To the editor: Culture critic Mary McNamara’s latest article harks back to an idea perhaps first articulated by Calvin Coolidge — the business of America is business — and how we are all now dealing with the long-term consequences of that reality (“My travel nightmare made me realize that self-service culture is capitalism’s greatest con,” Jan. 19).
Before Coolidge made this observation, the government established civil service about 150 years ago. Its purpose was to get patronage (and political loyalty) out of the federal government. It developed a system that enabled the aspirations of the Preamble to the Constitution to “insure domestic Tranquility” and “promote the general Welfare.”
The civil service dictate is to provide services that benefit the public as well as services that support, but are not the purview of, business. The balance of these public/private models was meant to give the U.S. a structure that nurtured our growth as a nation, enhancing our entrepreneurial capacities and our ability to utilize their benefits.
McNamara speaks directly to Coolidge’s observation in bemoaning the gutting of the service aspect of the model (certainly refined by the Department of Government Efficiency). Today’s policy seems to be “to give the appearance of providing a service without actually providing a service.” Business gets its big, beautiful profit, the public gets zilch.
Bridget Tucker, Laguna Woods
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To the editor: McNamara described my biggest pet peeve — no, my quickest trigger for fury. Every time I reach an online roadblock (which is just about every day) and find myself screaming “agent” into the void of a soulless computer, I start thinking about how much more money the corporation in question is making off my vulnerability to their greed.
Is there nothing these horrid institutions won’t do to scrounge up ever more profits? How much money does one need? Self-service culture has nothing to do with providing service and everything to do with making more money. Service is merely a byproduct, if you are lucky enough to get any.
I long for the days when I could call for assistance and a human being answered. Alas, human beings are too expensive, but robots are infuriating.
To maintain my equilibrium, I am slowly and deliberately cutting out everything I can that requires an app with no way to speak to a human being. And I am the one richer for it!
Sara R. Nichols, Los Angeles
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To the editor: McNamara’s column about customer disservice and the consignment of human interaction to devices struck a nerve. I spent nearly half of the day it was published on three different websites — a bank site, MyChart (for medical services) and DROP, the new California site to request deletion of data — to perform minor tasks. Not one was a success. All of them made me angry.
Last spring, I traveled overseas and encountered a situation similar to the one McNamara described. My 11 p.m. flight to Australia was canceled at 2 a.m., shortly after two other jumbo jets full of passengers also canceled their flights. Hundreds of people scrambled for attention and accommodation in the middle of the night. I lost a day of my vacation, and still was rerouted through New Zealand. That forced me to secure a digital-only visa to a country I hadn’t planned to visit and was only transiting through. I do not have a cozy relationship with devices.
I’d like to say misery loves company, but today’s customer-last business model increasingly divorces us from community, from humanity. I have no hope things will change this decline in civilization.
Ellen Alperstein, Palm Desert