Machinery Over Humans in The Job Market?!

Ahh, the age of the computer, could anything be better? Information at our fingertips, menial jobs like washing dishes no longer a hassle, automated sorting machines doing our jobs for us. And that’s exactly what they are doing – or at least taking – our jobs.

I wonder how many people have used the automatic check-out machines you see so commonly in our nation’s supermarkets. I wonder how many of those that have, use them on a regular basis. It’s dubbed as a more proficient way of utilising that hell of waiting for 5 minutes longer in line to pay for your shopping. At the same time, taking jobs away from the working classes who really need them to get by. And all this in an economic recession? (which, I don’t care what the Government says, is *still* a recession). It’s an incredibly unjust time we live in where the bottom line for a multi-million (billion?) pound business takes precedence over a man or woman trying to feed and clothe their family.

The main issue I think I have with it all is the fact that…they just aren’t faster. How many fucking times have you had to call over an attendant to help you sort out those God-awful Machines? They are far more trouble than they’re worth and take a damn sight longer to use than a helpful human being who smiles at you and talks to you. Why try to alienate customers by making shopping a totally clinical experience? Furthermore, where’s my discount for using a machine? I’m doing all of the work and yet, the same prices. No. Not right, not moral, not just.

Of course it is not just supermarkets, institutions like Post Offices, car plants, telephone helplines and banks follow suit with more sophisticated sorting machinery rendering manpower obsolete. All to save money, of course. This means that the average British postal worker or bank clerk or factory worker or calls assistant has either been laid off or had his/her hours reduced in deference for that of a machine.

Now, don’t misunderstand me, I’m no Luddite of any sort; I love technology and what it has done to us. I wouldn’t be writing this now were it not for some very smart men and their idea to further advance humankind with their newest idea. I’ve grown up during the dawn of technology, but I think it is irresponsible to replace humans with machines and emphatically do NOT want to have any replaced, no matter how advanced the technology. There are clear and defined uses for machinery for example, construction work, but there really has to be a line drawn when it is actually the intention of huge “super-companies” to make a person’s job redundant.

It needs to be stopped before they find more jobs for automation. I hope readers here will join me on going out of their way to use manned services as opposed to machinery, if it means keeping even one person employed who otherwise would have been made redundant.