#terminalf

Fruit and Granola Breakfast.

Local Tavern, Philadelphia International Airport, Terminal F, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. March 10, 2014.

After 10 days of greasy pits, sports venue hot dogs and succulent yet decadent meat chow, I felt the need for some healthy grub in me stomach. We had just missed our connection like I said yesterday, and my world was a void between two places, an airport terminal.

The one thing that stands out here at the Local Tavern, is the ipad powered ordering system. You sit down, take the ipad available at each table, and order your food by clicking on the menu items that tickle your fancy. Cutting the middle man and woman waiting tables redefines ordering in a restaurant, while almost totally annihilating the human contact that has always shaped such circumstances. Am I for it? The nostalgic in me sees this as a menace for a trade that I find noble and important. Not everybody that does this job takes it that seriously I grant you, but I will always feel that the human contact is important, even though half the time, the waiter or waitress is on an automatic mode, simply smiling for tips instead of smiling 'cause they're happy serving you. Which is also the reason why, even when in a hurry, I still go pay for gas inside with clerk instead of paying at the pump.

Is this a way that restaurateurs have found to make more money?  Yes, they're buying ipads. But ipads don't call in sick, they don't have mood swings, don't get ditched by their boyfriend/girlfriend before their shift, don't have their period, don't go on vacation and don't go play angry birds in the restroom. Which makes me wonder, is this going to trend? If there's money to be made or saved, there's always gonna be an owner that will jump on the occasion. That's a fact. In an airport, where tourists and business travelers tend to speak less and less together because of the self-entertaining devices of iphones, ipads and ipods, this is another big step towards individualism in our society. And that I feel, is the most dangerous element here. In my first travels, and this was not many decades ago, I used to speak a lot more to people around me. People on the plane, people at the pub. It happened this year, but helped by storied events that concerned us. Otherwise, not much speaking to people. Is it just me, or the new gadgets that we all have now have created individual bubbles in which we hardly go out?

I don't wanna be an alarmist, preaching against evolution and all that. I like evolution. I just feel sometimes there's good in the old too.