Andy Mukherjee, Columnist

How 7-Eleven Will Beat Worker Blues

Japanese labor's too pricey for mundane tasks. An old technology is coming to the rescue.

April 23, 2017 at 8:00 PM UTC

Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News.

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A 7-Eleven store in Japan can no longer afford its most prized possession: the checkout clerk.

The nation's employee shortage is now too acute to waste pricey labor on routine tasks -- like scanning low-value merchandise -- that have proven frustratingly expensive to automate.