When I was a kid, Dad would take us for rides in the Rambler
and, of course, occasionally stop for gas.
He’d pull up to the pump, turn the engine off, and (usually) grind out
his cigarette in the pull-out ashtray, rolling down the driver’s side window about
halfway. A young man, a teenager usually, would hurry over to the car;
sometimes there would be two. He’d wear
coveralls at some of the stations, or at least a twill shirt with his name
embroidered over the pocket. It wasn’t
always clean. While the tank was
filling, he’d squeegee the windshield and the back window. My perfectionist father would point out spots
he’d missed and he would cheerfully (okay, at least not grudgingly) go over
them again. Dad would pay, the attendant
would make change, and we’d be off.
Oregon is, in this respect at least, a time machine. It’s a shock to purchase gas across the
Columbia, because Oregon refuses to let me pump my own. I still relive the day of the attendant.
In 1951, Oregon opted to stop the clock, passing a bill prohibiting
customers from pumping their own gas.
Ostensibly, it was on the ground of safety; gasoline is, of course,
explosively volatile. But, whether
intentionally or not, it preserved an entire genre of entry-level jobs,
available to even callow high-school students:
the gas station attendant.
I thought about this recently as I watched a television news
report about a new experiment. Amazon.com
has opened, of all things, a grocery store in Seattle. At the moment, it serves
only Amazon employees (Amazonians?), but if it succeeds, the internet behemoth
plans to open 2,000 across the country. What makes it remarkable is that
customers can browse the shelves, choose whatever foodstuffs they wish, and
walk out the door. There are no
checkstands. And, of course, there are
no checkers.
If these 2,000 stores become a reality, they could do to traditional
grocery stores what the infant Amazon did to brick-and-mortar book stores, in
the process eliminating another full genre of entry-level jobs, from stockers
to checkers, even to managers. And they
could easily become a model for other retailers like pet supply or hardware
stores. Already, Wal-Mart is exploring
the same concept.
And then there’s Uber.
The car-sharing, app-driven service has already severely disrupted the
traditional taxi industry. But they,
too, are exploring automation, developing self-driving cars that are already on
the road in Pittsburgh and, soon, San Francisco. Although taxi-driving isn’t
exactly an entry-level job, it has provided opportunities through the years for
those with lower education levels, those without specialized skills, and recent
immigrants. A recent count showed that,
across the country, almost 234,000 people earn a living driving cabs. Bus
driver and even long-haul truckers could face the same future.
Donald Trump won election largely on a promise to restore
American jobs, the kinds of jobs that created and maintained the middle class. Good luck with that, Mr. President. Imagine that you’re a young person, freshly
graduated, either from high school or even community college. uHow are you going to enter the
workforce? How proficient are you at
coding?
I’m not a Luddite. I
embrace my high-tech gadgets, from my smart phone (and now smart watch) to my
flat-screen television. And I recognize
that robots can provide much benefit to consumers. No waits for attendants or long lines at
Costco. No need to carry on awkward conversations
with drivers. No need, even, to wait for
a UPS or FedEx truck to bring us the goodies we bought online when drone might
do the same. Oh, what a brave new world
that has such gadgets in it!
But … what of the workers displaced? Can we afford this future? Or should we consider taking a bold step,
like Oregon did in 1951, to declare that inefficiency is a social good if it
provides jobs to the unskilled among us?
Or will we just close our eyes to the vast tent cities that will
inevitably grace the public spaces of our cities?
