Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: Poor people pay higher time tax; Hey look at this; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/10/my-time/
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@pluralistic The time tax is creeping into middle-class time privilege now. Phone trees have more dead ends, website authentications are more onerous (or just broken). The burden is shifted even on expensive services: banks, cell and ISPs, hotels, rentals, tax preparers, insurance, HR, and fin. advisors all want you to self-serve the bureaucratic effort. Like grocery checkout, you’re doing what used to be someone’s paying job. “First they came for social services, but I was not on food stamps.”
@JR_Kelly
re: grocery checkout, OMG yes. I would always go to the checkout clerk before because they're usually faster with all my produce than I would be, and I could have a bit of chat, but my grocery store revamped everything and only have, like, two people doing checkout.
Like, is *this* the automated future we were promised?
Anyway, trivial gripe over.
@2ck @JR_Kelly I’m not sure grocery self-checkout is the best example. I (and many others I’ve talked to) vastly prefer an automated checkout because the larger numbers of automated checkouts mean less queuing. Having random friendly chats with strangers is not an activity valued by introverts, either.
@2ck yeah I see your point. The whole thing is kind of awkward. There’s basically 3 groups here
- the company (profits etc)
- group A of customers helped by a change
- group B of customers hurt by a change
The company is going to change to benefit itself, and that’s nice if you’re in group A - but sucks for B 😕