Denis: Even the best machines need that human touch

Feb 23 2009 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

I HAVE come to the conclusion that people are slowly being replaced by machines.

In supermarkets you are now encouraged to check out the items you have bought at a machine without the aid of a human being.

This I have avoided with all the determination of Ned Ludd. I don’t want to go into a shop, pick items from a shelf, pay a machine and leave with no human contact at all.

Besides, I like standing in a queue and working out the lifestyle or aspirations of other shoppers from the contents of their baskets. A packet of muesli and a brown loaf? Check for open toed sandals. A bottle of wine and a box of Chicken Kiev? He’s hoping for a romantic evening.

Then I stopped at a motorway service station on the M62 and found customers for Kentucky Fried Chicken were also being segregated by technology.

You could either queue, speak to a young woman and order your meal. Or use a computer terminal into which you put a credit card and picked what you wanted from a touch-screen of multiple choices.

I didn’t use this on Luddite principle and because of the fear that one careless prod of my index digit could land me with a family sized bucket of chicken, 17 bags of fries and a diet Coke.

Even in Morrison’s café (and yes, we do live high off the hog), they have a multiple choice computer screen at the till. The assistant no longer rings up four and six (those were the days) but touches the ordered items on screen for the price to be tabulated.

And then we have mobile phones. These might just as well have been brought from another planet.

Maria and I have a phone each that we only use for emergencies. Not that she knows how to use hers. If she is ever faced with an emergency she will have to ask someone else to make the call for her.

But as she was returning to Ireland with our daughter for a few days, she would need her phone for when she flew back alone. Only it didn’t work.

“Take it into a phone shop and ask,” said daughter Siobhan.

It was as if she had suggested visiting the Wizard of Oz. I would be out of my depth, surrounded by phones that sang and danced and made the tea and cost a zillion quid, while this was a £20 basic, pay-as-you-go Vodaphone and I didn’t even know how to send a text. Who knows what I might be shamed into buying?

We reluctantly entered the Vodaphone shop in King Street, wary in case we were mocked for our age and lack of knowledge. Instead, we met Steven, a young man who was extremely helpful.

The phone needed to be used at least once every six months, he explained, or the Sim card that makes it work is cancelled (and no, I don’t know what a Sim card is). A replacement card was less than a fiver and he sorted it out with no trouble at all.

Thanks Steven. Even new technology needs human beings. Oh and by the way, my name is Ned Ludd.