You may know by now that Danielle and I take a daytrip every week. I talk about this a little here, and it is a big part of our lives at this point in our journey. We don’t have much money and being on a fixed income, our once weekly daytrips allow us the opportunity to get out of the apartment for more than just our regular walks around downtown.

This week we drove over to Waco. When the children were still at home and we were living off-grid, we went to Waco several times a year. Homestead Heritage is there, and we visited quite often. For off-grid homesteaders like us, Homestead Heritage is like our Disneyland. We took courses there on woodworking (without power tools,) soap making, gardening, etc. Every fall they had a big festival and exhibitions around Thanksgiving time, so we went down there for that. We never went exploring around downtown. My woodworking courses were usually seven days long, so I’d be in a motel all that time.

All of this introduction is to create a contrast. I hope you pick up the deeper meaning.

Well, this time we headed east in the late morning. The drive was beautiful, much like I remember it being in the fall; the leaves changing in the trees nestled in the rolling hills. Small farmhouses set back from the road with winding drives past low fences. I remember in our other life when these fields were filled with corn in the late summer, but now in November, the green winter wheat is poking up from black soil. Cotton clouds, thick in blue skies, all made for painting if one had the skill.

Downtown they are having their own revitalization driven, I reckon, by the same cute Waco couple who ruined indoor décor for a whole generation (HEY, I have opinions too!) But there are nice shops and friendly venues downtown that aren’t farmhouse or industrial chic.

We started at a place, and I’m not going to mention the name because this isn’t a review and my opinions ought not be taken too seriously. It was a pizza joint and taphouse, which is a combo that is a bullseye for our daytrip checklist.

Let me start by saying, the wood oven pizza was fantastic. The place is clean and very modern. Great layout, a lot of seating, the beer was cold and delicious, the staff was friendly and helpful, the pizza cook even came out and said hi. By all accounts, they accomplished what they set out to do. A home run, so to speak. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have opinions. I would never give such a place a bad review, just because I have opinions about things that differ. I never want to hurt anyone’s business unless it needs hurting.

So, you come in the door and are met there by an employee who asks if you have ever been there before?

No.

Will you be paying cash or using a card?

(I didn’t expect to have to make a decision on that yet, since I just walked in the door.)

I can do either.

We are directed to a kiosk (there are several) where we are then trained (like in the grocery store self-checkout) how to use a digital menu, pick all of our extras, toppings, and sides. Our “training” takes several minutes (longer than it would have taken to just take our order.) I notice there is no beer page on the menu. I look around and there is no beer in sight. No signs. No beer menus. There is one sign with what looks like a beer on it with instructions much too voluminous for me to want to read.

What about beer?

Put your credit or debit card in, place your food order. After you are finished ordering, step over here and I’ll get your card and ID. It’s done separately. Then I’ll give you a chip bracelet. Then, in the next room there is a wall of beer taps. I’ll explain it after you order your food.

Sigh.

We spend the next five minutes figuring out the food ordering system and placing our order. Then we step over to the counter where we go though our next session of employee-like training. We hand over our card and our drivers licenses (forget that we’re both closer to 60 than to 50.) The employee scans all this in and then programs our wrist bracelets.

“Tap your chip on the scanner under the beer that you want. That will turn on the tap. The glasses are stacked over there. You pour your own beer, and it will charge you by the ounce so you can just have a partial glass if you want.”

Having worked in a bar for most of my adult life, I can see multiple ways this system can go horribly wrong. Not the least of which is that every tap pours differently, and usually 2/3 of the taps foam extensively requiring the pourer to dump copious amounts of foam to get a good pour.

We have our microchip bracelets, we get our glasses then we head to the wall of taps. There are a couple of dozen taps and each has a description of the beer, type, ABV (alcohol by volume,) IBUs (International Bitterness Units) etc. It takes a while to read them all. On a busy night, this area will be a parking lot of lookie-loos trying to read the small print. The sign says “you will be charged by the ounce.”

I pick my beer and commence to pouring (I’m a professional, in every sense of the word.) FOAM.

I set my glass of foam down and just stand there. I’m not pouring it out, because they’re charging by the ounce. After standing there a good 60 seconds, a helpful employee comes by (there are 4-5 employees standing around just troubleshooting self-service problems.)

Employee: “Here, I’ll scan my bracelet so you don’t get charged for straight foam.” She scans her chip, takes my class and pours a beer properly. On a busy night, this would be a train wreck. Very helpful, but the system is flawed.

I’ll say it again. The pizza was top-notch. The beer was cold and delicious. The place is impeccably clean. The employees were super helpful. But, I’ll probably never go back. This is the californication of business models. The goal, of course, is to eventually get your core customer base trained to serve themselves. Self-serve ordering, one guy making pizza, everyone pouring their own beer. Using a (future) implanted microchip to make it all seamless.

Back in the 90s at my last “regular” job, I worked at a place that sold office machines. We were going digital. Telling customers that the paperless office was on the horizon. NO MORE PAPER! Get on board. Over the next decade, offices used more paper than ever.

Never mind the spiritual, theological, economic, poetic, and moral calamity of replacing people with robots and machines. Never mind employees being hired to train customers to do the employee’s work so that eventually the employees won’t have jobs. Never mind the idea that the easily duped will have microchips controlled by the oligarchy and the fascio-socialist symbiosis – microchips that can be turned off if we have bad social credit or say things that are unpopular or don’t play the game. At the heart of it is the idea that you will pay double or triple for all of this. You will pay for the generation of people with useless liberal arts and social services degrees who cannot find jobs but who will get stipends from the government so they can live and buy robot pizza and beer. You will pay extra for all the equipment it takes to make this system work, and you will pay the inflationary rates every failed system pays when it pays people who do not have meaningful work. You will pay in suicides, homicides, increased security, riots, disintegration of the family unit, demoralization, and eventually worse. All because you want pizza without Giuseppe the entrepreneur hand-tossing it while his family and employees see to your happiness.

I can have opinions, and you don’t have to agree. I just happen to be right. Resist the AI robotization of our national suicide. Find you a local place, locally owned, that employs local people to have real, meaningful jobs. Our own Pioneer Taphouse does all of this, and it’s a wonderful thing.

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