sometimes slower was faster

Just got back from the grocery with a few items. I went there on the way home from Kinko's, where I faxed a few more supporting financial proofs to my son's prospective landlord in New York. Kinko's had four fax machines, of which three were offline for repairs, so I had to wait a while, and when I did it, I did it wrong and the lady had to help me. My confirmation also failed, and I had to refax everything. All in all I probably wasted about fifteen minutes before plunking down my fees and going to Publix.

But with my technical challenge of the day behind me, I was in no rush. So it didn't bother me that the poor old lady in the checkout lane was all a-dither over how to run her card through the scanner. "Is it debit or credit?" the cashier asked. "It takes too long to get waited on these days," the lady whined, ignoring or not understanding the cashier. The cashier, with the bagboy, helped her till they got her card (credit) scanned for her small items, and no one got impatient, including me.

I was thinking, that transaction was for that old lady about as frustrating as my faxing was for me. Both of us were being expected to process information on machines neither of us understood, and both of us were being glared at by other customers and staff, who must assist people all day with similar problems. When they're not busy, they don't do it grudgingly; but when they're busy, it's a pain in the rear and they often make one feel pretty stupid.

Before scanners, faxes, computers and the like, the old lady would have asked the grocery store owner for her tea and rolls, and he would have rounded them up for her personally and said he'd put them on her account, and thanked her by name for her purchase. My, haven't we come a long way with our conveniences? Now we're expected to wait for eons while every clerk plays with his or her computer and screen and nothing very good for us happens at all. And lord help us when the machine breaks down or someone doesn't know how to input it efficiently.

On a recent trip I tried to get a room at a Hampton. Three uniformed, attractive clerks were busy talking and computer inputting with phone customers, and I waited till one was free and asked for a room. "Smoking or nonsmoking?" "Your name?" (address, phone, license, vehicle, etc.), and the invariable "How do you spell that?" to which I always suppress the fantasy answer: 'correctly'.

After I spelled out everything slowly and she scanned my card, she played with her screens and keys for another five minutes before announcing, "The computer says we don't have a nonsmoking double for tonight."

For her it was a triumph of technical convenience and service. Just think, she had a grasp of her inventory that was irrefutable. I had been playing games with the three witches by that time for twenty minutes, and now I had a definitive answer at last: "The computer says there are no rooms left." Maybe the folks on the other phone calls grabbed the last ones for all I know, while my vidiot clerk was too slow at spelling my name, phone, address, vehicle info, and credit info on her keyboard. Didn't matter. The computer said no, so that was that. There is no higher court.

Not two years ago most clerks could tell you when you stepped up to a motel desk if they had no vacancy available, if their sign did not, so that at least you didn't waste a half-hour before finding out. We've sure created that "great big beautiful tomorrow" the Carousel of Progress at Disney World touts, haven't we?