the morning, and I am standing at a gas station in a silk suit with an unusual fashion accessory dangling from my right hand. This metal and rubber accouterment looks exactly like a gasoline hose.
In fact, it is a gasoline hose.
I am poised (for disaster) at this petroleum establishment which boasts of self-service - which is to say, no service, because there is no longer any station on my corner which has ``full service,'' which is to say, any service.
At precisely 8:33, as if on cue, the hose balks, the gas leaps from its point of destination and proceeds to decorate my skirt in a fashion familiar to Jackson Pollack fans.
The transfer of gas to silk is accompanied by expletives which will be deleted for the family newspaper. It is followed by a return home, a change of clothes, a trip to the cleaners and a delayed start of more than an hour.
Normally I would spare you the details of a gasoline-splattered morning. But this event was accompanied by a reverie about the brave, new economy.
We all know the now-classic joke about the job market of the 1990s. An economist exclaims about the millions of new jobs and a worker counters, ``I know, I have four of them.'' In my variation on this theme, another economist brags about jobs in the service industry and the consumer says, ``I know, I'm doing them all.''
The fastest-growing part of the economy is not the service industry. It's the self-service industry. The motto of the new age is: Help Yourself.
The generic story is that of the company phone-operator, whose job has been outsourced to customers. The Great American Gripe is about the endless minutes spent wending our way through multichoice listings before we get to the person or information we want. (Press 9 for Frustration.)
But that's just the beginning.
We now have a supermarket that not only allows us to pick our food from the shelves but scan it ourselves at the checkout counter. We have telephone companies where so-called ``directory assistance'' forces us to shout the town and name we are after into an electronic void.
Across the country, home delivery is increasingly replaced by pickup. If you buy something, u-haul. If you break it, u-haul it back. And if it's a refrigerator, you sit home at the convenience of the truck driver.
Even in the world of alleged health care, once house calls went the way of milkmen we learned to haul each body part to a separate specialist. But now we are sent home from hospitals with instructions on self-care that stop just short of a do-it-yourself appendectomy.
I am not opposed to the self-help ethic. I am still amazed and delighted that an ATM machine in Seattle will give $100 to a woman from Boston.
But I rebel at the casual ways corporations have downsized by replacing employees with consumers. Did anyone ask us if we want to moonlight for them?
Of course this is all done, or so we are told, in the name of competition, lower prices, and the American way. When Southwest Airlines initiated a policy of B.Y.O. food and had passengers transfer their own bags, the airline bragged of low fares. But sooner or later, competitors will pare down, fares will creep up and we will be left toting the bag.
Where are the economists who tally up the cost-shifting of time and money and energy from them to us? When companies boast that we pay less for gas, do they include the cost of our labor, not to mention dry cleaning?
Do companies add up the wages lost while the country's on hold? (Press 8 for Outrage.) And do they include the cost to us of being hassled?
I hear that a modest rebellion is encouraging a few new businesses - even an oil company - to advertise their latest frill: people. But the whole trend of the new economy is some perverse play on the great American can-do spirit. That we can do everything on our own, and without ever encountering another human being.
But before my gas tank runs dry again, may I suggest a rallying cry from those who only serve themselves: Help!
- The Boston Globe
LENGTH: Medium: 75 linesby CNB