When Did I Become the Employee?

I stood at the self-checkout yesterday, scanning my own groceries, bagging them myself, troubleshooting the scale when it inevitably complained about an “unexpected item in bagging area.”

And somewhere between resetting the machine and waiting for an attendant to unlock my transaction, I had this thought:

When did I become the employee?

I Used to Think This Was Progress

Self-checkout? Faster than waiting in line. Self-install internet? Convenient. Self-service platforms? Pure autonomy.

I bought the pitch. Fully. For years.

The framing was perfect: empowerment. Efficiency. Control. Who wouldn’t want that?

But last month, I spent three hours troubleshooting a platform integration that should’ve taken 20 minutes—reading documentation that assumed I already understood their architecture, searching forums for answers that should’ve come from support—and I realized something uncomfortable:

This isn’t convenience. This is cost transfer. And I’m the one absorbing it.

The Shift I Didn’t Notice

Here’s what I’m realizing: None of this labor went away. It just moved.

From their balance sheet to my Saturday. From their payroll to my “free” time. From someone’s salaried job to my unpaid cognitive load.

The work is still happening. I’m just the one doing it now.

And the wild part? I didn’t notice the transfer happening. It was so gradual. So framed as progress. So wrapped in the language of empowerment that by the time I realized I was doing work that used to be someone’s full-time job, I’d already normalized it.

When “Self-Install” Means You’re the Field Technician

I used to call the cable company and someone showed up. Tested the line. Configured the modem. Confirmed the signal. Done.

Now? They mail me a box labeled “Easy Self-Install Kit.”

Easy.

Except I’m the one on the floor, trying to decipher which blinking light pattern means “ready” and which means “call support.” Where I’ll spend 45 minutes proving I already did everything they’re about to ask me to do. Where the script they’re reading is the same one I already found and followed from their knowledge base.

Somewhere in that process, I became the field technician. The troubleshooter. The QA tester.

Unpaid.

The SaaS Trap: You’re Not the Customer Anymore

Here’s where it gets expensive—not just in money, but in time.

The platform markets itself as “self-service.” No waiting on support tickets. No dependencies. Just pure autonomy.

And at first, I loved it. Control without gatekeepers? Sign me up.

But somewhere between the third integration failure and the fourth time I found myself reading API documentation at 11 PM—documentation that assumed I already understood their event architecture, their auth patterns, their undocumented rate limits—I realized something:

I’m not the customer anymore.

I’m the systems administrator. The integration specialist. The first-line support.

All roles I’m paying them to not staff.

The “self-service” promise: You can do anything yourself. The reality: You have to do everything yourself.

I’ve spent hours diagnosing issues that would’ve taken a support engineer fifteen minutes—if one existed. But there’s no engineer. Just me, the documentation, and the growing suspicion that I’m troubleshooting their infrastructure problems on my own time.

Customer Support—Or the Absence of It

Speaking of support.

Instead of people, there’s a “Help Center.” Instead of a conversation, there’s a search bar and 47 articles that might answer my question—if I can figure out which terms they used versus which terms I’m using.

Last week I spent 20 minutes searching for a billing answer I could’ve gotten in 30 seconds from a human.

But there’s no human.

Just me, the knowledge base, and the growing suspicion that half these articles haven’t been updated since their Series B.

There’s a term for this—shadow work. The unpaid labor we perform just to access the services we’re already paying for.

And here’s what bothers me most: It’s not presented as a trade-off. It’s presented as empowerment.

What I Gained. What I Lost.

I’m trying to be fair here. Because the paradox is real:

I do have more control now. I can troubleshoot my own internet. Configure my own integrations. Research my own support questions. No waiting. No dependencies.

That’s worth something.

But I’ve also inherited the stress, the cognitive load, the frustration that used to be someone else’s full-time job. Except they got paid for it.

And I’m paying them not to do it.

The friction didn’t disappear. It was redistributed—from the company’s operational costs to my evenings and weekends.

Why This Gets Under My Skin

Here’s the part that bothers me: It’s the framing.

If a company said, “We’re cutting support staff and you’ll need to handle your own troubleshooting”—I could make an informed choice. Lower price for less service? Fine. That’s a trade I can evaluate.

But that’s not the pitch.

The pitch is convenience. Efficiency. Empowerment. And the transfer happens so gradually that by the time you realize you’re doing work that used to be someone’s job, you’ve already normalized it.

I did. For years.

I thought self-service meant freedom. Turns out it just meant reassignment.

Where I’ve Landed—For Now

I don’t have a clean answer here. I’m not swearing off self-checkout or canceling my SaaS subscriptions.

But I’m paying attention now.

When I see “self-service,” I ask a different question: Am I being empowered? Or am I just being reassigned?

Most of the time, it’s both. And I’m still figuring out which transfers are worth accepting—and which ones are just asking me to work for free.

Here’s what I think today: If the “convenience” comes with an instruction manual, a troubleshooting flowchart, and a forum full of people trying to figure out the same thing you are—it’s not convenience.

It’s outsourced labor.

And you’re not the customer anymore. You’re the unpaid employee.

The shift happened slowly. One self-checkout at a time. One “easy setup” at a time. One “self-service platform” at a time.

That’s how it always does.