Going to a pharmacy, retail store or restaurant used to mean getting decent help from an actual human before you reached your breaking point. Now it often means one frazzled employee trying to do the work of three while long lines form, tables wait, shelves go unattended, and everyone pretends this is normal.
Retailers all around us have been struggling to hold onto frontline workers, and when stores operate with skeleton crews, customers feel it fast. The pandemic may be long over, but many businesses are still having trouble finding dependable in-person workers who show up consistently and who can handle the job.
The customer service problem is not entirely on employees, though. Retailers are dealing with higher operating costs including minimum wage mandates in psycho blue states – so they have had to trim labor where they can and are piling more responsibility onto the workers who do come in. The result is a thinner and sometimes unreliable staff, more pressure, and a noticeably worse experience for everyone walking through the door.
Some restaurants like McDonald’s have embraced a modern workaround: replacing cashier interactions with self-order kiosks, letting customers punch in their own meals instead of ordering from a worker at the counter. Other businesses have replaced humans with AI.
So if in-person customer service feels worse, that is because in many places it actually IS worse. And when shoppers cannot find what they need, cannot get friendly help (or any help at all), and cannot count on a smooth and non-annoying checkout, it is no surprise that more people would rather stay home and let Amazon, DoorDash, and grocery delivery services handle their needs.