Change is good!
Jan. 29th, 2005 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothWitness these three examples which prove the statement above:
1. The cafeteria at work switched over to a new method of payment, where you'd put a bunch of money on your account, and then could buy from the cafeteria by swiping your card, without having to worry about how much the food cost. A few months later, since no one was paying any attention to how much things cost anymore, they raised all the prices. Of course, by some strange coincidence business started dropping off after that, so they reduced the number of stations so that you'd still have to wait in long lines, even with fewer people there, but now had less variety to choose from.
2. The laundry room here used to have some old, finicky machines, which cost $0.75 to wash and $0.50 to dry. The washers didn't work well -- you had to let the cycle run a little to get some water in the bottom, mix in the detergent by hand, and then add the clothing -- and you had to dry twice, usually, because the dryer cycle was only 30 minutes long. Recently, they replaced them with new smart-card enabled machines. You'd go to a charging station on the bottom floor, insert a twenty dollar bill into the machine, then bring the card you got up to the laundry room where you could use it to pay for the new, modern machines, which were much more convenient and only cost 2-3 times as much (2 for the washers, 3 for the dryers). As a bonus, the dryers now gave a full 60 minutes to their dry cycle. Unfortunately, you still had to run them twice to get things dry.
3. Illusionz is the only arcade left on the east side, as far as I can tell. Instead of the tried and tested 'tokens', you have to pay with 'points' that get put on a 'card' which you insert into a 'slot'. You get 1000 points for $10, and games cost anywhere from 25 (ha ha ha, no games actually only cost 25, but their sign says 25 is the low end) to 150 points. Most are in the 100-150 range. I'm not going to complain about the prices, though, because all of them suck -- it's impossible to go there and spend 1000 points, because the few games which are actually functional are boring and stupid, with the possible exception of DDR and its clones, which is just hideously painful, although other people seem to like it.
The moral of the story should be clear -- change is what kept cafeterias, laundromats, and arcades viable, and the switch to electronic money has ruined all of them.
This rant brought to you by the depressing surprise party Kiefer had sprung on him last night. Maybe it wasn't as depressing for other people, although I bet they didn't smell like mildew because the $%&*!@ dryer didn't dry their clothes.
1. The cafeteria at work switched over to a new method of payment, where you'd put a bunch of money on your account, and then could buy from the cafeteria by swiping your card, without having to worry about how much the food cost. A few months later, since no one was paying any attention to how much things cost anymore, they raised all the prices. Of course, by some strange coincidence business started dropping off after that, so they reduced the number of stations so that you'd still have to wait in long lines, even with fewer people there, but now had less variety to choose from.
2. The laundry room here used to have some old, finicky machines, which cost $0.75 to wash and $0.50 to dry. The washers didn't work well -- you had to let the cycle run a little to get some water in the bottom, mix in the detergent by hand, and then add the clothing -- and you had to dry twice, usually, because the dryer cycle was only 30 minutes long. Recently, they replaced them with new smart-card enabled machines. You'd go to a charging station on the bottom floor, insert a twenty dollar bill into the machine, then bring the card you got up to the laundry room where you could use it to pay for the new, modern machines, which were much more convenient and only cost 2-3 times as much (2 for the washers, 3 for the dryers). As a bonus, the dryers now gave a full 60 minutes to their dry cycle. Unfortunately, you still had to run them twice to get things dry.
3. Illusionz is the only arcade left on the east side, as far as I can tell. Instead of the tried and tested 'tokens', you have to pay with 'points' that get put on a 'card' which you insert into a 'slot'. You get 1000 points for $10, and games cost anywhere from 25 (ha ha ha, no games actually only cost 25, but their sign says 25 is the low end) to 150 points. Most are in the 100-150 range. I'm not going to complain about the prices, though, because all of them suck -- it's impossible to go there and spend 1000 points, because the few games which are actually functional are boring and stupid, with the possible exception of DDR and its clones, which is just hideously painful, although other people seem to like it.
The moral of the story should be clear -- change is what kept cafeterias, laundromats, and arcades viable, and the switch to electronic money has ruined all of them.
This rant brought to you by the depressing surprise party Kiefer had sprung on him last night. Maybe it wasn't as depressing for other people, although I bet they didn't smell like mildew because the $%&*!@ dryer didn't dry their clothes.
