My wife, Michele, and I spent six weeks driving through much of the eastern United States and Canada this summer. We visited family and friends, stayed in Air B&Bs, ate in restaurants, shopped in grocery stores, and made the usual stops that come with a long road trip.
Incidental to the great sites, scenery, and friendships we experienced over the course of the summer, I also came away from the trip with the unexpected conclusion that the quality of service is slipping in America.
More and more, I found businesses asking customers to do work employees once did. At fast-food restaurants, customers enter their own orders on kiosks. At grocery stores, they scan and bag their own purchases. At large retailers, they are often expected to use an app to figure out where merchandise is located before asking anyone for help.
It is said this is more efficient.
I’m not convinced.
At McDonald’s, I used to walk to the counter, place an order with a cashier, exchange a few words, and usually have my food within a few minutes.
Today, there often seem to be fewer employees than there were in the past. And the employees who remain appear to be working harder than ever.
They are handling drive-through customers, mobile orders, delivery services, takeout bags, customers inside the restaurant, and an endless stream of digital tickets—all at once.
Their morale often appears low. Many seem tired, frustrated, and unhappy, and it shows in the way they interact with customers. Eye contact is limited. Smiles are less common. The easy conversation that once accompanied an ordinary transaction has largely disappeared.
I don’t blame the employees.
In many cases, they look overwhelmed.
That is one of the ironies of all this technology. Businesses have reduced staffing, increased the workload on those who remain, and shifted more of the work onto the customer. It may look more efficient on a spreadsheet. It doesn’t feel like better service.
A stop at Lowe’s left me with a similar impression.
I was looking for a particular wrench. Before I went to the store, I checked the Lowe’s app. It showed that dozens were in stock.
I couldn’t find one.
I asked an employee for help.
He pointed toward another aisle and said, “I think it’s over there.”
It wasn’t.
When I came back and told him I still couldn’t find the wrench, he responded curtly, almost dismissively, “We have 38,000 products in this store. I can’t know where they all are.”
Technically, he was right.
But that wasn’t really the point.
One reason people once valued hardware stores was the knowledge of the people who worked there. An employee might walk you to the shelf, ask what you were trying to fix, and recommend a better tool or a simpler solution.
Today, we have sophisticated inventory systems, store apps, and digital maps, yet it can still be harder to find someone who knows where something is—or who has the time to help you find it.
Then there was a McDonald’s drive-through.
My order was a little over fifteen dollars. I handed the cashier a $20 bill. After he entered the amount into the register, I found a quarter in my center console and handed it to him so my change would come back in even bills rather than bills and coins.
He looked confused.
“I can’t do that,” he said, handing the quarter back.
Then he told me, “It would be easier if you just used a card.”
I wasn’t sure whether the register prevented him from changing the amount, whether he had been trained not to deviate from the screen—or whether he couldn’t do the math.
I don’t mention that to embarrass him.
I mention it because the moment seemed to illustrate something larger: we have become so dependent on systems that employees are sometimes neither expected nor empowered to solve simple problems on their own.
The register had become the decision-maker.
Fortunately, the trip also gave me a very different example.
While we were in New England, Michele and I shopped several times at the New England Grocery chain, Market Basket.
The contrast was striking.
The stores were busy—very busy—but there were employees everywhere. Checkout lanes were staffed. Many had baggers. Employees greeted customers, answered questions, and kept things moving.
The stores felt energetic rather than understaffed.
What impressed me most was that the employees seemed engaged. They appeared to know their jobs, take some pride in what they were doing, and understand that helping customers was part of the job—not an interruption to it.
And the customers responded to that.
What made the contrast even more striking was that less than a mile away was a Shaw’s supermarket.
We stopped there, too.
While Market Basket was bustling with customers and staffed checkout lanes, Shaw’s was remarkably quiet. The emphasis there was much more on self-checkout and customers bagging their own groceries.
The difference was hard to miss: one store was packed with customers and employees; the other seemed almost empty.
I can’t say customer service was the only reason. Prices, selection, location, and customer habits all play a role.
But it was not lost on me that two grocery stores less than a mile apart appeared to be operating on very different philosophies—and customers seemed to be voting with their feet.
Market Basket was investing in people.
And people were showing up.
Market Basket has technology, of course. It is not operating in some nostalgic pre-digital world.
But it has not allowed technology to replace people.
That was the contrast I kept noticing throughout the trip.
At many businesses, there seemed to be fewer employees, more work piled onto the people who remained, lower morale, and more responsibility shifted to the customer.
At Market Basket, the company appeared to make a different calculation: put enough people in the store, give them a role in serving customers, and make human interaction part of the value of shopping there.
I understand why businesses are moving in the other direction.
Labor is expensive. Technology can reduce costs. Many customers like self-checkout, mobile ordering, and apps. I use them myself.
But I sometimes wonder whether the calculation is as simple as it looks. Self-checkout may reduce labor costs, but it can also increase what retailers call “shrink”—merchandise that leaves the store without being paid for, whether because of theft or an honest scanning mistake. At some point, you have to wonder whether putting a cashier back at the register might be worth the cost.
Technology can be useful.
The problem comes when technology stops supporting employees and starts replacing judgment, service, and basic human interaction.
I also noticed that many younger employees seemed almost startled when a customer tried to engage them beyond the basic transaction. Eye contact was fleeting. Simple questions sometimes produced a deer-in-the-headlights reaction, as though ordinary conversation was outside the script.
I don’t think that is necessarily their fault. It may say more about how little training some employers provide in the basic skills of customer service: making eye contact, listening, answering a question, carrying on a brief conversation, and making a customer feel acknowledged.
Those skills used to be learned almost by osmosis—at home, at school, on a first job, or simply by spending more time interacting face-to-face with other people. Today, employers may have to teach them deliberately.
Ordinary competence and hospitality now stand out in ways they once did not.
A cashier who looks up and smiles.
An employee who walks you to the right aisle instead of pointing.
A worker who knows the answer—or is willing to find it.
A person who is trusted to solve a small problem without consulting a screen or calling a supervisor.
None of this is extraordinary.
That may be the problem.
We have begun treating things that once represented a normal level of service as though they were exceptional.
Businesses have become very good at measuring efficiency. They measure labor costs, transaction times, inventory, productivity, and margins.
But I wonder how many companies measure what they are losing in the process: customer loyalty, employee pride, personal interaction, judgment, competence—and sometimes even the ability to solve a simple problem.
Technology should make employees better at serving customers, not make employees incidental to the transaction.
America doesn’t need less technology. It could use a little more old-fashioned customer service—and a return to the everyday excellence we once took for granted.
©️2026 Bruce J. Zanca. All rights reserved
Bruce J. Zanca is a communications strategist and former White House spokesperson who served as Director of Press Advance for Vice President George H.W. Bush and later advised three presidential administrations. In the private sector, he held senior communications and marketing roles at four publicly traded companies, including serving as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer of Bankrate, Inc. Over a career spanning more than 35 years, he has advised corporate executives, boards, and government leaders on media relations, investor relations, crisis communications, and business strategy. He also contributed an essay to Jean Becker and Tom Callimore’s Don’t Tell the President.
