If you look at the history of automation, you'll see that practically nobody wanted it to arrive on the scene.

Secretaries battled word processing and answering machines. With good reason, as it turned out, because these devices made most secretarial jobs redundant. Even the most fumble-fingered executives found they could hunt and peck their way to finished memos if they persisted, providing they hit the backspace button often enough.

"May I take a message?" had always been a suspicious question. It was replaced by voice messaging. Automatons delivered not only the precise text, without interpretation or distortion, but also the all-important tone of voice of the caller.

Automation has generally, and may I add, shamefully outperformed the humans it has replaced. Yet, there was widespread reluctance to embrace technology, and early adopters were perceived as cheap penny-pinchers that existed on the margins of profitability and survival.

I've been in an ongoing battle with a local outlet of a large supermarket chain. The clerks are surly and they actually obstruct doing business with the store, as I've mentioned in numerous articles.

One way that they've been unhelpful is in challenging the coupons that their own store has issued. Instead of noting that you have purchased the brand and the quantity of items to qualify for the discount, and then scanning the coupon, they read the fine print to see how to DISQUALIFY you from getting the bargain.

"Oh no," one of them snapped, recently. "You have to buy the smaller size baby formula to get the benefit of the coupon!"

I was buying MORE, at a higher cost and presumed profit, yet I was turned around to retrieve the smaller size, which would be less lucrative to the store.

We call this a LOSE-LOSE transaction, plus I was put to work schlepping back to the baby food aisle, restocking the bigger cans while fetching the smaller.

Now, that clerk has disappeared from view. In her place are four automated scanning machines. Without any flack, I can check myself out, input my club card, swipe my plastic, and double-bag my stuff, without having to ask permission.

And happily, the scanner even invites me to tender coupons.

As it turns out, the machine welcomes them, seldom lawyering the fine print.