GE Answer Center, 1989 Commercial [video]

A new experience for me since I moved from California to Amsterdam: A local shop where we often buy vegetables closed for the entire month of August, with a hand written note on the window. In September they were open again.

> Could you imagine someone running a grocery store today that wasn't open on the weekend?

Something I learned as a result of covid was that normal Chinese practice is to go to the grocery store every day so that you can prepare a meal from fresh ingredients.

Obviously under such circumstances it wouldn't be possible for grocery stores to be regularly closed over the weekends. That idea has to result from the mass individual storage of large quantities of food, which is interesting in its own right.

Lot of lines became pretty blurry in the recent few decades. Lots of business target the “off time”. Lots of companies offer or run non-traditional schedules where employees are off on “work days”. And finally, saying “we’re closed for the holidays” - which ones? It’s becoming less clear with so many cultures in the mix.

So yes, 24/7 became the norm. And it’s ok if people get paid fairly and are willing to do it. On a side note, I do miss the old simpler days.

When I was young, 70's early 80's, in the country I grew up in stores were closed on Sunday. Impossible to imagine now.

It's like they know that "Cool URIs don't change"! https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

Do they still answer somewhat arbitrary questions like they do in the ad? Do they charge for the service somehow?

Man, I miss that newspaper! It probably still exists, but went downhill so far I stoped subscribing when it was still a paper edition.

I think the GE Answer Center is just support for their appliances? Not a general question line.

Hard to tell from the ad though.

Or is ChatGPT the modern answering machine? Depends on how empowered it will be to actually solve problems, which given the failure of other automated customer service systems, I suspect it won't.

AIUI this is less like ChaCha/kgb (which were services that would have a human answer any text question at a premium rate) and more like "24/7 support for GE products".