One of the attractions of living in the UAE’s big cities is the ease of daily life. Groceries are bagged and brought to your car. Food can be delivered at any time of the day or night. And petrol, plentiful and cheap, can be pumped for you as you sit in the air-conditioned comfort of your car.
That, at least, may be about to change, with the announcement that Abu Dhabi customers will next month have the choice of four self-service petrol stations. The selling point will be speed: payment will be taken via one of three cashless methods.
Whether it catches on or not remains to be seen. But it does feel like the beginning of something. Self-service’s lazy, corpulent cousin, full service, is dying out, hit by labour costs. Hiring a dozen or so attendants for every petrol station across several shifts is expensive – an expense that, in the end, must be passed on to the customer. In the past, it may have been easy to ignore that additional cost. But perhaps no more.
Only time will tell whether self-service catches on and whether it expands. Perhaps, as the summer approaches, full service will play better with customers (if not with the unfortunate station attendants). From an economic perspective, full service is hardly efficient: there are additional costs and extra time.
But the easiest way is to let the market decide. Rather than making the speed of cashless payment the sole selling point, perhaps Adnoc could consider a second trial period, where the petrol is also cheaper at self-service pumps, factoring out the cost of attendants. That might make more people seek out those pumps. Higher speed and a lower cost are a powerful combination.
Is this the beginning then of self-service everything? Restaurants where you have to return your own trays? Fast-food outlets where you actually have to park and enter the shop to order? Grocery stores that say: “Sorry but we have a minimum delivery charge”? For the most pampered among us, that would be a dystopian future. On the plus side, it is unlikely to happen soon. And if it did, at least it would reduce the cost of living.
