Ok, maybe I’m still cranky from this head and chest cold I’ve been carrying around for weeks, but I’m seriously tired of “self-serve” nonsense. I skip the self-serve isles in supermarkets, department stores, and others, not because the technology frightens me, as those who sell the things like to claim (frankly, I can program better than the people who build these silly things), but rather because if I’m going to do the work of a clerk, I expect to be paid for it in the form of discounts. You don’t pay me, I don’t do your work. Simple, really.

But tonight, I ran into something so mind-numbingly stupid I was moved to write about it here. For years now, I’ve been a customer of Verizon Wireless…heck, I bought my cell phone from Sprint Cellular something like eight years ago, which became 360, which became something-or-other else, which was eventually bought by Verizon Wireless. And for years, I’ve been dropping my bill off at the local Verizon Wireless store; my daughter loves the trip to the mall, since she deposits the envelope into the drop box, then we go up the escalator to the food court for a soft-pretzel snack. She’s been doing this since she was too little to get on the escalator by herself, and almost every month, right about on time, she’ll ask if it’s time to go pay the Verizon Wireless bill.

But no more. Tonight, they told her she couldn’t use the drop box, pointed me to a computer terminal, and told me to enter the payment information into their system. Apparently, the six or seven sales people standing around with their thumbs up their rear ends (no joke, there were three taking care of dealing with me) were too busy thrilling themselves, and so I’m to do their work for them. (In fact, one kid told me, “I guess because they had to do this anyway at the end of the night.” Yeah…tough work, getting paid to enter transactions and all.)

Me, enter the transaction into their computer? Not in this bloody lifetime.

I’ll be mailing this bill in. And over the next few weeks I’ll be researching other cellular telephone companies; I’m determined to have a new provider by the end of the year. The total lack of service from Verizon Wireless, up to and including expecting me to do their d*mned clerical work for them, convinced me in no uncertain terms that they can go jump off the nearest cell tower. I’m finding another company.

The only depressing thing is, I doubt there are any other companies who will actually provide service anymore. And the reason is, I’m convinced, is that we as consumers allow them to constantly screw us around this way. They tell us to do their work for them, while paying for the privilege…and we meekly do.

But not this old man.