My Amazon boycott is over

[*Nately120*]

(10-02-2018, 06:27 PM)Dill Wrote: Just a side note on the issue of technology, wages, and worker replacement.

Well into my teenage years (I was born in '51), most every gas station had a service crew of attendats who pumped your gas and washed your windows, and often checked your oil and tires.  That was "the standard."  A self-service station would appear non-competitive.

Then these new-fangled self-service stations stared opening up in the late '60s. They were not Sinclair or Shell or Humble or other big name brands, though now I cannot remember their names.  I saw them first in "big cities" like Billings and Rapid city (I am from Southeastern Montana, where our county seat is 4,000 people). HS kids seemed to prefer them because the gas was a few cents cheaper.

By the mid-70s, it was RARE to see a service station attendant anywhere, and by then I was driving as far as Texas and Connecticut.  Apparently consumers preferred the savings, or over time forgot the convenience.

Credit cards no doubt made this easier, but the transition to self service occurred before credit cards could be read at the pump.

So these service jobs became superfluous, and not really because of advancing technology--just consumers willing to work a little more to save a buck.  Now pumping one's own gas is just normal. And companies save on wages, apparently.

NB I seem to remember attendants at NJ gas stations, back in the 90s--required by law.  Was that the case? Is it still?

We were actually talking about this the other day.  No matter how vividly I recall full service stations being the norm, the idea of anyone pumping my gas other than me seems like a completely absurd concept now.  When I tell teens now that I had a job bagging groceries when I was their age I may as well be telling them that I used to have a job herding woolly mammoths, or calibrating Victrolas or something.