Brickbat: Robot's Day of Rest

A German court has ruled that the robots at the Tegut supermarket chain must be given Sundays off, just like human workers. Under German law, retail stores must close on Sundays and Christian holidays in order to give employees a day of rest. Tegut has gotten around that law by fully automating its stores, and it gets 25–30 percent of its sales on Sunday. A union that represents shop workers filed suit to force the stores to close on Sundays, saying it fears the company's success could undermine support for the nation's blue laws.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

You know who else went around the naysayers and kept at it seven days a week even though it was wintertime in Russia?

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

Khan!?

[Quicktown Brix]

Catherine the Great and her horse?

Obviously the horse's family were the main naysayers.

[mad.casual]

Christian Nationalists?

[rbike]

My great-great-great grandfather moved from Bavaria ( what became Germany) in the 1830's to come to America. I tell people he left because Germany is full of Germans. And their rules.

[Dan S.]

That something might undermine popular support for a law is considered a reason for banning it?

[Jack Nunn]

I remember blue laws growing up. 'Essential' items (food, clothing, etc.) were still allowed to be sold so department stores had sections roped off on Sunday. It was bizarre. You could buy a shirt but not a toaster even though the toaster was in the same store and right across the isle from the shirts.

[Don't look at me!]

Like the dark days of Covid hysteria.

[MrMxyzptlk]

Most of those laws are passed on the bullshit of "Holy Days" but the people who really want these laws are large business owners who don't want to compete with small business owners who are willing to be open 7 days a week. I knew a car salesman who loved the blue laws against selling cars on Sunday. He said. "If I have to work on Sunday, someone is going to jail."

[LIBtranslator]

FDR took Herbert Hoover's "free market" Republican prohibitionist Banking Moratorium draft and edited it into an "authoritarian" Bank Holiday 04MAR1933. In it, natural persons possessing gold got prison time, but artificial persons were let off with a fine. Germany had just installed Hitler, so it's taken them this long to catch up and grant some extra immunities to bots and droids.