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There is the old story about the man who decided that he would teach his horse how to go without food. Every day, he would give his horse a tiny bit less hay than he had given the horse the day before. This went on for a few months. The horse grew thinner. Finally, one day in the third month, the horse dropped dead. “Damn,” the man said, “just when I almost had him trained to eat nothing, he ups and dies on me.”

This story reminds me of the very large all-inclusive stores that none of us can do without. All right, I’ll name them. Home Depot, Lowe’s, Walgreens, CVS, Office Depot, OfficeMax – and you can name a lot of others that fit into this category. They do a great job of offering virtually every item in their field, but once you get inside the store you can’t find anything, and even if you find it, it takes you a long time to get past the cashier and out of the store.

In other words, you usually can’t find any employee to direct you to the location of an item, and the store almost deliberately puts up barriers between you and freedom, getting out of the front door.

Because of this impersonal service, eventually customers revolt, make their way to some new store that promises more personal service, the stock price of the old store goes down the toilet, and the president of the corporation resigns with a 60-million-dollar retirement package.

Why do all these stores not put one elevated desk in the center of the store with just one knowledgeable person who can tell you where an item is? Why are there always 10 checkout counters, but only two or three persons on duty? Why do they think customers are going to rush with glee to the self-check-out counters where you have to read the bar codes themselves and even make your own change?

Don’t they realize the horse is dying?

And why limit this to just retail establishments. Call a web site with a complaint about merchandise you have received, and you are asked to click one, click two, click three and so on until you are finally back to one again. I have discovered not to bother with the complaint number. If you have a complaint, call the sales number. That number is answered immediately.

This impersonal world is everywhere. Try calling administrative offices at all levels at the University of Florida, and find out how often a human voice answers you. Generally, you get the one-two-three click dance, and finally end up with an answering machine. The university saves money at the cost of alienating the public that supports it.

I’m not calling for a holiday on the gasoline tax, a rebate on tuition, a discount on my last year’s IRS offering or anything else. Just a human being to politely direct me in a store or over the phone. Don’t we other human beings really deserve to know that someone we are dealing with is human just like us?

This is Radio Ralph with a comment at midweek for AM850.