Automation Adversary Gifts

Supermarket Self Service Checkout

'A human being answered the phone!'

'Welcome to the automated booking line. Please state your location.' - 'Oxford' - 'I'm sorry. I didn't hear that. Please try again.' - ''Oxford', you dumb robot!' - 'I think you said 'Dumbarton'. Please press '9' to confirm.' - 'Yeah, maybe later.'

"He's taught himself work-life balance."

"Uh-oh...it's starting to delegate work to me."

"I fear one day our jobs will be taken over by technology."

'Now I know why the strategy guide warned against entering the 5th stage. Awesome!'

"You'll do everything...accounting, marketing, manufacturing...with no pay or benefits...and three years from now we'll trade you in for a newer, sexier model."

"Your job is to build an app that replaces you."

Employee of the Month

"The boss expects us all to be robots."

"Before automation how did humans endure work?"

'Two men having a sword fight with large pen and pencil.'

"Robots can't take away your job, Khanna. No one knows what you do."

'I don't want to talk to any flunkies. Put me straight through to the computer.'

Smith and Hobson: People replacing people with apps and robots since 2009.

"The Fad Herald cometh." "Wasn't he just here? Why's he back so soon?" "Hear ye, hear ye. The following is out: Human labor. The following are now in: Pizza delivery droids, Amazon delivery drones, and replacing all blue- and white-collar jobs with cheap, highly productive robot labor... ...robots who never sleep, never ask for a raise, and never complain about harassment... ...because they're too busy plotting the extinction of the meatbag species. We will isolate you. Alienate you from one

"Question ... what is my motivation to ever leave this armchair?"

"You have reached our 800 number. . . . If you are a preferred account, please dial B-I-G-S-H-O-T now. . . . If you are an ordinary account, dial J-O-E-B-L-O-W now. . . . If you have a service complaint, dial G-E-T-L-O-S-T now."

"It's been in self-drive mode all morning, maybe it's not programmed to recognise stop signs?"

'Computers and Business Making Money'

"Head office have taken on board your concerns about excessive admin so we've taken on a new management team to look into it."

"It seems like a good idea, but is it scalable?"

"We've just bought some software that's 20% better at being you for half the cost so we're letting you go."

"I think R&D is staging a coup!"

"You are one of my people, Collins, but you could be replaced by one of my computers."

'That Doctor has a lot of nerve...I've waited six weeks for this appointment and he says, 'you're lucky we caught it in time'.'

Computer driving a fork-lift in a warehouse.

5-6 pm: Unhappy hour - mourn the loss of jobs to apps, bots, drones.

"We took care of our leaf problem a long time ago."

"The self-driving division has taken over."

"If I see that commercial one more time, I can hate it enough to ignore it."

"Guess how I got even with the telecommunications industry today."

'Who should I call first? 911 or the parking lot manager?'

"A robot was doing my job, but it quit."