The Target near my apartment in Brooklyn is not giant, but due to population density it has a ton of registers. Over the holidays, the replaced a sizable chunk of these registers with self-checkout kiosks. Although there was a long line to use the self-checkout kiosks, it was a faster and better experience than waiting for a register to open.

More importantly, there were still a lot of people working in this section. People were directing customers to registers, guiding people through checkout, and (my favorite) putting things that people left behind back on shelves immediately. Although it was still hard work, the job definitely seemed preferable to standing behind a register and moving things past the scanner.

I am still confident that short-term automation will improve environments and turn bottom-tier jobs into more productive roles (in Jack-in-the-Box's case, maintenance teams for the kiosks, software developers to code the kiosks). In the debate about minimum wage increases, a lot of people see automation as a negative. It may hurt in the short-term but we will see a major benefit faster than people assume.