This will make you think twice about any professional photography you see these days.

Self-Serve. My new grocer is an older store in a neighborhood that’s seen explosive growth in the last twenty years. As a result they’ve taken some major steps to attempt to keep up—some of which are questionable. They narrowed the aisles some time back, so that pushing a cart anytime between the hours of 7AM to 8PM is like being in the backfield of a NASCAR race. If someone takes a minute to review a product in an aisle, the store closes down like a clogged artery. Despite this, and the walking proximity of the Wal-Mart, they stubbornly keep the junk aisle open (that huge area directly in front of the entrance where they stack useful items like beach chairs, Halloween candy, and cooler chests) instead of razing it and opening up the layout.

My new complaint—and this applies to other stores as well—is the idea that self-serve aisles will save money. Notice I didn’t say “speed up customer service”, but save money. Store Management, in its infinite wisdom, decided that putting customers in front of a series of touchscreens, card-swipers, reciept printers, and speakers instead of a catatonic checkout employee would be cost-beneficial. Nevermind that most people still can’t program the clock on their VCR, let alone navigate the crap UI on the kiosk. I have no figures to back up my claims, but I would estimate that it takes at least twice as much time to check out as it did before—this in a store I want to spend as little time in as possible. Where do we stand while we’re waiting for Grandpa to figure out where the barcode is on the box of Mini-Wheats? Oh, right. In the middle of the tiny aisle. Where other folks have no way to get around us.

Here’s a memo to you, folks: At some point, continuing to push the work in the lap of the consumer (think: ATMs vs. tellers, phone menu systems vs. operators) is going to piss us off to the point where we don’t use your company any more.

Our friend Rob sent me a link to this website yesterday: www.mediainspiration.com. I haven’t had time to really dive into it, but it looks pretty good so far. Thanks, Rob.