Well taxy, here in Ontario, masks are no longer required (except for medical facilities).
Which leads me to think perhaps a lot of the call-in (grocers) can now save a bundle by putting those extra workers needed to other jobs or just plain let them go.
One of the large grocers I go to has Car pick-up. I see many employees going around filling baskets, and still, line-ups at the cash.
Automating the call-ins is just the next step?
Well, the automagic filling of the orders by machines is likely the way of the future. I don't really mind it in principle, if they can do it without laying off a bunch of workers. But, I'm not that interested until I can get the same level of specificity on my grocery orders. Make it possible to list the sorts of things I'm willing to accept as a substitution for out of stock items. Actually, Provigo is pretty good at that now, but they need to allow a wider range of choices for what to substitute with.
I have been using that specific IGA store for online ordering for years, from well before the pandemic started. I'm familiar with the delivery guy and the people who assemble the orders. Some of them have been working there since before I started ordering from them I do worry that they will be out of work. I guess that will be up to the individual store owners, since it's their budgets that will be affected.