Today I am honored to present a guest entry from Doombot. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did. Doombot, however, cares not for your feelings, mortals...
Doombot vs. Globalcorp
Has the American populace surrendered, en masse, to automatoninnity?
Don?t answer that.
Doombot concedes that a checkout line at Linens?n?Things is not the ideal venue for raising this question. Doombot also admits to having stood, of its own free will, in just such a line this very morning, and to having raised precisely this issue in said line. However.
Several mortals precede Doombot in said line. Each mortal is asked by the checkout clerk, upon submitting merchandise for her ministrations, for his or her phone number. Each mortal provides this information.
Doombot?s turn goes badly. First of all, Doombot is annoyed. There is one, yes one, checkout clerk for all the customers in the store; there is a long, long line; and this phone-number business is slowing things up. Doombot does not improve the situation.
"Phone number?" asks the clerk of Doombot.
Doombot replies, "Why do you want that information?"
"What information?" asks the clerk, who clearly does not listen when she speaks.
"You asked for my phone number," responds Doombot. "Why do you want it?"
"Oh, we?re just collecting it," replies the clerk.
Just collecting it? Doombot wonders. What, like old auto hubcaps?
"I don?t give out my phone number to strangers," says Doombot.
Clerk looks as though she is about to roll her eyes and tsk in the manner of a 13-year-old girl whose parent has just unreasonably forbidden her to go to Motorcycle Week with several new, 280-lb. male acquaintances wearing knife scars and leather vests. "We have to have that to ring you up," says the clerk.
Doombot refrains from pointing out that, as it is not itself on sale at Linens?n?Things, it will resist, with force if necessary, any and all efforts on the clerk?s part to ring Doombot up.
"I don?t think so," says Doombot. "All you have to do is ring the price of my floormat into the register, take my money, bag my floormat, and give me my change."
"We have to have your phone number," repeats the clerk, who is turning pink around the nose and mouth.
"Is that store policy? Are you telling me that, in addition to extracting the price listed on this merchandise, you now require that I surrender my privacy in order to buy things here?"
"I don?t know! I?m just taking phone numbers from everybody in line!" hisses the clerk.
A manager arrives. "Is there a problem here?"
"Yes," says Doombot. "This young lady claims I cannot buy this floormat unless I provide you with my phone number, and I don?t wish to give it."
"Oh, we?re just taking that from everyone," says the manager, as though she thinks I mistook the clerk?s request for a pickup line, and as though the fact that this outrage is being committed on all of the customers rather than one of them makes everything peachy.
"No; you are not taking it from me, because I am not giving it to you. May I or may I not purchase this two-dollar-and-fifty-cent floormat without turning over personal information in the process?"
Behind me, a lengthening line of natives grows restless.
"Ma?am, it?s just for marketing purposes," responds the manager, who has mistaken Doombot for a mortal woman.
Whenever Doombot patriotically attempts to participate in our market economy these days, it is quizzed for its zipcode, address, age, gender, marital status, phone number and on and on. Doombot resents this. Doombot calculates that, on average, the telephone number thingie takes about 7 seconds for each and every customer ? asking, answering and entering the responses of the vast majority of persons who surrender this data without a thought.
Now, Doombot freely confesses ignorance of the mechanics involved in manipulating this stored data by those who collect it. But Doombot is sure of one thing. That?s not only 7 seconds of Doombot time on its own transaction, it?s 7 seconds of Doombot time for every single person in front of it in line. If Doombot is 9th in line, more than a minute of Doombot?s time goes to assist some Globalcorp in its efforts to sell Doombot more stuff. To this must be added all the time of all the other people in said line. Twenty people in line = a total of 1470 seconds spent doing business for Globalcorp by the people in line, on their personal time, at no cost to Globalcorp, by the time the last customer?s through. That?s 24? minutes.
Globalcorp is saving gazillions in not having to hire minions to ferret out the phone numbers of its customers. Why should it pay someone wages and benefits when it can, while overcharging customers for shoddy goods assembled by miserably-paid third-world workers in sweatshop conditions, get those same customers not only to pay for the goods but also do part of Globalcorp?s marketing legwork for them? The 40-hour work week translates to 124,800 minutes per year. Doombot doesn?t know about you, but Doombot bets it wastes an hour a week in lines where customers meekly supply companies, free of charge, with information those companies a.) Have no right to; b.) Make money from by selling it to other Globalcorpses; and c.) Should be hiring and paying someone to collect. Multiply Doombot?s hour by, say, 200 million consumers 52 weeks a year, and that?s a chunk of change.
Doombot confesses to bewilderment as to how the buying public has been cowed into such abject oppression. (Don?t even get Doombot started on those who willingly pay companies for the privilege of having their bodies used as billboards by wearing logos.)
Doombot wishes to start a movement: do not give information to checkout clerks! Better still, give false information! Make Globalcorpses hire workers who get paid for these jobs! Don?t work for Globalcorp for free!
Doombot also notes with gloom, however, that having raised this fuss, the mortal immediately behind Doombot in line gave the clerk his telephone number.
We have nothing to fear from Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, or even George Bush. The war is already over. We are a captive people..
Posted by hilatron at September 2, 2002 12:30 AM