Rehctub “This is simmilar to what happens with 'on line shopping'. Orders are colated, cut and packed and shipped.

I could do the same amount of business and cut several jobs. But, is that a good thing in the long run? “

I do recall the days before supermarkets, when my mum used to go to the grocer, the butcher, the haberdasher, the baker, milk was delivered by a man with an electric cart, using recyclable glass bottles and so forth….

Rehctub, the introduction of “supermarkets” theoretically cost retail jobs.

I say theoretically because what the changes did was to treat the service component for what it is, a “competitively supplied service”, not “a sacrosanct process designed to employ people”

The only ones who have a sacrosanct right of employment are public servants (and that’s only because they have a particularly deviant perspective for which it is safer to keep them away from value-adding work)

What rehctub is describing is called “improved productivity from to improved processes”, using fewer people to do the same work, by the application of technology and automation.

It is the founding principle of “industrialization” which occurred at the time of the industrial revolution and as every luddite since has discovered, it is unstoppable.

Regarding your 5 staff, we employ people for lots of reasons, you must be making excessively good profits if you can employ people to stand around and do nothing. On the other hand, what you describe is called “customer service” and remarkably people pay for it from restaurants to retail stores and even internet purchases… like I bought things recently and they emailed me to say it had been dispatched and was on its way… customer service… part of what people pay for… along with the retailer and wholesalers “costs of breaking bulk” like cutting cattle into chops and storage in your cold room.