American Life as Salad Bar

A restaurant salad bar generally offers more variety than the house salad, but it comes with a price: Having been seated comfortably at your table, you now have to get up again, go through a line, and bring that loaded salad plate safely back to the table yourself. Instead of being served, that is, you must serve yourself. Well, if I wanted to assemble my own salad, I could have stayed at home.

There is a marvelous scene in the movie “Back to the Future” (one of my favorite movies), where actor Michael J. Fox, whose character has been transported back in time, drives into a service station for gas. He has grown up with self-serve gas stations and is astonished by attendants rushing out to fill his tank and clean his windshield. “Check your oil, sir?” they used to ask. Yes, really. A customer never had to get out of the car. Hence the name service station.

All forms of domestic travel and much travel overseas (unless one ventured far off the beaten paths) used to be similarly luxurious, though what was ordinary at the time was not recognized as luxury. Being checked in at the airport, having one’s baggage checked, boarding a train, ordering a meal in the dining car — you didn’t have to be a first-class passenger paying the highest price to be attended by personnel whose job was to take care of you. That’s just the way things were. Nowadays almost every aspect of American life that used to offer customer care is becoming or has already become a serve-yourself  maze. One after another, businesses are hurrying to eliminate staff and cut services, thus cutting costs but not — please note — cutting prices. You can go through a checkout lane that “lets” you scan all items yourself, but you don’t get a price break for doing it. Someone lost a job, and now you’re doing that person’s old job for free. 

Some people like the new way. Maybe you like it. Self-service eliminates the need to interact with other human beings, so maybe you feel more independent, more self-sufficient in this brave new world. Just whip out your smart-aleck phone and sail through life in a self-enclosed bubble. It’s just like staying home, isn’t it? Often it is staying home (shopping online), and when it isn’t, it might as well be (except that Siri is watching your every move and hears your every word).

(On the other hand, one-time luxuries such as manicures and pedicures, facials and massages, have now become part of everyday life for many Americans of all ages and stations of life. Could it be that we crave human interaction, after all? That we want to be, once in a while, cared for by others and are willing — if we can afford it, if we haven’t lost our jobs — to pay for the privilege?)

So far, not every alternative to self-service has vanished. Not only can I visit a retail store, I can even choose a check-out lane employing a real person. I can buy stamps at the post office from a real person behind the counter. And if I go to the right restaurant, I can sit down at my leisure while someone comes to take my order and brings me my salad. But how long will a world with alternatives last? 

An article in the most recent Atlantic magazine gives a chilling account of jobs being lost to robots in coffee shops and fast food restaurants, the very “service industry” where we were assured there would continue to be work for human beings even as manufacturing jobs were lost to robots! 

So consider trying this today, though of course you don’t have to: Wait in the lane for a human being to check your groceries. Buy your books in a bookstore and your stamps at a post office. Patronize the coffee shop or bar where your drinks are made by a human barista or bartender. Because how much longer will this kind of life be possible? You don’t want to do everything yourself, do you? 

Although you’re paying, I contend that it’s more than a commercial transaction when there are real human beings involved. The waitress may not have been waiting for you to come into her life, but she will be happy to bring your salad to the table.