I don't know if you have these scanners at your supermarket, but a couple years ago they introduced them here. After bringing in the "self-checkout" several years ago, they now have the scanners where you can scan your own items as you go around the shops pulling them off the shelves.
Seems convenient.
I am yet to try this.
When I was at university, I was a trainer at a McDonald's, and while there were trash bins in the customer area, we would go to lengths to clean up people's trays ourselves. This was easier for us overall, because we were better at it than the customers, who would often spill half full cups of coke on the floor, causing much more work for us. Not only this, it was a much nicer experience for the customers when they heard, "Just leave it, I can get that for you" from staff. Because of this, it is still weird to me in Finland that even at some mid-range decent restaurants, people are expected to return their trays, scrape food into the bin, separate knives and forks etc.
Of course, I would also prefer to also deal with humans, and I would prefer that humans have jobs where possible, but convenience and profit-seeking will always drive people out of jobs, and isolate us so we don't have to interact with each other, especially those that might be different to us. What ends up happening is that just like on the social media platforms, automation leads to people siloing themselves with others similar to themselves that they approve of, and therefore ideas that they are comfortable with.
It also means that there is less chance of random interaction, which probably suits many people because these days, we have been conditioned to have stable experiences, with no surprises and everything delivered to us just the way we want it. The problem is, this has led to us becoming even more isolated, using apps for everything so that we don't even have to talk to a human at a business to get their products delivered. This has a two-way affect also, as not only do we not build up a relationship with the local businesses, the local businesses do not see the immediate positive or negative feedback from the customers, except through the app. And people will more likely post negative than positive - but in-store, you get to see the smiles also.
Because we all like convenience, a lot of people disagree with me being far less positive on automation than them, which is fine. They have all kinds of excuses as to why convenience and automation is good for society, but most of the same people tend to see that society is not moving in a positive direction. Automations and artificial intelligence, social media algorithms and screens are only part of the cluster of aspects that are isolating us, breaking our learning processes, disconnecting us from each other and impacting on our mental health, but as long as things are easy in daily life, we will keep ignoring the decline for as long as possible.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]