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Robbie and Roberto, Robots

Anita G. Gorman

    The news, it’s just full of crazy stuff, like the story about the robot who was fired from a grocery store in Scotland. Since I happen to own a grocery store, I find this story interesting.
    I’m going to protect the guilty as well as the innocent, so I won’t tell you the city or the name of the robot or the name of the store. Instead I will make that part up. Let’s call the robot Robbie, since that sounds Scottish. Let’s call the grocery store Robertson’s, since that’s a Scottish name. Or so I am told. The city? How about Glasgow? I like the sound of that.
    So here’s this robot, Robbie, all plastic and robot-like and standing in a grocery store where he is supposed to direct people to the correct aisle after greeting them. Robbie was programmed to greet people in a rather personal way. “Hello, Gorgeous” was one of his signature salutations. I am not sure to what degree the robot was able to discern the attractiveness of the shoppers. Probably not so much. I like to think he/it had other appropriate hellos, for example, “Good morning, dear” or “Hi, how are you, madam” or “Greetings, handsome.”
    One problem was the cheekiness of Robbie’s hellos. Another problem was his inability to tell customers where to go. “Where can I find beer?” customers would ask, and Robbie would answer, “In the alcohol section.” And where might that be? Robbie didn’t seem to know.
    It turns out that Robbie the robot was inept at directing busy shoppers to the right part of the store. He was also given the job of passing out sample foods, but few customers accepted his offers. He confused people, and before long everyone started avoiding the area of the store where the robot happened to be. People started asking other human beings where stuff was, and not necessarily people who worked at the store. Heck, a five-year-old kid could probably direct you to the candy aisle.
    Finally, the store’s owners fired Robbie the Robot. What happens when a robot gets fired? Does it go to the unemployment office? The nearest landfill? Back to the factory for retuning? That sounded like the best plan.
    So the robot was fired, and customers were happy, and I became inspired. I wanted a robot for my grocery store. I thought it would be fun, a real image maker, a customer draw, but I was afraid that my robot would turn out to be just as inept as Robbie over there in Scotland.
    So I decided to hire my son.
    My son’s name is Roberto, as it turns out, which really works for a robot. Our store is called Amici, which means friends in Italian. I thought that Roberto could combine the novelty of a robot with the intelligence of a human being. My son’s only eighteen, and fairly intelligent. At least he knows where everything is in our store. He’s on the short side, which is good. I had the feeling that a tall robot might intimidate adults or frighten the children.
    It’s not that easy to make a human being look and act like a robot, but we managed to find a robot costume on the internet. It was plastic like Robbie, the other robot, and like various mechanized beings in recent space movies. Our Roberto was a bit reluctant, but my husband and I convinced him by (a) offering him good pay and (b) threatening to evict him if he refused. You’re allowed to kick out an eighteen-year-old, aren’t you? I mean, he’s an adult, right? The thing about Roberto is that he has yet to find himself, as they say. So he was now finding himself to be a robot.
    Fortunately, the robot’s head nicely masked Roberto’s human voice. We also taught him to make his speech sound more mechanical. Before long he was ready to go to work. On the first Monday in January, we debuted our new robot.
    Roberto had up to this moment been a relatively shy person. No more. Apparently the plastic covering around his body gave him confidence he had never had before. Within an hour the complaints began.
    “That robot greeted me with ‘Hey, Gorgeous,’ and asked for my phone number.”
    “Your robot gave me a pat on my rear as I went by.”
    “That robot looked me up and down and whistled at me.”
    “The robot sent me to the dog food aisle, and I don’t even have a dog. I think he was being insulting.”
    It was time, I decided, to fire the robot. Roberto lasted one day. We also evicted our son the robot. He took the robot costume with him. The next day he showed up at the discount supermarket in town, Cheap Foods. Roberto the Robot is a big hit there, I’m told.
    I’m thinking of checking into a real robot, maybe old Robbie from Scotland. By now he/it should be fixed and ready to work anywhere. Even in Ohio.

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