Will You Pay 100 Rupees for a 2-Minute Job?

Will you pay 100 Rupees to a person who repaired your phone in 2 minutes?

A Reel That Got Me Thinking

This morning I was scrolling through Instagram and watched a reel in which a technician explained about Labour Illusion using 2 customers he dealt with the previous day.

The technician said his day started with a customer who reached him to get his mobile repair, and upon looking at the issue the technician fixed it in less than 2 minutes, and asked for 100 rupees as charge, but the customer refused, and paid 20 instead. The technician didn’t fight it, and let go.

On the same evening another customer reached him with the same issue, but this time the technician took 20 minutes to get the repair done, and asked for 250 rupees as the charge, guess what! the customer paid 300 instead upon mentioning he liked the technician’s smooth work and commitment.

So Labor Illusion is a phenomenon where people value the service based on the seen effort, and time invested on it. (Artificial efforts count)

The Restaurant vs. The Roadside Hotel

Now not only those customers, let’s imagine me waiting at a restaurant to get my food served. It feels like a lifetime for me, but the same me when waiting for my tiffin at a roadside hotel doesn’t feel like a lifetime, though it likely takes the same time.

But why?

Because I see the people working at the hotel: Open kitchen. But at a restaurant: I don’t know what’s happening inside, sometimes I even doubt “Is the chef asleep?”

Now I have a doubt “Why am I not applying this theory with AI?”

The Speed Paradox

When I usually ask a question to an AI it responds in seconds though I can’t see the effort it’s investing, still I appreciate it. Why?

If I closely observe the behaviour here :

Customer A : Less time and Less seen effort : not acceptable

AI : Less time and Less seen effort : acceptable. WHY?

Because I know with AI my time is being valued.

Yes, I clearly know that reading the 50 page pdf and writing a summary on it will require hours of my time and it’s getting done in a few seconds with the AI.

I know the technician is also saving my time, but I still don’t appreciate it, because I have to pay him the very next second, unless AI.

Obviously as fellow humans I want to see more effort from the individual who is working for me when I am paying for their service.

The "Conditions Apply" Rule

Okay, even though AI helps me to do my work easily, I still have an exception in appreciating the fast responses, because I don’t rely on the AI’s few seconds response to prepare my firm’s most important document. YES!! I don’t.

Because if the work is important for me and if I genuinely think it will require immense time, and effort, instead I receive an answer in seconds then I’m not okay with it.

Because I have a different image of my work being done, (probably me sitting in my pyjamas with messy hair and whining "what am I up to?") but AI is doing that for me in seconds and I can't take it.

And I guess there’s nothing wrong with my behaviour, because I've been wired like that since my childhood.

Yes, I’m stuck with my 6 mark math exam mentality.

The 6-Mark Exam Mentality

If I want a movie recommendation, I’ll use AI and watch the film without a second thought. If I want my assignment to be done then I’ll just cross check before copy pasting the answer, but when I want my final semester’s literature review work to be done then probably I would question every single line before working on it.

Because, a movie recommendation is a one mark question, assignment is a 2 mark and literature review is a 6 mark for me. These marks are assigned based on the time and effort I’ll be investing to complete the respective action if I do it all by myself.

Yes, I guess I'm still that girl stuck with the 6 mark math exam mentality, the only difference is I'm using it to differentiate my entire life. I knew you got me clear and fair.

Now if you just zoom out the camera angle then you’ll be right next to me doing the same thing, Right!! (just like me, huh?)

Now I guess it's time to wrap everything up, I can perfectly guess, we are valuing other’s work for us not by the time and effort they are keeping, but by the time and effort they are saving for us with exceptions though. And the exceptions list will be created based on our mentality and mindset. So it's our mindset that shapes the world around us. I guess you agreed with me.

Hey, wait a minute, I almost forgot, you didn’t tell me whether you would pay 100 rupees to the technician, or not. Tell me in the comments.

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