Making It Up As I Go Along #390

Self Cooked Stone Steaks
The service industry has become obsessed with ramming do-it-yourself down our throat. It’s made out to be some amazingly great thing. Where we are supposed to feel good about doing duties and tasks that others used to get paid to do... primarily because nobody else would want to do this for free.

We’ve become like children who get duped into cleaning up their room by a parent who says “let’s make a game of it!”

As a result... we now check ourselves in at airports. This started out good. Only a few adventurous sorts would tackle the machine while others lined up to be served. A quick line to drop your bag and you’re on your merry way.

Only now, everybody gets their own boarding cards. So the baggage drop off line is just as long now as the boarding pass line used to be. Nothing is saved unless you decide to travel with no baggage at all.

Still, airport self serve is a fairly painless one. How about the one that gets me the most... and the longest running one... all you can eat buffet.

So the deal here is that you can eat as much as possible as long as the people preparing the food have nothing to do with serving it to you. The long lines to get a scoop of rice are one thing. But we have to put an awful lot of trust into the idea that the strangers who wander up to the troff ahead of us are sanitary. Fingering an egg roll hardly seems beyond the realms of possibility. And what of the heat lamp? Should we feel good about eating food that’s been left to simmer under glorified light bulbs? The end result is that you eat more food than you actually need in you and it’s at a low end quality. Yet we go nuts for the deal and elbow each other out of the way for the last scoop of dried out lasagna.

Higher end restaurants have gone in on the action. Fondu places have been around forever. Raw meat and boiling water... somehow it seems to work. A social aspect to the meal enables it to be one of the few that get away with legitimate do-it-yourself. But yesterday I was at a restaurant that posted rock grilled steak.

For more money (about $3 extra) you have the privilege of finishing off the cooking process of your steak. It comes out to you half done on a stone that’s heated to 700 degrees. It’s then your job to turn it over, cut it, and see to it reaching your desired degree of cooking. Rare? Well done? Medium? From now on, you no longer have the option of sending it back to the kitchen complaining that it isn’t done to your liking. It’s all on you!

That’s a lot of pressure for someone who just wants to sit back, chat, and have a meal. The steak can be overdone by the simple slipping into too good of a conversation. And let’s not forget, you’re sitting inches from a 700 degree stone. Reach across the table for a napkin, and leave half the skin of your forearm sizzling there next to the meat. Your steak will surly be overdone as you take the time to get iced and gauzed. A perfect evening. All at an the bargain cost of $3 more!

Grocery stores are the worst though. We used to bring our food to cash registers and look at the cashier with a degree of pity. Remembering when we were a seventeen year old entering the adult world of the working. We’d watch as they fumble with an item, looking for a price tag or barcode. Exasperated, they’d get on the phone calling Bob to the cash for a price check. This was no job that I ever aspired to do. I was thankful for not doing it and sometimes felt like I should give them a little something extra just to help them out financially... anything to get them on to a better job.

Today, we are meant to feel overjoyed for stepping into the role of seventeen year old cashier. Bring your groceries to a scanner and do it all yourself! Only... I don’t want to weigh bananas... and I don’t want to try to scan a tin of soup. I don’t even know this Bob guy who’ll do my price check!

Somehow, businesses are giving us less service and trying their best to make the customer feel that this is a good thing. The funny thing is, quite a few people buy into it. They gleefully head for the self checkout line at the grocery store. And they seem confused as to the holdup, not knowing why that eighty-three year old woman is having trouble scanning her can of peas. What a glorious and advanced age we live in.

WEDNESDAY...
— Busy day at work. I’m pretty much doing it alone from 6 to 2:30. Once Phil gets in there, I’m pretty wiped out.
— Groceries and gas slow the getting home process. Just some baseball on TV to polish the night.

THURSDAY...
— Paranormal Activity... round two. It’s fun again to see.

FRIDAY...
— Quiet night at work... pizza comes in to make it go better. Getting cold... -10 with windchill tonight. Brrr.

SATURDAY...
— Scratchy throat, hot and cold, and some general aches... sick again. Work is quiet and I get through okay, despite feeling crumby.

SUNDAY...
— Get some much needed stuff at the store after work. Vitamin D and multi vitamins... and orange juice.
— Play ball even though I’m not feeling great. First game since I hurt my thumb where I don’t feel off in the field. Could still hit a bit better in this indoor league, but felt good in the field. Finally.
— Skip post game drinks in favour of a shower and soup... want to get rid of this sick thing.

MONDAY...
— Find out my new team to be at work. Come December I’ll be back in AFIS with a decent looking group. Pretty quiet day otherwise... Still not feeling 100% but improving for sure.

TUESDAY...
— Hockey night. Meet up with the crew and we eat at the Crazy Horse restaurant... then off to the stadium for the Oilers vs. Sens. Good game that goes to the cursed shootout. Ottawa pulls it out 4-3.