paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- waking up to fast food reality The bagel / coffee shop near our house has switched to a new system of order-taking. We�ve been going there for quite a while on Saturday mornings for bagels and coffee and like the friendly staff. I�ve thought several times about how they seem to have fun and how many people are regulars. The ordering process was always personal, too, from the moment of approaching the counter to when it was time to pay. Their system was intuitive and required that they keep track of complex procedures, which was never a problem, and the few times I ever observed any confusion, it was just funny. That was their attitude, and the customers attitude, because everyone knew that nothing about a bagel order makes or breaks a world. But two weeks ago we walked in to long faces and a quiet bagel shop. No big buzz behind the counter, no witty banter about people�s orders. And, our orders were written down on special tablets, in duplicate. We were given a copy and a copy was hung up for person preparing the food, who couldn�t talk to us because she had to rush through the orders as quickly as possible. And we walked down to the register with our ticket and paid and joined the others, waiting for our names to be called. All of the sudden, the neighborhood bagel shop became nothing more than a fast-food restaurant. I am sad about this and had to harp on it for a good deal of yesterday. And now. It bothers me that absolutely everything is becoming corporate and turning to procedures and processes. In the past, everyone was capable of keeping orders moving, in fact, I think service was faster. Certainly it was friendlier because the people working there had more fun. It made going for bagels and coffee more fun. I guess the new system is in preparation for the 800 new neighbors we are supposed to get, only the new fancy apartment kingdom is having difficulty letting all of the units and have reduced themselves to a two-months free promotion. It will be weird when we have a bunch of yuppies instead of the weird crew who currently live in our area. I think the city will loose something off-beat. But, now that the off-beat has been commercialized, I don�t what we are in our area � some other decade�s version of off-beat. Or maybe we are just all under some giant rock. It reminds me of the whole �alternative to what� music discussion a few years back. In other news, the office flooded with asbestos containment water on Friday. So, in addition to having to rewrite a big federal grant in one day, I had to slop around on soggy carpet and move a bunch of high-powered fans around all day. Psychologically, it was not a good day. But the esquire � interesting thing about the esquire, she seems to have practiced law more and more years and with more and more areas of specialization than I find imaginable � said she was an environmental lawyer for 20 years and that only sailors who worked for 30 years in ship yards and who smoked had any signs of asbestosis. So we all make the jokes and displayed our incredible knowledge of movies in a good-faith effort for repartee and slogged around in the water and soggy carpet all day. The weekend has disappeared on me again. But not without my noticing how spring is opening up all around me. I wish it would just swallow me, just take me over in its beauty and eternal positiveness. Countdown to graduation: 42 days 10:19 p.m. - 2003-03-30 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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