Robots answering support calls are annoying, but self-service websites are pretty good for 99% of things.
They scream at me when they think I'm stealing (Any human being doing that would instantly be reprimanded by a manager), they have tiny platforms where I can't even fit my groceries and heaven forbid if I do something the machine doesn't like, an attendant needs to come unfuck it for me.
The best thing about them is that I can do some work for the store for free as part of my shopping. I can't wait for the next grocery innovation of having the customers stock the shelves from the backroom before they can fill a sack with onions.
I was a cashier for a couple summers. There were a couple members of staff that were really experienced experts who could really fly through the checkout, but there were plenty of us that were just kids working over the summer...
Supermarkets have always looked to save cost, it is a price sensitive business after all. At some point you'd give a list to the clerk and they'd put your order together. I'm sure people were annoyed when they had to start doing that clerk's job.
Think bolder. As a software engineer in the Soviet Union I had to spend about three weeks each year in the collective farm fields planting, tending and harvesting potatoes and cabbages. Since some of my American friends are very fond of socialism these days - these types of “improvement” look definitely a possibility.
Something about this doesn't seem to entirely add up, given that workers in government and defense-critical industries weren't exactly rounded up a la carte to work the fields. Not when there was a dedicated class of kolhozniks that were paid next to nothing, and couldn't really leave the countryside for better jobs in the cities.
But now that you mention it, I would pay good money to see the likes of Peter Thiel spend a few weeks a year picking strawberries, or filling grocery bags, or piloting a shitbarge up the Hudson river along with the rest of us. I do keep hearing from that half of the political spectrum that hard, poorly paid work, and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps builds character...
And not to be overly pedantic (although we are on hn here, and when in Rome...), but leading American socialist movements are focused on democratic socialism, much like many European countries where I'm pretty sure forced agrarian labor isn't a thing.
some wholesale clubs apparently counter this by randomly auditing every cart as you leave, but that seems to leave the whole thing only marginally more efficient than traditional checkout
I have lost count of how many items I forgot to pay for at Home Depot.
