Urban Hermits

On my walk home from a bit of food shopping, it struck me that you can shop in most modern grocery stores without interacting with anyone. The installation of “self-checkouts” takes away the only mandatory human you would have to deal with. While this does lower the amount of awkward, forced “How are you today”s and can speed things up, is it really a good thing?

At any rate, it does prep us for the possibility of eventual replacement of cashiers with robots. I can imagine the Walmart of the future. You’ll see at least 50 cash registers, all maned by identical cheerful blonds with perfect teeth, blue eyes and immaculate “make up”. They will also have a lovely figure toped of with not too big, but pert, breasts. Skin shades and hair styles may change by location depending on what “guests” respond the best to the idea will probably stay the same. Other than a science and sociology perfected “hello”, she won’t respond unless spoken to. That is until you reach the point of money exchange, and even then her tones and words will have also been run and tested to provoke the best response from a customer.

The more I think about that, the more it sounds like someone’s wet dream. Personally, I really hope we don’t evolve the shopping experience into that.