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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

I hope this doesn't signal the end of the entire business model.

I know there are still speed bumps and problems to address, but cashier in a convenience store is one of those awful jobs I don't think anyone should have to do if we can avoid it.

I've had plenty of friends and family work those jobs, and briefly did it myself (at a gas station). Often these friends worked overnight, with the risk of being held up at 3am when no one is around. Usually it's just standing around waiting for a customer, with occasional chores to be done.

And it always pays as little as legally possible.

Let's destroy this job.

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This is easy to say from the perspective of someone making tech money, but plenty of people (immigrants, minorities, people below the poverty line, people without a high school diploma) depend on such jobs and will gladly do them. Unless you also have a solution for employment for all such groups, "let's get rid of these jobs" comes off as way too simplistic. The benefits of automation are largely enjoyed by the upper classes, not the people who are displaced.

You have realize the purpose of SV automation then. Not to advance human productivity but to rid itself of a class of people en bulk.

As is always said when this argument comes up: fine, let's automate the job and then just give those people the money they would have otherwise made.

The people in need get the money, but no one has to do the awful job. Win-win.

Or we could just pay them to dig holes and fill them back in again, if you demand that they must perform labor to "earn" their way.

These are needless jobs. They should be destroyed.

Who exactly is going to "just give" them this money? Big corporations? Why would they do that exactly? Under some law? What would the law say? That each company has to give some random people money? Or is it the government handing out the cash? Who all will they pay? Where will this money come from? What are the chances any of this actually gets voted for and enacted? How will it be enforced?

It's easy to create these fantasies in one's head, but think about it realistically for 5 seconds and it all breaks down.

Cashier jobs are entry level positions. As such they are also a means of advancement to other roles in retail. Countless people started as cashier and worked their way up to roles like customer services, buyer, store manager etc.

These jobs are also an opportunity for students to earn money and get work experience. But yes, "Let's destroy this job" simply because you don't like it?

Since your profile states you are a staff developer at Shopify, here's a Shopify link that outlines the value that the role of cashier brings to a retail environment:

https://www.shopify.com/retail/retail-jobs-common-positions

This is a fallacy imo. The less mundane, mindnumbing and highly automated jobs we have, the better.

There is a reason why for example living human beings do not manually switch phone lines anymore when you make a phone call - you could rationalize it as much as you can, but frankly humans we born for better stuff.

If you are going to state something is fallacy then you might want to substantiate the fallacy. Instead all you provide is your opinion that the elimination of a class of jobs is for "the better."

What I have stated is that entry level positions are a means of advancement in retail environments. This based on empirical fact.

>"There is a reason why for example living human beings do not manually switch phone lines anymore when you make a phone call"

No, the reason "human beings do not manually switch phone lines anymore" is because the growth of subscriber lines exceeded the capacity for manual switching in Central Offices. It had nothing to do with nature of the job.

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