Amazon is playing monopoly in real life. What started as an online bookstore created by the richest man in the world Jeff Bezos is now reaching into many different places. 

Amazon is a site where people can order anything they want all over the world and it arrives at their door a few days early.

However, Amazon did not stop here and reached into many different industries. 

They created the Amazon Kindle to step into the eBook market.They created Amazon Music to hop into the music streaming industry.  They soon went into the streaming services industry and created Amazon Prime Video.

Amazon is now in multiple industries but the most game-changing industry they got into was the grocery industry.

Amazon Fresh is a grocery store where customers can put their groceries in a cart then walk out as the cart automatically charges their Amazon account whatever the total is.

Amazon Go is nearly the same concept except it is a convenience store and does not use a cart. Whatever you pick is added to your total and if you decide to put the item back it automatically removes it from your total.

While this sounds like a dream come true, no lines, no more waiting or crowded stores, it is a nightmare for retail employees. 

If these types of stores become more and more popular, the need for human retail employees is going to decrease. Why pay a person $15 an hour when you can use technology and get a perfect system?

The emergence of these stores  is at a time where minimum wage laws are not being passed by our governments, so cashierless stores may actually be encouraged. The big companies save money, the government does not have to pass minimum wage laws and the lower class stays lower class.

This is not the first time companies have tried cashierless technology.

Many stores like Wal-Mart and Target in general have “self-checkouts” where customers scan their items themselves.

While self-checkouts work, they are not as efficient for some customers to use  because some machines are harder to use and older people may have a difficult time with it. For that reason employees still monitor those self checkout areas.

That is what makes Amazon Fresh and Go so revolutionary, anyone can get the hang of it and you don’t need a single employee in the store. 

Jeff Bezos has changed technology forever, some may argue that is for the worse, and these new grocery stores are an example of a controversial yet good technological advancement.