This Is So Convenient! Unless You Happen To Be Inconvenient

Last Updated on: 6th March 2023, 09:52 am

It’s so fantastically great when all you want to do is some regular people thing like travel or quickly buy something you need and the world tells you to go fuck yourself. The last time I had this experience was back at Christmas with Via Rail and its stupid un-staffed train station here in Kitchener (luckily it was full of a crowd we could follow that day), and now, if this asshole gets his way, I’m going to be having it a whole lot more. He’s trying to make convenience stores with no people in them into a thing, the fucking dick.

There isn’t a word here about accommodating disabled people, because of course there isn’t. There never is with any of this do it yourself crap. Everybody’s just supposed to be normal and if you’re not, tough shit.

Maybe tough shit is doable when there are other nearby options, but if this winds up in an area where you’re the only game in town for anyone without a car, a blind guy like me or somebody in a wheelchair who can’t reach everything is screwed. Ditto if these things become selling points in apartment buildings and wind up driving my rent up as a result even though I can’t use them.

Yes, I know there are helper apps. but not everybody has a smartphone, hard as that may be to believe. And lord only knows if they’ll even bother making the door opening app accessible, and at that point it doesn’t really matter how many minutes you paid Aira for this month. And even if you get in and have all of the minutes, you still may not have all of the connectivity. Even here in KW, home of eleventy billion tech companies, cell connections still routinely drop if you make the mistake of turning the wrong corner in the damn Walmart, fucking you anew.

It’s 2022. Inaccessibility should never be something that’s baked into your business from the ground up. We’re supposed to have learned so many things by now, or at least that’s what I’m told when I don’t just shut up and take whatever I’m being served straight up my arse.

New convenience stores are popping up in Toronto that are completely self-serve, have no cashiers and are open 24 hours a day.
If you want to get inside to buy something, you’ll need to download an app to your smartphone.
“The store is completely unmanned and cashierless and in order to get into the store you need to have the mobile app,” John Douang, CEO and President of Aisle 24, told CTV News Toronto.

Douang said that once you download the mobile app and create an account, you can get inside. Shoppers can then pick out what they want to buy, go to the checkout station, scan their items and make their payment.

Aisle 24 currently operates eight self serve stores in Ontario and Quebec, but has another 30 planned to be opened soon and hopes to open as many as 200 across Canada within two years.

Douang said he believes other retailers will also adopt this format.
“This type of technology and innovation is going to be prevalent in many different businesses in the future,” he said.

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