So I usually don’t use this space to talk about my personal affairs. However this particular incident creates a segue into something that has pissed me off for quite some time.
So I recently moved and am renting a new place. It came unfurnished, so we went to buy a kitchen table and chairs. We found a very nice a reasonably priced set at a furniture warehouse and got delivery for this morning. They called me on the phone at 9 to say they would be there between 9 and 12. So as I am working in the city, a train ride away from my house, I called my roommate who lives 20 minutes away to go to the house. He was quite pissed as 3 hours of work is a substantial amount of money, as he is paid hourly. It’s like they jacked up the price of the table by his hourly wage x 3. What’s even worse is that they didn’t show up. He called them back and they were like, um 1 to 4. Fuck that. We would have just asked for a refund normally, but we’ll give them one more chance tomorrow as they were so nice in the store. Also it was hard to find such a table at the good price.
But this leads to my main point. People who have money work all day. People like me have 2-3 hours of commuting divided in half by my working. During this time I can’t do anything. I can’t go to the doctor, I can’t open my house for furniture to be delivered, I can’t go to the fucking bank. Sure, during lunch I can get small things done. And at night some things are still open for business. And on the weekends most retail shops are open but crowded as hell. In college when I had tons of free time I could go whenever I wanted to get whatever I needed at any time. Things were open and available at hours I was free. But now, my increasingly precious weekend time is being eaten slowly as it is the only time I can go buy life’s necessities.
Even the Internet, which should solve this problem, is not infallible. Sure, I can order stuff on Newegg, have it shipped to work and carry it home. But if I want something big work shipping is not an option. But stupid Fedex and UPS wont leave shit at my door. And sometimes I don’t want them to leave expensive shit at my door. Yet there is no way that I or anyone else can be home to accept the package. And the fuckers don’t deliver on weekends without extra money.
The bottom line is that what I want will never happen. What I want is a complete change of working hours across the world. If you are a place of business that provides services to people when they are at home, you should be open when people are home. Would you believe there is a deli in my town that closes before I get home from work? It even has a sign out that says “now serving dinner”. Yet somehow at 6:30pm it’s dark and locked. Stay open until midnight fucker. On the one hand it’s their loss at losing my business. But it’s also a loss for the whole economy because I have money I want to spend and nobody is willing to provide the service I desire at any price.
In this information society people like me have stronger demands about service and less care about time. There isn’t a housewife or an army of servants in every home anymore. People only have time to do things at night and on the weekends. A corporate office can run any hours it wants since the majority of the business they do is not time sensitive. But for a retail store or a restaurant time is everything. To reach the maximum people they should be open every single night until people go to sleep and then all day for all weekends and holidays. Why be open early in the morning if you aren’t a breakfast nook, drug store or gas station? Nobody needs to go to Best Buy urgently at 10am on a weekday. But they do want to go there at 10pm on a Thursday after they got their paycheck.
So to repeat a message I’ve expressed before, in other places if not here. Service me. I demand higher quality services that follow my needs and schedule. I’m willing to pay a premium for these services if you are willing to provide them. While I hope somebody might hear my call and stay open late besides the book store and the grocery store, I doubt it will happen. The continued cheapening of our society with places like Wal-Mart providing large quantities of low priced, no service, no quality goods we’ve lost all hope of real luxury. Not only that, but you’d think maybe we’d have less problems in society if something besides bars were open after midnight.
