TO BE FAIR, WHEN IT COMES TO DAILY LIFE, MOST EVERYTHING’S BEEN GETTING WORSE SINCE ABOUT 2008: I Reviewed Restaurants for 12 Years. They’ve Changed, and Not for the Better.

Many of the little routines of dining that we used to handle by talking to a person now happen on a screen. When we go to Shake Shack, we order and pay for our burger and frozen custard on a screen. In some places, we enter our names on the waiting list for tables on a screen. We scan QR codes so we can read the menu on a screen. Restaurants are turning into vending machines with chairs.

Before we walk in the door, we’ve usually made a reservation on a screen. You could still make reservations by phone in 2012. Many places were on OpenTable by then, but if you didn’t feel like using it or couldn’t find a time you wanted, you picked up the phone, and your call would usually be answered by a human. Pleasantries were exchanged. Polite phrases were used: Please. Thank you. I’m sorry. We look forward to seeing you.

2008 was a triple whammy: Smartphones, the financial crisis, and Obama. America was beginning to recover when Covid struck, though the harm we suffered came more from the official response to Covid than from Covid itself. What’s next?