The Day Customers Started Working Here

Welcome aboard.

You may not have noticed it, but sometime over the past thirty or forty years, many of us took on a second job.

We’re now helping banks, airlines, retailers, restaurants, hospitals, insurance companies, and even gas stations perform work they once paid employees to do.

What’s remarkable isn’t that businesses changed. Businesses have always looked for ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency. What’s remarkable is that most of us gradually accepted our new job descriptions without even realizing it.

I first noticed it at the gas station.

When I was growing up, you pulled up to the pump and someone came out to greet you.

“Fill it up?”

While the tank filled, they checked the oil, cleaned the windshield, looked at the tire pressure, and often took your payment. You never got out of the car.

Today I pump my own gas. If I want a clean windshield, I wash it myself. If my dashboard lights up with a warning, I’m often expected to diagnose the problem using an app or an onboard computer before taking the car in for service.

The employee didn’t disappear overnight.
The job quietly migrated to the customer.
In many cases, that customer was me.

The same thing happened almost everywhere.

For nearly twenty years my wife worked as a travel agent. I watched reservation systems, airline websites, and eventually smartphones transform her profession. Today we compare flights, choose seats, check ourselves in, download boarding passes, track delays, and often rebook flights ourselves. Many of the little things travel agents once handled—comparing alternatives, arranging side trips, suggesting restaurants or attractions, confirming reservations—are now things we either do ourselves or simply skip altogether.

Watching that profession evolve from the inside taught me something. The technology didn’t eliminate the need for travel planning. It simply redistributed who did the planning.

Banks once employed armies of tellers. Today we deposit checks by taking a picture with our phone, transfer money online, pay bills electronically, and rarely enter a branch.

At the grocery store we increasingly scan and bag our own purchases. Hotels ask us to check ourselves in. Restaurants hand us touch screens instead of menus. Medical providers direct us to patient portals to schedule appointments, review test results, and sometimes even retrieve the bill we owe before paying it online.

Amazon may be the ultimate example. We search for products, compare alternatives, read reviews, place orders, track shipments, initiate returns, and rate the experience. Many of those activities were once performed by salespeople, customer service representatives, and order clerks.

The work didn’t disappear.

The boundary between business and customer simply moved.

At first glance, the reason seems obvious.

Technology made it possible.

Digital systems are available twenty-four hours a day. They don’t get tired, take vacations, or call in sick. Businesses can standardize processes, reduce staffing, and serve millions of customers through the same platform.

But that explanation only tells half the story.

The other half is us.

Why did customers accept this?

In some cases, we didn’t have much choice. Full-service gas stations disappeared. Paper statements became optional—and then sometimes disappeared altogether. Some medical providers no longer mail bills, expecting patients to log into a website instead. Government agencies increasingly assume we have internet access and know how to use it.

The change wasn’t always presented as a choice.

Other changes, however, we embraced enthusiastically.

I don’t miss driving across town to find out a store is out of stock. I don’t miss waiting for bank hours to deposit a check. I like ordering a product from my living room and having it arrive the next day. I appreciate being able to book a hotel room at ten o’clock at night without waiting for someone to answer the phone.

The bargain was attractive.

Businesses reduced labor.

Customers gained convenience, speed, and flexibility.

At least most of the time.

But every bargain has consequences.

The customer now performs work that once happened behind the counter.

We enter the data.
We troubleshoot the problem.
We schedule the appointment.
We scan the groceries.
We print the boarding pass.
We track the shipment.
We become part of the process itself.

That raises another question.

If customers are doing more of the work, where did the savings go?

It’s tempting to assume companies simply pocketed the difference.

The reality is probably more complicated.

The cashier may have disappeared, but the software engineer arrived. The travel agent gave way to cloud computing, cybersecurity, mobile apps, digital payment systems, and logistics networks that would have seemed unimaginable thirty or even twenty years ago.

The labor shifted.
The costs shifted.
The business itself changed.

As an engineer, I’ve spent much of my career watching systems evolve. One lesson I’ve learned is that improvements in one part of a system almost always create new requirements somewhere else. The complexity doesn’t always disappear. Sometimes it simply moves.

The same thing seems to have happened here.

The relationship between businesses and customers has been quietly rewritten.

We used to buy a finished service.

Today we increasingly participate in producing it.

That may be the biggest change of all.

That’s neither entirely good nor entirely bad.

The convenience is real.

The efficiency is real.

The frustration can be real too.

Not everyone welcomed this change equally. People who grew up with smartphones often see self-service as normal because it has always been part of their lives. Others still prefer talking with a person—not because they fear technology, but because they value the confidence, flexibility, and reassurance that another human being can provide.

The stress of navigating passwords, portals, apps, verification codes, online forms, automated phone systems, and self-service kiosks has become part of everyday life. For some people it’s merely an inconvenience. For others—particularly those less comfortable with technology—it has become a genuine barrier.

What fascinates me isn’t whether this transformation was right or wrong.

It’s how completely we accepted it.

Without much debate, the boundary between supplier and customer moved.

We crossed it so gradually that we barely noticed.

And most of us never even noticed we had started working there.

I suspect this isn’t the end of the story. If the last thirty years shifted physical tasks from businesses to customers, the next thirty may begin shifting some cognitive tasks as well. Artificial intelligence and digital assistants are already beginning that journey

The question is where the boundary will move next.

If history is any guide, we’ll probably cross that boundary just as quietly as we crossed the last one.