RI Stop & Shop Worker Blasts Robot Birthday Bash — Calls on Company to Celebrate Customers and Staff

RI Stop & Shop Worker Blasts Robot Birthday Bash — Calls on Company to Celebrate Customers and Staff

Melissa Gaethofs, the florist manager at the Stop and Shop in North Kingstown, took to social media to criticize the company's celebration of "Marty" the robot's first birthday.

"While the robot was being celebrated today for its first birthday, us human employees were busy taking care of our human customers. Our local elementary school had a sweetheart dance tonight and we didn’t stop all day. From custom corsages to leis (love making leis), we had better things to bring our attention to," she wrote.

Gaethofs continued:

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"You can celebrate Marty all you want Stop and Shop, but not without me chiming in with my two cents. Let’s get back to basics please. And by basics I mean let’s focus on your people first. Your customers and your employees," she said.

"The day Marty makes a custom wrist corsage for a customer is the day I celebrate the robot. Until then, I’ll be over here taking care of business," wrote Gaethofs.

 

25% of American Workers Face "High Risk" of Their Jobs Being Lost

In April of 2019, Stop & Shop workers went on strike for a new contract, but the workers face greater threats in the future.

A 2019 report found that up to 25 percent of American jobs face a “high risk” of disappearing due to future machine automation.

In the report by the Washington-based Brookings Institution, researchers identified about 36 million U.S. jobs as having “high exposure” to automation.

"Among jobs facing the greatest risk are those in office administration, production, transportation and food preparation, the report says. Jobs in these fields may be replaced with technology-driven by machine learning and artificial intelligence," found the report.

Marty is a spill detection robot. This technology is just the beginning for Stop & Shop and other retailers.

The company making some of the technology solutions, like Marty, says that retailers need technology to stay competitive.

"Today, global retailers lose nearly $450 billion in revenue annually as a result of out-of-stock items, empty shelves and other in-store inconsistencies. Fragmented communications and lack of data between headquarters and local stores also contribute to operational inefficiencies and revenue loss. However, these gaps are within the retailers’ grasp to solve by addressing the root causes of inventory and data disconnects with the implementation of technology solutions and operational efficiency improvements to eliminate these revenue-limiting issues," said Badger Technologies, the company behind Marty.

 

READ HER FULL FACEBOOK POST HERE:

Posted by Melissa Gaethofs on January 25 to "Our Town: North Kingstown"

Hi everyone!

First post here!

I wrote this post on my personal page tonight.

But I thought I would share it with all of you as my first post in this group. I know many of you here, but for those I haven’t met yet, I am the florist manager at the Ten Rod Road Stop and Shop. I live in Cranston but have worked at this store for the past nine years.

I LOVE NK. I LOVE my NK peeps... (I’ll be moving this way soonish (two years ).

This here is just a snippet of my thoughts about Marty the robot and what really matters.....

—While the robot was being celebrated today for its first birthday, us human employees were busy taking care of our human customers. Our local elementary school had a sweetheart dance tonight and we didn’t stop all day. From custom corsages to leis (love making leis), we had better things to bring our attention to...

These are the things that should be celebrated at Stop and Shop.

The human interactions that happen every day.

The days we work straight through to accommodate our customers.

The customers that hug and kiss us for our special efforts.

The little girl who thinks the world of you “for taking pearls from the clams in the ocean” to make her wrist corsage.

 

Marty is so important that Marty has a hashtag.

And I’m going to use it with this post.

You can celebrate Marty all you want Stop and Shop, but not without me chiming in with my two cents.

Let’s get back to basics please.

And by basics I mean let’s focus on your people first. Your customers AND your employees.

The day Marty makes a custom wrist corsage for a customer is the day I celebrate the robot.

Until then, I’ll be over here taking care of business.

 

#martyparty #stopandshop #peoplefirst