I knew a guy who had been a typewriter repairman for IBM! These were in the days before widespread data automation, and a lot of billing and such was manually typed.
And, of course, typewriters replaced people writing in longhand.
Thanks. I like to call this the “What does Bob in Accounting really do?” problem. For people with no experience in a job, they see a room (or 10) full of people sitting around in Accounting or HR or Purchasing and assume they are not really doing anything productive, they don’t need all those people - how hard can it be…?
Joke: “Why’d you pack my eggs at the bottom of the groceries?!!”
“Well, if I put them on top, they’d break and run all over the other groceries.”
Certainly being able to pack things efficiently and with though is a skill that is underappreciated.
The key thing is to leave the jobs for humans to the type of work that humans do best - but never underestimate the ability of automation to do such jobs in all but the edge cases. When common sense is called for, it takes a human … so far.
Henry Ford with his legendary people skills was the epitome of this - apparently one story was he’d walk past the accounting department, a huge room full of people sitting at desks, and ask “who are they?”. When told they were accounting, he’d say “They’re not making cars. Fire the lot!” By the time WWII came around, the company was a mess, unpaid bills were measured in piles by the foot to estimate the balance sheet, and the government engineered a coup to replace cranky old Henry with his offspring so it could be productive making war equipment.
I guess the self-checkout attendant is an example of automation for better or for worse. I’m seeing a lot less situations of people being hassled by the tills - possibly because the weight is no longer checked on some, possibly because people are actually learning - consciously on unconsciously - how these work; plus the tech is getting better. I think of it as similar to how online credit/debit use is a lot less of a hassle than it was years ago - for example, a lot fewer people who don’t know their PIN, or try to tap the wrong end of the card…
Yes, shoplifting is an ongoing business expense. A good example of automation is the ubiquity of video surveillance, making it easier to catch thieves, if not in the act then afterwards. There are even computer programs nowadays that can take a plethora of video feeds (i.e. Jan 6) and identify and track the various participants by their appearance, replacing the tedious work of scanning video. Now if only the police/court system could get its act together…
I think the current employment problem has only been postponed by assorted crises for years. I remember being in Florida a year or two before 2008 and there we saw signs in every window for “Help Wanted” - likely also more prominent there due to the interesting demographics of Florida. Then 2008 came along. We were just getting up to speed when COVID came along. Two-plus years later, the demographic crunch is finally hitting home.
A similar situation was in the news from Alberta back over a decade ago - the booming oil business and lack of housing meant a serious shortage of people to do the lower end jobs. There were stories of shops closing early in the evening in December, prime shopping time, because they could not find staff. Some Tim Hortons (sort of our version of Dunkin’ Donuts) was paying drive-thru attendants $20/hr. (Makes you contemplate the profits to be made from coffee…)
When I was young (cue “cranky old fart” accent) I would have to go to the bank every week at least. Now, assorted tech has conspired to make that visit rare, beyond the odd visit to the ATM in the lobby if the one in the gas station doesn’t work. I’d use the teller also to get American cash for travel - now some ATM’s have the option to dispense US bills as well as Canadian. I can deposit cheques using my phone, less hassle that an ATM deposit envelope (and less work for the bank staff). Recently I’ve noted the trend (opposite to before) that my bank is slowly closing some branches.
So the answers to the OP are - automation, fewer public establishments and more online shopping (i.e consolidation), immigration, and better technology. And higher pay, better working conditions… Not a lot the government can do on its own.
Oh, there are still plenty of people who can’t fathom how to work a card. They tend to be elderly, but any day I’m running a register there are at least a dozen folks who don’t know which end of the card to insert, or how to insert a card, or who don’t know their PIN and ask me if I can somehow look it up, or… well, they’re a mess, really, But they tend to really, really avoid self-checkouts so we “real cashiers” have to hold their hand to walk them through it. Add in poor hearing (and sometimes poor brain function) and they just will NOT follow instructions and/or suggestions.
But most of the rest of us have gotten more savvy about paying with plastic.
You know, I look at that and see an appalling increase in unnecessary waste and debris. I mean, sure, for some people that makes sense but for those with somewhat normal functioning getting our scripts without all that extra packaging works just fine. Also, for those of us who DON’T need daily medication, setting everything up under the assumption you’ll be getting a 30 or 90 day supply of everything can make getting a 10-day run of something a problem because it doesn’t fit the base assumptions going on there.
Which is great if you’re the average person, but there are people who really do need custom fitting an adjustment.
What I’m getting at is that by eliminating all the brick-and-mortar pharmacies and eyeglass places and so on you’re making life MORE difficult and MORE inconvenient for those who are not the average person.
I also think we lose by making everything on line. Much less opportunity to socialize, which is bad for human mental health. Or maybe I’m just a cranky old fart.
Asimov wrote The Naked Sun in the early 50’s, (followed in 1983 by Robots of Dawn ) which depicts a society where humans rarely interact and the drudge work is done by robots. It had gotten to the point in that society where people are almost rarely in the same room, and many have an intense phobia of meeting others face-to-face (but holographic video meetings are acceptable).
I doubt that appeals to a lot of people - Asimov was less social in that respect. However, between smartphone interactions, hookups via things like Tinder, and assistants like Siri and Alexa, I suspect it may become a not-unusual thing in the first world over time - especially if there is another pandemic recurrence. We are already using tech to isolate ourselves from typical interactions, and as I’ve described above, commerce seems to like increasing the isolation tendency - as you say, to the detriment of those who need the interaction. Soon we may all become a creature whose entire life is managed on our behalf by a digital Jeeves, who handles the arrangements and details and knows what’s best for you. “Sorry, but I have deleted the desert from the order until your blood sugar reading improves…”
What I think will happen to address the need you mention is “boutique service”, something we already understand the meaning of. You will pay extra to get a human involved. “What’s it worth to ya?”
We see the beginnings of that too, with all those bills I constantly get reminders about - “switch to online billing. It’s faster and simpler!” Some businesses are starting to give a discount for online (for now) effectively putting a premium on the physical connection.
So the vanishing human connections are not coming back any time soon.
One area that seems to be hurting a lot during this labor shortage* is in the area of childcare. I hear we’re importing British nannies, which shocks the utter hell out of me, because reasons.** And I’ve heard of day care centers contracting with agencies to bring in Philipina women to work in them.
*In more than one place recently have I read that the “labor shortage” may be exaggerated, and that there are plenty of people still looking for jobs and aren’t able to find them.
**Why on Earth would a British woman leave Britain for the US for a low-paying job?? She could make twice that at home, and the UK has better labor protections (I’m assuming). And, you know. Free healthcare.
Brings to mind the line from Family Guy when Stewie was suffering from teething, making a sick joke about an old court case - “Shake me like a British nanny!!”
Is nanny still a low-paying job? Once you figure in the free living arrangements (I assume) the pay is all profit.
Sometimes “clearly labeled” isn’t.
According to this article, Walmart Self Checkout & Major Upgrades Part of New Store Design (passionatepennypincher.com) approximately 1,000 stores out of 10,000 stores have upgraded to that model.
So no, Walmart is not entirely self-serve.
Sometimes people capable of reading English don’t bother to read.
Which is why I - and the vast majority of us in the UK - do our own packing. If you look decrepit enough, or pull the “confused old dear” act, they might get someone over to help,.but I prefer to do it my way rather than have some bored teenager chucking stuff in at random.
I went into an Amazon store yesterday to try out their new ‘no checkout’ system. If you have the regular app, it can show a VR code to open the gate, it knows who you are. You select your groceries and head for the exit gate. You get an email and the orders on your Amazon account are updated about an hour later.
I saw just one person manning the entrance, helping people get the code from the app, and a few people restocking. However there did not seem to be a way to see your total bill increasing as you did your shop. So I guess this is more appropriate for the lunch time office workers getting lunch or a few staples.
Aldi have a similar experimental supermarket, but people needed a lot more help because fewer had the Aldi app on their phone. I guess this is the direction of travel for this business. I expect it will be quite some time before it reaches outside city centres and customers who know little of smartphones, apps and online accounts. There were quite a few bemused customers who seemed to think it was all a bit too complicated.
I am not sure many people will miss the checkout. Now if only they could do that at IKEA, which seems to have the slowest checkouts, with huge lines full of families trying to pay and get home with their outsized purchases.
The labour market changes, jobs go and other appear. I have never seen so many delivery services. Once there were small stores and delivery boys on cycles. The supermarkets introduced self service and checkouts. Now they are transforming into checkout-less convenience shops and home delivery services. …and the delivery boys are back.
Whether the total number of employees has gone down or moved to other duties, I am not sure. As a customer, anything that makes tedious shopping chores easier is welcome. Boutique shops with lots of personal service is a quite different experience.
Maybe I’m weird (Oh wait, I am!) but I really don’t like someone hovering at my elbow when I’m browsing or looking at goods. I like the big anonymous stores where nobody is around. More often than not asking “do you have more in the back room” gets the answer “no” anyway. And with small stores, if I browse and don’t buy I feel like I’m telling the owner “your store is inadequate.” (And, I absolutely hate returning stuff unless it is defective - that’s a part of shopping I don’t understand)
So limited human interaction, with the self-checkouts, the big stores, and especially shopping online - is exactly what I want.
Years ago I read in one of the early science fiction stories — think Bellamy’s “Looking Backwards 2000-1887” or Wells’ “The Shape of Things to Come” — that stores would eventually tend toward two extremes: a) boutiques, or b) vast semi-automated warehouses.
I think this is happening to some extent. The warehouses handle the routine orders, and the boutiques handle the edge cases with attentive personalized service. I’ve noticed for a while that, at banks, since the routine transactions started taking place at ATMs (and now online), the remaining transactions taking place in-person at the counter take longer and are more complicated.
Stores adding self-checkout are just trying to add both sides of this differentiation in the same establishment.
Here’s an article about self-checkout and related technologies in stores:
The interesting one to me is the 7-11 version. At 7-11, you use their app to scan and total things as you go, then pay on the app, then the app gives you a QR code that lets you out. That would seem to take care of the ‘can’t tell what the total is as you go’ problem.
The Amazon version would be enormously helped by displaying prices in-store.
The cafeteria at work switched to a self-checkout system instead of vending machines; you grab things off the shelves, take them to the pay station (or use the app), scan them, and pay. The main problem is, there are NO prices displayed. You have to scan something to know how much it costs, and then you’re in a checkout transaction. If they had labeled prices, or a ‘check the price’ function in the app, it would be a huge improvement.
You know, I’m OK with that. In fact, I think having both a self-serve option and a full service lane for check out (with an additional “customer service” option for the most difficult interactions) is the best of both worlds. Options are good.
I don’t like people hovering over me when I’m shopping, either, but I do like to be able to find a helpful human when I feel a need for assistance, large or small.
Where it gets sticky is when a store tries to force only automated interactions.
My place of business has an option sort of like that, you scan as you shop then check-out at the end but it’s far from perfect. One major obstacle is the humans - not everyone picks up new technology easily. Another is, again, theft - it can be easy to put something in the bag without scanning. And then there are age restrictions - buy alcohol or ammunition or an R-rated movie and a human has to double-check your age. This might be easier to implement in stores that don’t sell age-restricted items.
That’s also an issue that keeps getting raised with the shift toward telework, but that’s only tangentially related to the subject of this thread (except insofar as a tight labor market puts employees in a better position to say “You want us to start commuting again? Ha ha ha no.”) New thread on that subject here.
The first self-checkouts I ran across were in the grocery store. They were a convenience because the ATM insisted on dispensing $50 bills if I went over $100, and I could use these checkouts to make change for that $50 with a small item without a human thinking I was being a jerk.
Later self-checkouts are universally “no cash”. First, the cash handling was more onerous, the machine more complex and prone to fail, plus dealing with the “out of change” scenario was a lot extra work, I assume. (and the float required) A while after these appeared, they began posting the warning before the transaction -“Does not accept cash. Do you want to proceed?” I assume some bright legal beagle told them that having incurred the debt by starting their transaction, they could then offer the cash to an attendant who would be obliged to accept legal tender. If you agree beforehand to not use cash, they don’t have to accept it, they can require electronic payment only.
Nope, that’s not it. We have no-cash machines that really are NO cash - if you can’t complete the transaction electronically we really can’t make the sale. At all. Well, OK, we can take your stuff to another station and re-ring it all up. That bit comes up because a lot of people are clueless, oblivious idiots who don’t read and don’t pay attention.
No, if you offer the money to an attendant they are NOT obligated to accepted it. The store is not legally required to sell you anything. We can and do refuse transactions for all manner of reasons, and it’s perfectly legal. We do have an incentive to try to complete transactions, but we do have have to do so.
If I dump my $50 on the service desk and walk out, what will they do? Charge me with theft? I doubt the police would be interested in that one. Leave the groceries behind so you have to go up and down the aisles putting away frozen goods and perishables?
There’s a legal technicality here - at what point does a purchase contract exist? At what point is a debt incurred? You cannot refuse legal tender for a debt, that’s the whole concept of legal tender; but you can refuse to create a contract and debt if you notify the buyer ahead of time “you are agreeing not to use cash”. However, if a buyer can walk up to a machine and start a transaction under the illusion they can use cash to make a purchase, then presumably they are accepting your offer to sell and that makes a contract.
making them agree “no cash” to proceed precludes the creation of a contract for cash.
IANAL I’d love to hear the legal details of this.