Automated Ticket Machine

This is kind of an unformed thought but it just seems to me that more and more jobs are disappearing. I know, I know. That is not even remotely an original idea. But today, after lunch, we stopped at a movie theater so one of the guys could by advanced tickets for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. There was a single ticket seller and about 10 people in line. Next to the ticket window were two automated ticket machines. One guy got out of line, navigated through a touch screen menu and bought his ticket for the afternoon matinee. Install a couple more of those and you don’t need a minimum wage ticket seller at all.

You can walk into any Home Depot and many other big box retailers or major grocery stores and use an automated check out machine. I’ve only done this once myself and it was not immediately obvious how the process was supposed to work. But the grocery store I was at had a single person monitoring 6 automated check out machines. People walked up, scanned their items, swiped their credit cards and left. The one person was doing the job of 8 to 12 people (6 check out cashiers and some number of baggers).

And, of course, there are the ubiquitous ATM machines. These I use all the time because I want to get money at times banks aren’t open and the banks charges customers to talk to people. Which brings me to another issue that bothers me. This is another development er, change in society that increasingly isolates us from one another. We keep moving more and more towards being isolated little enclaves of people. I know a lot of people that don’t even know the names of the people that live in the same building as them. And a little interaction is not a bad thing. Beyond my pet theory that it makes for a less violent society (we see each other as human beings), a college acquaintance of mine ended up marrying the bank teller.