Substitutes for Labor:

 

Scan your own items at the grocery store!  Estimated Cost: $125,000 for four lanes and an attendant’s station.  Benefit to the store: a substitute for labor with a nine-month payoff.

 

Young Nicholas Hubert, 9, at a QFC Uscan checkout station

 

 

Pumping one’s own gas at the self-service station; and, of course, washing the windshield and checking the oil as well.

 

Young Nicholas Hubert, 9, at Barnecut's Texaco Service Station