When was the last time you REALLY had to ask someone a question... yet didn't have a way to get an immediate answer? Where the only option was waiting… and I’m not talking about waiting hours, but days???
Man, are we spoiled by technology. Texts. Emails. Phones. Slack. Teams. It's almost too easy to ask a question and get a rapid response.
While it's 2026 and I do have access to emails, phones, and texts, I suddenly found myself back in the "early" days relying on a little something called... mail. Why, you ask? My son is currently at sleepaway camp.
My favorite part about sending him to camp is that he has zero access to technology. No phone. No computer. No smartwatch. No iPad. No email. Outside of the three phone calls and one visiting day we'll have over the next seven weeks, our source of communication is snail mail.
Ok, this isn't entirely true…I'm able to email him, and I get to see about four to seven photos a day of him enjoying camp life. But the communication is completely one sided. I can see him. I can email him. His responses? Good old fashioned handwritten letters.
So, being someone who desperately needed an answer, I emailed Zach asking him to respond to my question by taking a picture of himself giving me two thumbs up if the answer was yes. When the photo popped up, I literally shrieked with excitement.
It worked. But then had to explain to an entire room of people why I had randomly screamed in the middle of a meeting. And while I explained myself, my POV this weekend became crystal clear.
How it in world did we manage business before instant communication existed?!? Can you imagine not getting an immediate response to a "flagging this real quick," "got five minutes?" or "oh no... I need this fixed ASAP." What would we do? How would we survive?
Well... for decades people didn't just survive. They figured it out.
They used their own judgment. They leaned on experience. They became resourceful. They solved problems without waiting for someone else to give them the answer. They got creative. And imagine this, they may have even opened a manual or instruction guide. (🤯)
But that was then and this is now, and the way the world runs and works in 2026 most certainly does not work in an analogue world.
Business simply doesn't work that way anymore, nor should it. But there is one skill from the pre-instant-response era that I hope we never lose….Reading people. Being able to read a person, their nonverbal cues, their facial expressions or even knowing what a simple thumbs up in a photo that can communicate even when your miles away.
And you know who still does this better than almost anyone? Restaurant workers.
Technology that works with restaurants, not just for restaurants, has done incredible things by allowing hospitality professionals to become hospitality workers again instead of tech managers.
Can technology help use excess inventory to build smarter menus? Yup.
Can it help employees schedule fair shifts? Yup.
Can it allow guests to order whenever they're ready? Absolutely.
Can AI even identify that guests consistently think a dish is too salty? Yep.
But can technology tell you when a guest wants another drink before they ask?
Can it recognize that a family lingering over dessert isn't waiting for the check because they're celebrating something special?
Can it sense that the woman at table 53 is about to tell her parents they're going to be grandparents?!? Nope!
But human expressions can. Reading a room can. Noticing the non-verbal messages can. And wow I hope we never lose that.
So what's your point, Julie? Yes, instant communication has made us faster, but has it also made us a little less resourceful?
I know it’s made me a little less patient and less observant. But my summer of being a pen pal with my son has reminded me that the answers we need can be found without waiting for someone to text/email/call us back. How can we still be creative, thrifty and resourceful in finding answers to our questions,? Let’s spend the extra moment to figure it out old school and enjoy the satisfaction that our human side gave us the win.
