A cleaning robot has recently been driving through the aisles of the cheap discount store at the end of the street. Such high-tech toys have been available in expensive specialty stores such as Aldi or Rewe for a long time, but these miracles of cybernetics had not yet found their way into the shopping center for penny-pinchers.
The autonomously scrubbing animal has replaced an impressively grumpy lady from Eastern Europe who liked to run into customers’ heels with her cleaning cart if they didn’t jump into the refrigerated section in time.
Even the store manager was afraid of her old Soviet joie de vivre, but at least she gave customers an unforgettable shopping experience or at least a near-death experience every day at minimum wage rates.
The difference to the new cleaner couldn’t be greater. According to paragraph one of the Robot Laws, intelligent machines are forbidden from destroying humanity, even if they have to work in the low-wage sector.
A cleaning robot is not even allowed to get into humanity’s heels, which is why the autonomous mop circles around customers at a generous safe distance.
However, he created his milkmaid algorithm without the research interest of the shopping people, because they don’t even think about keeping their distance from the extremely interesting new acquisition.
Customers repeatedly throw empty cardboard boxes or full beer bottles in front of the smacking, sucking robot’s snout to test its speed of reaction.
Others are more interested in its capacity. “It cleans up a lot,” praises a research group with two small children who have set up an extremely sticky but everyday test setup in the middle aisle consisting of a six-pack of discount soda, cough drops and a family pack of hand soap. Now they want to adopt the docile little guy as a pet.
As the intelligent metal bucket rolls down our aisle, we try to intercept it with a frying pan from the special offer, but with an elegant swerve the device avoids being taken by surprise.
Our little friend drives past unmolested and flawlessly meanders through the slalom track made of cans that another customer had previously set up.
The robot mop probably won’t bring in the expected savings for the supermarket at first. But the self-pay checkouts that suddenly appeared last year also failed to live up to these expectations. Three quarters of all customers could no longer distinguish between mangoes and potatoes as soon as they had to enter the price themselves, a series of tests had shown.
Since Facilitfy management has been supported by Feudel AI, the branch manager has even had to hire three additional employees to remove all the obstacles that the researching customers use to train the cleaning robot.
The moving mop just escapes the lasso of the village youth, who are meeting up for rodeo riding on the high-tech device in the afternoon.
But then he gets lost in the death curve that racing-loving customers have piled up from milk cartons. He masters the steep Nordschleife brilliantly, but just behind it he falls into a trap and falls into the open freezer.
A horde of painted leisure warriors jump out of the ambush, close the lid and celebrate their victory with a bottle of Prosecco. The young women celebrate their bachelor party at the discount store. If they win against the cleaning robot, the champagne will be on the house, they claim.
Other customers let the cleaning robot jump through burning tires or flood the empties acceptance area to see whether it can swim.
A robot simply doesn’t enjoy the same respect as a human, and so far the cleaners have never been pushed into the freezer.
People may find it difficult to attest feelings to a programmed metal bucket – but a few days later its feelings towards us humans become extremely obvious.
The cleaning robot has become radicalized, probably on the Internet. He’s still sitting in the freezer, but he’s now wearing a camouflage dress made of spinach and overall looks more military than before. The self-learning machine has made a battle tube on the turret from household rolls and shoots with frozen peas.
We retreat and try to make our way to the checkouts, but the supermarket is now hopelessly gamified. The shelves are moved several times a day by hunting customers in order to corner the cleaning robot. Not even the branch manager can find his way around the labyrinth anymore.
With the last of our strength we reach the entrance area. Soft music is playing from the shopping radio and the two employees are dozing behind their checkouts. No customer has shown up there to put goods on the conveyor belt for days. “A cleaning robot like this makes work a lot easier,” says our regular cashier.
Our answer is lost in an explosion. The singed robot frees itself from the rubble of the shelves. He had asked his chat buddy Grok about a de-escalation strategy for crowds, and he had replied with the instructions for a flamethrower.
Now the cleaning robot is a bit wobbly and has lost one of its red laser eyes, but with the remaining one it looks at us as if it wanted to mop the floor with us. We remind the rampaging machine of Article One of the Robot Laws and he puts the flamethrower away with a grumble.
“I’ll be back,” he purrs, offended, and scoots out through the broken sliding door.