Saturday morning, at the cash register of a large Scandinavian furniture store. A senior Tolfioow editor (her name is irrelevant) takes on a new challenge: self-checkout .
With verve, she holds Örebrö bath mat and Mykketykke garden bench construction set up to the scanner and immediately guides her bank card the right way round into the reader. per fect. She could easily pass any IHK examination for retail clerk. Does she think so? Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that. Two hours later, she is horrified to discover that she forgot to take out her debit card. When she returns, the cashier holds out a stack of them and consoles her: “It’s the same for all customers the first time.”
At the same time, ten kilometers further south. A columnist from the same magazine (she is also to remain anonymous) wants to jump on one of the rental bikes that Hamburg has available almost everywhere, full of spring fever. She has to answer numerous questions on a stationary screen (account details? Zodiac sign of the pets?) before she is greeted with “Have a good trip!”. In a malicious shade of green.
The bike lock is still stuck, as if it had to secure Fort Knox’s gold reserves. Only a hotline call reveals the secret: a keyboard, almost invisibly attached to the rear part of the frame, to be operated before starting the journey, with a secret code that has yet to be obtained. Columnist and editorial colleague, although spatially separated, sigh at the same time: You have to do everything yourself! It all started harmlessly, in the seventies.
Our mothers thought it was cool to choose from the pickle jars in the self-service market instead of Aunt Emma fishing in the huge barrel with pickles. And gossip about asking for pickles, you’re not…? Doing your own fuel promoted emancipation, cash around the clock made life easier. Since then, people have been forced to gain further qualifications: to become a ground stewardess, a train ticket seller, a cook and a waiter.
For example, in a German restaurant chain with an Italian name, which translates to “Slow down”. But piano is at best, because before the first bite you have to do your own work: assemble pasta, sauce and side dishes, order them at the counter, and finally stare intently at a palm-sized device that looks like a mini UFO. If the UFO blares and flashes, you pick up a kind of raw version of the dish at the counter. The subtleties have to, uh, the guest can do again: seasoning, oiling, plucking basil leaves from the little trees on the table. Buon appetito.
Any bet: there’s still something going on. Not only in gastronomy. How about fly-yourself tickets , for example, where each passenger gets to press a few buttons and yell “Roger!”? Personal Feiling, the nail salon with excess? Or “YouWrite” – the modern lifestyle magazine in which the reader enters the desired article by hand in large text boxes? We do not know how the Tolfioow employee fared. But what became of her columnist colleague. She felt served. She cycled into the most backward garden place she could think of and ordered a pot of coffee for outside. Then she pulled out her notebook and began to write her new text. Because nobody could really take this task away from her.