When Did Hospitality Get So Hostile?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It's interesting to read the history of the concepts in the article.
Unfortunately, for those of us who love seeing huge problems swept away by advances in the status quo, there's also no easily-quantified solution in here. It's a qualitatively-minded piece, great.
But the quantitative, rational aspect of this problem is basically begging for technological intervention. I hate to say it out loud, because people think tech is too much. But in many places I think we intuitively understand that the quiet, simple, efficient tech solutions are simply not there enough, in the right place, at the right time. It doesn't have to take much.
A lot of us can count off restaurant experiences that could quickly turn one into a vending machine connoisseur.
We may also be able to name hotel staffers who make us want to sleep in our cars in the future, because parking ordinances are more reasonable.
I was also reminded me of the days when the answering service would talk back to you, because it was staffed by humans.
If a problem came up, was it the customer's fault? The caller's? The service? This could be a real issue. You could write a fascinating piece on the dynamics.
Nowadays though--no way would that deeply-personal knot of dynamics be seen as a risk with voicemail, unless you knew there was a significant trade-off and intentionally shopped for someone to answer your calls.
So it's a different problem for the general voicemail-user population now, but the personal factor is mostly long gone. The beautiful, impressive personal factor, but also the awkward, infuriating personal factor when times were tough.
Looking at this issue from various angles, it seems clear that many potentially helpful (and maybe helpfully de-personalizing) solutions are simply waiting on the sidelines, solutions which don't drag everybody through the roulette game, and which also aren't the kind of AI-takeover-issue that some people fear.