In the petition, McCarthy writes that self-service machines are ‘overwhelming’ and ‘a nightmare’. Her appeal has been gaining traction, and by August #BringBackTescoStaff was trending on Twitter. In May, the 69-year-old from west London called to ‘stop the replacement of humans by machines’ at Tesco checkouts. The 230,000 people who signed Pat McCarthy’s petition would agree. ‘If you don’t have money to go out and socialise and be in bars and other social spaces the supermarket might be one of the only places where you get that kind of interaction,’ says O’Dwyer. In the cost-of-living crisis, loneliness has got even worse. According to her, daily micro-interactions – the small exchanges we have with our neighbours, bus drivers, post workers and shop assistants – can actually lead to a longer, healthier life. O’Dwyer has been researching the importance of interactions between frontline staff and regular people. ‘Machines are a big part of who we are and what we do, but the problem isn’t machines, it’s the absence of other people,’ says Grainne O’Dwyer, a senior programme manager at Neighbourly Lab. Londoners are also more likely to feel isolated if they’re acutely poor, single, living alone, disabled or have experienced prejudice (such as being an ethnic minority, or part of the LGBTQ+ community). The small exchanges we have every day actually lead to a longer, healthier life Nearly one in three Londoners said they felt lonely some or all of the time during Covid, 20 percent higher than the UK-wide average. Similarly, a national study by the Office of National Statistics during the pandemic found that London is the loneliest place in England. A recent study by the Greater London Authority and Neighbourly Lab, a think tank for improving community in the UK, found that one in 12 Londoners is lonely, with 700,000 of us saying we are ‘often or always lonely’. London is in the midst of a loneliness epidemic and it’s very possible that all this automated stuff isn’t helping. But are these shops simply an answer to our insatiable demands for more and more convenience and longer and longer opening hours, or are they sucking the life out of our cities? The lonely Londoners And where high streets and supermarkets were once hubs for communities, we now have more and more soulless stores where people avoid human interaction at all costs. People have been ranting and raving about self-scan machines since their inception – they’ve always brought with them fears of a fully automated world. But is this tech something to be worried about? We’re also going increasingly cash-free – Tesco Express on High Holborn has been entirely devoid of physical money since 2018. This isn’t just happening in the UK, either. China, Sweden, Japan and the US all have supermarkets that are cash and staff-free. Even Aldi is opening a no-checkout store in Dalston, and Morrissons is rumoured to be revealing one soon. Alongside Amazon Fresh, Tesco is slowly rolling out a wave of ‘checkout-free supermarkets’ called Tesco GetGo, which also require an app for entry. There are now 19 of them in the country, with all but one being in London. In March 2021, Amazon opened its first till-less supermarket in the UK in Ealing. New technology, customer convenience and the appeal of reduced labour costs have made way for the boom in staffless stores. The red light starts flashing – a very bad omen – as you desperately hope for a human being to come and rescue you. A typical trip to the shops now involves playing Jenga with your items, as the cheery robotic voice tells you to ‘remove the unexpected item from the bagging area’. Almost all grocery stores these days are full of self-service-card-only tills (SSCOTs). In London, supermarket shopping has become augmented. You stroll away with the oddly smug feeling that you haven’t paid for your shopping, only to check your Amazon account later and discover that the retailers have totted up all the items you picked up and left you a neat bill. Signs on the shelves implore you to ‘Just walk out’. To gain entry, all you need is an Amazon account and a smartphone. A visit involves no interaction with staff at all. Have you been to one of those Amazon Fresh stores in London? A squeaky-clean, eerily futuristic shop.
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