Job Killer

When will I learn not to complain on Facebook? After any posts about the self checkout at Wal-Mart I get responses about costing people their jobs by using those odious machines equipped with the voice of an irritatingly patient woman. (I believe she also works for Verizon).

One must remember that complaining about Wal-Mart is a god given right if one lives in rural America. I realize Wal-Mart installed them as a cost cutting measure (not that you can tell from the price I paid for my last package of E. L. Fudge cookies). But I'm not sure that by refusing to use self checkout that I will change corporate policy. (Lord knows my last fifteen calls to customer service hasn't)

I heard a report on television last night that drones might soon be making pizza deliveries. Should I now refuse to order pizza as well? I would like to try just once. It sounds pretty cool unless the drone forgets its mission and takes me out by mistake. I do sometimes resemble Osama Bin Laden after a few days without shaving, particularly after a shower with a towel draped over my head.

Did the first people that used automobiles get complaints that they were putting blacksmiths

and livery boys out of business?

I don't get any flack when I download a song from I-Tunes even though I am putting people who make CD cases out of work. Come to think of it I don't remember people grumbling when I switched from cassettes to CDs or from eight tracks to cassette or from......I could go on and on  here. About the only transition I haven't had to make was from changing player piano rolls to cartridges for Victrolas.

Automation put my life in danger earlier this week when I ran out of blood pressure pills. I had dreaded calling the new phone voice system Moody's Pharmacy just installed. Thankfully a story on the sudden death of James Gandolfini snapped me back to my senses and I made the dreaded call. It was just as annoying as I had expected. And I swear the same woman from the checkouts and Verizon was instructing me to "Press one if." She is everywhere. She is going to take over the nation if not the world. I bet Osama had to call her whenever he needed new dialysis equipment. 

I missed talking to a real person (I love hearing them snicker when a guy whose last name is Cox asks to have his Viagra refilled)and I hope Moody's hasn't fired anyone since switching to their new phone system. But I am going to stand up for myself this time. If it comes down to deciding between using a touch pad on my phone and thereby throwing someone out of work and dying too young like Tony Soprano I'll use the dang touch pad.