Opinion: AI in the super market

When I was sixteen and seventeen, I was a carry-out boy for Lucky Stores in Palo Alto. But three months before I turned 18, I graduated from high school and became a retail clerk. I moved into the check-out stand. Legally, for the first time. In San Jose, I joined the Retail Clerks Union. There, I was warned that some sort of innovation was on the horizon that would eliminate the jobs of check-out clerks in all grocery stores.

It was 1959, and after all these years, I don’t remember what the threat was. Moreover, I can’t find mention of it on the Internet. But I suspect that it was rumor that something akin to the Universal Product Code (UPC) was being considered by grocery-store chains. 

In those days, being a check-out clerk for a super market was a bit more work than it is today. For example, we had to check in for work 20 minutes before the start of our shift in order to walk through the produce department and note any changes in the prices of various products. The price of milk also varied slightly from time to time. The rest of the items in the store were hand-stamped. And, of course, once in our check-out stands, we had to punch in the keys and make change for the customers.