As a child, back in the 30’s, I lived in the country. Most rural America back then lived in about the same conditions that most of humanity had for a couple of thousand years. There were some variations of course. Every summer I spent a week with my maternal grandparents in town. It was great, a different world. My grandfather had a job all during the Great Depression. They had electric lights, running hot water with the turn of a faucet, an indoor toilet, a radio, a Victrola (record player), and an ice box, things I consider to be close magic at the time. Anyone remember the horse drawn wagons that delivered ice door to door? Grandma put a sigh in the window indicating how many ponds of ice her order was to be. I joined the gang of children who followed the wagon to pick up the ice chips generated when the big blocks were broken down. Ice chips in July, a real miracle. And they were free!
I have noticed the quality of service one gets in our society has really gone downhill since the 30’s. Not just in stores but the entire system of service. It was a slow insidious process like the boiling a frog myth. It seems to me we have been trained like rats in a maze to accept bad service as a norm. The supposed justification is reducing service keeps prices low, which may be true to some extent, but the real reason is the bottom line. Nothing like a machine telling you that you are very important but all the customer service personal are currently busy helping others and someone will be with you shortly. After an hour of holding the phone you wonder why they don’t have more people serving the public. It affects the bottom line, that’s why. I always get the mental picture of one beleaguered employee alone in a room with a bank of phones, trying to answer all the posed questions.
Just a few memories of a silly old man.