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The end of scab tills

I passed my test in 1978 and I don't think I've ever not had to fill my own tank in the UK. I've had other people do it abroad but it feels frankly weird.
I normally pay at the kiosk though and only pay at the pump when it's a choice of pay at the pump or not have any fuel.
 
In the village i lived as a kid in the 70s/80s i can remember my parents getting petrol from a station with an attendent at the pump. I've never seen it since i started driving myself though. Pretty sure it was dated even then.
 
In the village i lived as a kid in the 70s/80s i can remember my parents getting petrol from a station with an attendent at the pump. I've never seen it since i started driving myself though. Pretty sure it was dated even then.
In the late 70s I had a short-lived Sunday morning job filling cars at our local newsagents that had a solitary old fashioned pump outside (metal numbers that clicked and a wee glass “bubble” on the side with a little paddle that went around when filling up, etc.). I say short-lived as a modern self-service petrol station opened up next door and put them out of business.
 
Speaking of petrol stations, an interesting fact is that mechanical car washes on petrol station forecourts are one of the few automated industries in decline. They've more than halved in the UK in the last 20 years, while the hand car wash industry has cleaned up. You can partly thank modern slavery for that.
 
Speaking of petrol stations, an interesting fact is that mechanical car washes on petrol station forecourts are one of the few automated industries in decline. They've more than halved in the UK in the last 20 years, while the hand car wash industry has cleaned up. You can partly thank modern slavery for that.
I would not touch an automated car wash as I don't trust them not to damage the car or to do a half decent job.
 
Speaking of petrol stations, an interesting fact is that mechanical car washes on petrol station forecourts are one of the few automated industries in decline.

I guess a bunch more automated industries must be dead, or never got off the ground in the first place.
For all the talk, almost all the automation that has come along in the last 50 years has just been shuffling 0's and 1's, and a bit of warehouse automation.

Haulage, retail and farming are all beset by labour shortages rather than the reverse. No one in 1960 would have predicted this.
 
In the village i lived as a kid in the 70s/80s i can remember my parents getting petrol from a station with an attendent at the pump. I've never seen it since i started driving myself though. Pretty sure it was dated even then.

Street View shows this one with an 'attended service' sign in December 2021

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It's in Wainfleet, which is a few miles inland of Skegness.

I've not been there for a while, so don't know if it's still there.
 
I tend to look for a human till at my local Morrisons, I usually have between 30 - 40 quids worth and there is no way I am going to scan all that myself. However I have a bit of a natter with the checkout operator, can't have that with a scab till! Often I find myself in a queue for an operator I nattered with the week previously which is nice.
 
Oh and when I was a lad there was a petrol station in our local village where the operator used to have to hand pump the fuel into your car.
 
The thing about scab tills is that they are a precursor to the adoption o robotics and AI more widely in society.

Scab tills take the money out of a potential workers pockets, and the extra profit goes to the shareholders of the supermarket.

So when AI replaces people's jobs and people can chose to do other things, where will the excess profits go and who will pay the individuals so they have a viable income to do these "other things?
 
The thing about scab tills is that they are a precursor to the adoption o robotics and AI more widely in society.

Scab tills take the money out of a potential workers pockets, and the extra profit goes to the shareholders of the supermarket.

So when AI replaces people's jobs and people can chose to do other things, where will the excess profits go and who will pay the individuals so they have a viable income to do these "other things?
And that's why we need a Universal Basic Income since robots won't buy any of the stuff they're churning out.
 
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