Process improvement amongst the machines

During the pandemic and in fact even leading up to it, lots of retail jobs have been replaced by jobs in the e-commerce ecosystem: warehouse jobs, delivery jobs, supemarket pickers, etc. There has been much hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing about this, including here on the Grouse. I think that service jobs, serving people while standing on your feat, speaking to them and looking them in the eye is incredibly important to skill and confidence development in both young people and in people seeking to improve their lot in life. So long as people aren't stomped on by reactive managers acting out their own fears and insecurities and so long as subsequent employers can look at a McDonalds or Jersey Mike's job on a resume and recognize the growth that might be had there for those that embrace it.

Yet despite all the retail blood-letting and store-closing, the pandemic also witnessed record new business formation in the US. I suspect that this may be because operating within the more formal process-driven value chain of logistics, where people are dealing with time and logic as key variables rather than the intersubjectivity inherent in retail, the sheer messiness of human relations, is an easier place to come up with new ideas which can be tried out. Dry and boring as it may sound, logistics is a really fertile territory for change.

Which may be why Shopify and the like are taking share from Amazon and letting a thousand flowers bloom on more fertile soil. We shall see how this plays out. For now, to work.