Death of a Salesman

In the middle of a pandemic, advances in artificial intelligence, and increase in education requirements, we are all a bit Willy Loman.

Barlon Mrando
3 min readDec 6, 2020
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Imagine a time long, long ago where members of the government, and many activists push for an increase in the minimum wage with the purpose of increasing the earnings of hourly, minimum wage employees. This would be the perfect world, everyone makes more, everyone can afford to live and stretch their paychecks further. They can now afford the rent on a two-bedroom apartment, as opposed to a single room with their children.

However, reality strikes. What occurs instead is companies seek to shrink their workforce, and many retail storefronts and fast food chains opt for automated touch-screens to take customer orders. The storefront salesman, the service with a smile is now being killed off. You can order products, order food, order anything from home on your computer, or even remotely on a mobile app on your phone, and either have it delivered, or you can pick it up curbside. Not everyone uses it, but it is used enough to shrink the salesforce at a big box store.

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Barlon Mrando

Maybe I’m foolish, maybe I’m blind. Thinking I can see through this and see what’s behind. Got no way to prove it, so maybe I’m blind. I’m only human after all.