{"id":10614,"date":"2014-06-21T22:53:25","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T02:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=10614"},"modified":"2014-06-21T22:53:51","modified_gmt":"2014-06-22T02:53:51","slug":"the-automat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=10614","title":{"rendered":"The Automat"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, in a different venue \u2013 someone mentioned the Automat<\/A>. I think the context was we were discussing the possible effects of a $15 an hour minimum wage that Democrats are pushing hard.<\/p>\n

You have to be pretty old to remember the Automat, or adept at using Google or Wikipedia to pretend you remember.<\/p>\n

Back in the 1960s, my mother dragged our family to visit in Philadelphia. She seemed very familiar with the concept, which was a little surprising since we have none in western Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

The Automat was essentially a cross between a cafeteria and a modern vending machine – before that technology existed. <\/p>\n

You walked through the serving area, and you would look in the sliding windows at the various foods that were available. Each item had a price, and you inserted the appropriate coins so you were able to open the door. There was a cashier, but her purpose was mostly to make change if you didn’t have the correct coins.<\/p>\n

The reality was \u2013 while it might have been less resource intensive than a real cafeteria, it was nonetheless resource intensive. Behind those magic windows, there was a human who was restocking items as they were sold. I discovered that when she turned the device to restock it after I put in the coins but hadn’t yet opened the door.<\/p>\n

The purpose was more to deal with a large lunch time crush of people quickly, not to save labor costs. Unlike a cafeteria, the Automat was random access, not sequential. A secondary purpose could have been so that white customers didn’t have to have social interaction with the black women in the kitchen. We’re talking about the city of Frank Rizzo, after all (and New York).<\/p>\n

The first US Automat opened in 1902 and they started to vanish in the 1970s – when McDonald’s, the death of downtown shopping and inflation did them in. The three generation rule may also have been a factor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, in a different venue \u2013 someone mentioned the Automat. I think the context was we were discussing the possible effects of a $15 an hour minimum wage that Democrats are pushing hard. You have to be pretty … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10614"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10621,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10614\/revisions\/10621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}