I was at the local Mega-Shop-And-Save last week when I realized I’d been asked to whitewash the fence…metaphorically speaking. Actually I was at the cheerfully-named (but badly spelled) “U Check” stand scanning and bagging my own purchases. If I wanted lighthearted small talk while I checked out, I’d have to supply that myself as well.
I already have a full time job, but somehow the managers of the Mega-Shop-And-Save convinced me that what I really wanted was to take a new job as one of their cashiers … at least for a few minutes. If they had actually asked me to pay to whitewash a fence, I probably would have done it with a smile.
I’m told that self-service started in gas stations. There are people who claim that once upon a time a visit to the gas station meant you got to have your car service by manically cheerful individuals wearing clean white uniforms and hats with shiny black brims. They’d rush out of the building eager to check the gas, fill your oil (your older cars burned oil faster than fuel), clean your windshield, air up the tires and present you with set of commemorative whiskey glasses. Of course, the people who tell these stories lived through the sixties which is a historical period notorious for the practice of recreational pharmacology and wide-scale institutional dishonesty.
Still, what if it’s true? What if the trend is away from full-service? First the gas stations, then the Mega stores … what’s next?
The home improvement stores are already full of suggestions about “Do It Yourself” projects. Weekly free seminars promise to teach you how to accomplish anything from laying new hardwood floors to rewiring your house to building an entirely new house constructed from recycled beer cans, shredded paper, and library paste. If these seminars were any good, you’d expect to see large groups of professional contractors picketing outside the stores with placards reading “Home Depot We Won’t Go” and “How Lowe’s Can You Get?”
You’ve never seen this, of course. The contractors aren’t afraid of these seminars. They want you to go because if you go there’s a chance that you’ll actually try to perform some kind of home improvement and then you’ll need the services of a professional contractor before the nice building inspector will grant you a certificate of occupancy for your own home.
Far from “Do It Yourself” these projects become “Do It To Yourself” projects. Various clever television executives noticed this trend and started producing home improvement programs.
These shows feature smiling hosts who come from some parallel dimension where everyone has an instinctive ability to pound a nail without twisting it into a tiny steel pretzel. They grin into the camera and hold up a hammer or screwdriver or handsaw or some other complicated home improvement device and say, “With a few simple tools and a couple of hours you can change your bathroom from this…” (the camera shows some kind of grim, tile-covered space that wouldn’t be out of place in a nineteenth-century mental hospital) “…to this…” (cut to a pile of polished marble and gleaming gold that makes the Palace at Versaille look like a camp ground outhouse). It appears as if they moved the camera to a completely different space … because they did. The only way to actually renovate a bathroom that much would be to level the house, torch and salt the earth, level the surrounding houses and find someone to donate several million dollars to the cause.
The producers of these shows laugh themselves breathless imagining all of us out here in television-land trying to follow their instructions. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that they’re investing billions of dollars in research projects designed to create two-way TV sets to let them peek in on us to see the havoc they’ve caused. If this ever happens you’ll know because there will be a rash of guffaw-related deaths in Hollywood.
Lots of these shows have websites to provide back-up information in case you mis an episode. Buried somewhere on the site you’ll find a disclaimer that the producers aren’t responsible for “injury, damage, loss, embarrassment, excessive repair fees, marital arguments, hair loss, or total failure of the masculine self-image.” No fools, these producers, they want to cover themselves for every eventuality.
At least the self-service trend hasn’t hit the health care industry yet. Imagine showing up for a dental check-up and getting a checklist instead. You could sit an hour or so in the waiting room, frustrated that you’re not calling yourself back faster. Then you’d show yourself to the exam room, sit yourself in the chair, play with the buttons until you’d achieved a position which would even be uncomfortable to advanced yoga practitioners, put the stupid bib on yourself, tell yourself to open your mouth and then poke around inside with pointed instruments archaeologist-style looking for unexpected cracks and crevices. About the only thing you couldn’t do would be to wait until it was physically impossible to talk and then ask yourself a question. Maybe they’ll come up with a machine to take care of that for you.
At the end of it, though, in the fine tradition already established by the gas stations and the Mega-Shop-And-Save, you’ll still have to pay the dentist. And no whining that he should be doing the work if he expects to get paid. The time to whine was at the “U Check” stand and you embraced that without complaint. You’ve already shown that you’re rough-and-tumble customers who can take care of themselves.
Which is why I’d suggest you be very careful next time you go to the doctor. Whether it’s to deliver a baby or have major surgery, you might find yourself more in control of your own fate than you expected.
