A Labor Day Thought….
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Interestingly, my first BLOG comes on Labor Day; a day to honor the laborer. As I sit at my home office, I can’t help but think back to my first job and see how technology has changed this day. My first Labor Day, as an employed individual, was working as a bank teller at a local savings & loan in Southern California. I was excited for the 3-day weekend, but first we had to handle all the clients standing in line on a Friday night to cash their checks. The holiday lines were at least 10 deep, full of blue collar workers, construction folks, ladies in dresses/skirts, guys in polyester suits, and several customers with lighted cigarettes.
Yes, waiting in long lines at lunch hour and after work on Fridays to cash your check was “normal”. In fact, one could use their entire lunch hour traveling from/back to work and waiting in line to cash a check. Savings & Loans were NOT open on Saturdays, so it was Friday or Tuesday. If it was the first of the month, the lines were even longer to accommodate the folks getting government checks.
Would we have the patience now to wait in those lines? Wait without cell phones, i-pods, and pocket calculators? Automation has allowed us to to do banking whenever we want, or do it at home on the computer. Tellers had to balance their drawer with an adding machine tape, pen and paper, and could not leave until it was balanced. It is now so much easier and home offices are convenient! Technology has simplified aspects of our lives, but has it made our lives easier? We would complain about the lines today, complain about the balancing, but have laborers lost jobs because of it? Would we give up technology if it would add back the jobs?