Starbucks is my favorite place to worship

Thank you. (Wouldn't have read otherwise)

I'm glad you're telling us it should be socially acceptable to treat you like a robot at your job. I hope every customer coworker and business partner honors your wish by pretending you are a lifeless chunk of metal with no purpose other than satisfying the agreed upon transaction. If insulting you feels good to them, I hope they will berate you endlessless for things that are not your fault (a robot wouldn't care). After all, whether its reliability or the desire for a verbal punching bag, the customer is always right regardless of anything the employee may feel.

When you are old and gray, I hope strangers continue to honor your wish by seeing you as a worthless husk because you no longer capable of offering any services they care about.

Old people I know that treat employees like robots don't have many friends or family they care about them. Maybe, if you coincidentally end up in that position too, you can pay robots to keep you company. I hear they're very reliable and predictable.

I long made the same mistake of assuming history. The answer is no, that kind of interaction wasn't transactional in a robotic way, it was highly trust-and-relationship building. Which is exactly what we are missing today.

Go to a farmers market week after week, buying and talking to people. It is completely different from a vending machine. I know the people at my market, if they asked for help I'd help them for nothing in return. And I have no doubt at all they would do the same for me.

The vending machine owner would get no such help from me, nor would I expect them to help me if I asked.

"Gray Death" is what I think we should call it, because yes it is much more than loneliness.

Its like a fog, slow, suffocating, hard to grasp, hard to agree on where it starts or ends. But we agree its there, and agree its a problem.