I’ve lived in the city nearly all my life. I never had to repeat my highly complex Starbucks order — a “tall” coffee — three times to get a response from the bummed-out barista, the way I do now.

Bob Dylan’s lyric, “Everybody must get stoned,” is now apparently in the employees’ handbook at most every place requiring customer interaction.

My friend Shelley Clark, a restaurant consultant, observed, “Too often, any question or request is met with a vacant look and a very much by-rote ‘no problem.’”