It is more of a joke. I don’t actually believe that using self-service checkouts saves jobs or that not using them saves jobs. If the supermarket decides sacking the till staff makes them more money, they’ll sack the till staff regardless of whether the self-service works any better.
Although in my more cynical moments, I might take issue with your assertion that we don’t keep doing pointless things just because someone does them for a living. I think there are probably lots of jobs that properly considered are completely pointless but we keep paying people to do them anyway.
I seem to recall someone wrote a book about that. yup:
