It won’t be long
before our electronic books will be authored by robots. That’s an exaggeration,
of course, because machines can’t think and never will. Unlike the fictional
HAL, machines can only follow the instructions their human creators have
programed into them.
Still, sometimes it
seems as if machines are taking over, and it isn’t always a pleasant experience.
When we left New
York City last week, we decided to get lunch at Newark Airport. An entrée cost
$30 at a sit-down restaurant, so we headed for the food court. The prices were
better, but the service was highly automated, and not in a good way.
After we figured
out what type of food we wanted, we ordered it from a pad. We’ve done that at
other places, but this menu didn’t include any drinks and we couldn’t find any
place to order them from.
Paying was an even
bigger problem. The person behind the counter was there to make up the orders
and nothing else. Another patron finally told us that we had to pay for our
food at one of the self-checkout kiosks. It wasn’t until we had scanned the
order ticket and charged our sandwiches that we discovered we had to get our
own drinks and scan them in, as well. Even the “on tap” Coke that flowed
directly from a machine was purchased by scanning the code on the correct size cup
and paying for it before pouring the drink. But when I tried to use cash to pay
for my drink, I was told I would have to use a different checkout station. So I
gave up and charged that, too.
We weren’t the
only ones who were frustrated or confused, and the food court paid somebody to
stand by the self-checkout machines and explain how they worked. The concessionaire
may have saved on one or two employees, but at what cost in customer
satisfaction?
Robots will never
write books without help from a human creator.
But when did
technology replace customer service?
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