Wal-Mart is replacing some of its non-customer facing workers with robots, like bookkeepers who were responsible for counting and storing the store's cash supply.
Last August, a 55-year-old Wal-Mart employee found out her job would now be done by a robot. Her task was to count cash and track the accuracy of the store’s books from a desk in a windowless back room. She earned $13 an hour.
Instead, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. started using a machine which counts eight bills per second and 3,000 coins a minute. The Cash360 machine digitally deposits money at the bank, earning interest for Wal-Mart faster than sending an armored car. And it uses software to predict how much cash is needed on a given day to reduce excess.
‘They think it will be a more efficient way to process the money,’ said the employee, who has worked with Wal-Mart for a decade.
Wal-Mart has a Cash360 machine in nearly all of its 4,700 US stores, eliminating thousands of jobs in what is yet another example of how automation will soon replace hundreds of thousands of jobs in the retail and food-service industries.