Surely a machine could do this, but teenagers are cheaper. And more surly.

The bliss of a couple of days off at the end of summer is usually wrecked by an impromptu day trip avec sprogs to a theme park (always seems like a good idea at the time) however this time around that was not the case.

I volunteered, most nobly, to take the junior department of the clan to the Almighty Pleasurewood Hills (just off the A12 between Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft) to give them a grand day out at the finest East Anglian theme parkesque experience while simultaneously allowing the wife to have a day of peace and quiet. So far so good.

Firstly, Pleasurewood Hills is neither maginificently pleasurable nor particularly hilly, so it is poorly named. As far as I can recall this particular themed park has been a rundown, few rides (“exciting new attractions coming in [this year +1]“) shoddy excuse for a day out for ever – never actually improving very much, although at least that spotty pink rubber twat Mr Blobby has been cast into the fires of the unemployed again.

Secondly, Pleasureless Hills always sticks in my mind as “just off the A12 between Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft” from a series of adverts for it in the mid 90s. This is another flawed description. A better one would be “just off the godforsaken road with is littered with 30MPH sections every few miles and with the guarantee of getting stuck behind some coffin-dodging fuck insisting on going 10MPH below the speed limit the entire way there, also bringing you perilously close to Norfolk.” The A12 heading north is a big pile of shite. It goes to Norwich, say no more.

I, as usual, digress.

The day was enjoyed by all. Kids had a good time, I had a good time, but I was struck mid-afternoon by what must surely be a considerable issue for theme park operators across the world – staff. Pleasurefree Hills is staffed by late teens with a fixed expression which says “my mind is currently out, please leave a message”. To be fair, while some of these are possibly normally bright college student types with a crappy summer job, a fair few would have had the choice between working in Mickey D’s or Pleasurehill Woods. However, regardless of their cerebral firepower, or otherwise what you have here in terms of employment, is the bottom of the barrel.

The thought that I had was quite simple – surely a machine could do this?

Let us take two examples. The first of which is the young lady operating the log flume. As we attended this particular ride on multiple occasions we saw the same girl operating the ride the entire day. A fairly normal looking girl, who might have actually been quite pretty were it not for the absolute brain death she was apparently suffering. Her job basically consists of pushing a button to stop a “log” then pushing it again to make it go. That’s it. I’m pretty certain she longs for someone to get trapped beneath a log, or for there to be an horiffic maiming of a passenger just to break up the monotony – I know I would.

The second example probably has a worse time that the button pushing log flume peon. The ice cream serving girl. She actually had a fairly sunny disposition about her, however what occurred to me instantly was the proximity of her booth to the incredibly loud and generally aggravating barrel-organ-playing-non-stop-show-tunes car. Surely this must drive you fucking potty! 8 hours or more per day for the entire summer of non-stop-show-tunes in a badly tuned barrel organ stylee. How long does it take for her to realise the tunes have actually stopped at the end of the day? Does she wake from her sleep with Rogers and Hammerstein night sweats giving her chills? Is she some form of Manchurian Candidate whose assassination of the prime minister will be triggered by a quick burst of “There’s No Business Like Show Business”? I dread to think.

Effectively it left me wondering how much cheaper it is to employee the inteligencia of the future than it would be to construct a button pushing or ice cream vending machine. Yes, the human touch may be valuable, but I’m one of the few people who find that automated phone lines (press 1* to repeat these options) which are well designed are often more effective than a real person who doesn’t give a shit, so I’d sooner entrust my faith to a machine, with a human overseer should an accident occur than to inflict this misery upon the young and cash-starved.

I’ve had crap jobs, but what I saw today was little better than water torture.

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