From the robots that fail miserably at their jobs to the robots dealing with our literal crap,new sensation sex videos Mashable’s Crappy Robotsdives into the complex world of automation — for better or worse or much, much worse.
It's hard not to feel like technology is taking over when you turn on the TV and see some of your favorite characters dealing with their own personal robot revolution.
Television shows have tackled emerging technologies and workplace modernization over the years, but few have hit the nail on the head quite as precisely as Justin Spitzer's workplace comedy, Superstore.
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Superstore,which follows a quirky group of employees at the giant, fictional Cloud 9 department store, premiered on NBC in 2015 and concluded its six-season run in March 2021. The show, which starred America Ferrera, Ben Feldman, and Lauren Ash, famously spoke to pressing hot-button issues, including politics, immigration, the environment, #MeToo, and cultural appropriation. Throughout it all, writers established a deep sense of relatability between their characters and real-life retail employees by addressing the growing presence of tech in the workplace.
In introducing chaotic cart-collecting robots and glorified Roombas, Superstore captured the confusion of the non-tech-savvy as they encounter modern machines, the paranoia and distrust in automation held by the tech-averse, and the very real fear that robots will one day put humans out of work.
In honor of Mashable's Crappy Robot series, I spoke with Superstore writer Justin Shanes about the show's relationship with shitty robots and the realistic inspirations behind some of the series' most tech-heavy episodes.
Shanes joined the team in 2016 as a story editor and was a supervising producer by the show's final season. Superstore superfans may recognize him from his cameo as a corporate representative in the Season 3 episode, "Aftermath." Shanes also wrote the Season 4 Halloween episode, "Costume Competition," which features one of the show's first major robots.
Cart-collecting chaos
Superstore's six seasons are loaded with technology in the form of security surveillance, a corporate-controlled thermostat, smart pedometers, and an invasive employee app that collects personal data and tracks workers' locations. But the cart-collecting robot in "Costume Competition" really raised the bar.
Shanes explained that writers had been considering the cart-collecting robot storyline for a while, and fans who guessed that it was inspired by a similar robot from the real world are correct.
"In terms of getting inspiration for the show, we would read the headlines and a bunch of news articles about retail to see what the trends were and what they were trying, because retail is dying and they're always trying to concoct a bunch of weird shit to save it," Shanes said in a phone interview. "I remember we read an article about these cart-collecting robots, and how that might be a way to save time and obviously reduce the need for employees, and it just seemed kind of insane. Then we were trying to figure out the mechanics of it: How does it work? How does it know where to go and pick up the [carts] and come back? Is there some sort of homing device?"
Sandra vs. the cart-collecting robot Credit: nbc In "Costume Competition," corporate sends the store a newfangled cart collector that's part of a pilot program. The robot is controlled by a fob remote and successfully guides a few carts to the return station during an initial demonstration. However, the robot also pins an employee between the carts and a metal railing, which is definitely not ideal. The rest of the robot scenes show employees goofing around with the technology and playing "matador" with it in the parking lot. Then their kind but clueless boss, Glenn (Mark McKinney), snatches the robot-attracting fob away, shoving it in his bag. He spends the remainder of the episode frantically wondering why the robot is following him.
"It was just a comedy of errors. [The robot] kept breaking down and hitting the wall."
"Glenn has always kind of classically been a bit of a Luddite and very scared by technology," Shanes explained. "He doesn't really understand how phones or computers work, and we make all these jokes about him having a million tabs open on his computer. So it seemed kind of perfect that he would be the one to have to interact with this thing."
It's clear that the cart-collecting robot was a mess on screen, but Shanes assured me the technology was a shit show when filming, too.
"It was just a comedy of errors," said Shanes, laughing. "[The robot] kept breaking down and hitting the wall. I remember there was one scene where it just had to enter the store, it just had to come into frame, and it banged into the sliding doors and almost broke the glass."
The episode memorably ends with the cart-collecting robot following Glenn's car as he drives home, but Shanes explained that technical difficulties almost prevented them from getting that hilarious shot.
"Jerusha, pack a go bag!" Credit: nbc "I remember the sun was setting and we had like 20 minutes to get the shot. We only had the ability to do two or three takes at most, so it was this race against the clock. And the thing just broke down. The special effects guy was under [the cart-collecting robot] with the screwdriver, and we were panicking, but we were able to finally get something," Shanes said.
The finicky cart-collecting robot was a learning experience for the team, and it inspired them to seek out simpler technology when creating the most prominent robot in the series: Robot Glen.
The start of Robot Glen's terrifying reign
Robot Glen, not to be confused with the aforementioned human Cloud 9 employee named Glenn, is a high-tech floor cleaning robot that was introduced in the Season 5 premiere, "Cloud 9.0."
The second I saw Robot Glen's giant gray name-tag-adorned frame on my screen, I laughed out loud. The sight hit far too close to home, as Robot Glen reminded me of my own grocery store archrival, Marty, the googly-eyed, aisle-patrolling robot in hundreds of Stop & Shop stores across the country. Both Glen and Marty were brought to stores with a promise that they'd make employees' jobs easier. Instead, employees see the robots as nuisances that make more work for them and threaten their job security.
Robot Glen, human Glenn, and Marty the Stop & Shop robot Credit: mashable composite: nbc and DAVID L. RYAN / THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES The useless Stop & Shop robot — which roams the floor alerting humans to hazards and spills but doesn't actually clean them up — is one of several different retail robots that served as a basis for Glen.
"We actually had pictures of all the retail robots that exist around the country," Shanes shared. "There are security robots — just these giant vibrator-looking cylinders that roam around parking lots. And there are shelf-scanner robots that have a giant strip and basically let employees know when items are out of stock on shelves. We had a bunch of different models."
"[Glen] is pretty close to Marty, just without the googly eyes."
When it came time to build Robot Glen, the team kept aesthetic, budget, special effects, and their negative experience with the cart-collecting robot in mind. They considered repurposing an existing space robot from a Paul Feig show called Other Space, and while Shanes doesn't remember if they followed through with the plan, he notes that it took a few tries before Glen was visually on Marty's level.
"At first it looked just too much like a chair that was just sort of roaming around. It didn't really look very robotic, so they added a little hump on it, and then they added an electronic panel so it looked like people could get into it," said Shanes. "In the end it got to a point where you could buy that this is a robot that would exist in the store. It is pretty close to Marty, just without the googly eyes."
After concluding that Robot Glen is essentially a perfect employee — one that doesn't get tired or ask for raises or healthcare — the Season 5 premiere ends with the team pushing Glen off the roof. The robot crashes to the ground, but after a moment of celebration and relief, workers look down in horror to see him pick himself up and resume rolling around. Glen proceeds to wreak havoc on the store by crashing into displays and interfering with humans. Eventually, the robot even electrocutes an employee, which results in a lawsuit against Cloud 9.
Cloud 9 employees unite to push Glen off the roof. Credit: nbc 
Carol, post-Glen electrocution Credit: nbc The realness behind the robot episodes
This fear of robots and smart technology replacing humans wasn't just addressed a couple of times on Superstore— it was a topic continuously brought up in the writers room and worked into dialogue throughout all six seasons.
In the Season 4 episode, "Scanners," Amy (America Ferrera) demonstrates new high-tech scanners to the employees, and a collective paranoia quickly sets in. "So basically these scanners are going to make us obsolete," Garrett (Colton Dunn) says. "This is it, the robots are coming for our jobs," Glenn echoes. And Sandra (Kaliko Kauahi) questions, "Are the scanners going to be listening to everything we say like our phones do?"
Amy hesitantly confirms that the fancy price guns aren't a threat to workers, then contradicts herself by explaining that corporate asked her to cut back on employee hours.
In Season 5's "Carol's Back," Garrett says, "This might be the start of the robot wars," after Robot Glen knocks into shelves and makes a mess of the warehouse. And in Season 6's "Conspiracy," Marcus (Jon Barinholtz) becomes so convinced that corporate is using technology to control workers' minds that he breaks into the store's server room and unplugs everything, which causes the store to shut down.
While Superstore's robot episodes may have seemed comically over the top to viewers, the storylines were a lot closer to reality than people outside of retail may think.
"Superstoretries to be pretty grounded, even though it can get very absurd," said Shanes.
"There's a lot of mixed literature on the threat of automation to retail employees. You can easily read stuff that says that it's taking a lot of jobs and depressing wages. And there's also a bunch of stuff about how the threat of robots is not nonexistent, but it's at least overblown," he explained. "But I do think that when you are a worker, and you're on the floor seeing these things every day, to you it doesn't feel overblown. These people see it as a real threat… so for us it was about getting into the minds of employees and thinking, how would they react to this?"
"There was definitely an element of exposing the extent to which having all these new gadgets with fancy bells and whistles really didn't make anyone's life better — neither the employee nor the customer," Shanes continued. "It was just a desperate attempt to stay relevant and for corporate to feel like it was doing something."
With Robot Glen especially, Superstorewriters worked to capture realistic employee and customer reactions. Glen is seen wearing Halloween costumes and protest shirts throughout the series alongside employees, a callback to real-world Marty robots that are dressed for holidays and were even given masks during the pandemic.
At one point, Cheyenne (Nichole Sakura) also tells her boss, "You should know that robot's a dumbass. Everyone's been saying it." That line took me back to a 2020 interview with a Stop & Shop employee who's been with the company for more than 30 years. When asked about Marty the robot, he said, "He's a pain in the ass. That's not my perspective, it's everybody for the most part."
Superstore's one hopeful robot
The majority of Superstore's robots made life significantly worse for employees. But a virtual greeter that featured a hologram of former Cloud 9 employee, Myrtle (played by the late Linda Porter), ended up becoming a heartwarming reminder of the actor and character after her death in 2019.
Hologram Myrtle Credit: nbc Hologram Myrtle was brought to the store by former district manager Jeff (Michael Bunin) in a misguided attempt to make up for firing Myrtle, who had worked at Cloud 9 since 1987.
"This thing could not be more worthless. It benefits no one and it's just so creepy," Shanes said, describing Hologram Myrtle. "It started as this laughably useless gesture, but then became this really poignant object once Linda passed, which was really tough on the actors and the writers. We loved her."
"It started as this laughably useless gesture, but then became this really poignant object once Linda passed."
The Hologram Myrtle greeter made appearances throughout the series and showed a virtual Myrtle making announcements about in-store deals, products, holidays, and more. Shanes was responsible for creating pages of phrases and random words for Porter to read, which were recorded with the thought that they might be needed at some point down the line. After Porter died, those recordings came in handy. Superstore gave Myrtle a heartwarming sendoff episode that features employees watching all her old virtual greeter footage.
"It was nice to be able to have this mechanism that was built into the fabric of the show to get her back on," Shanes said. "Being able to use that and see her again was really great. It was kind of cool that we had all this footage."
Human Myrtle and Hologram Myrtle bonding. Credit: nbc In this rare instance, a robot left a positive mark on the store and its employees. But it's worth noting that the thing everyone loved about this piece of smart tech was its ability to reproduce the image of a human.
A bittersweet, foreshadowed ending
Superstoreends with a satisfying montage of flash forwards that gives fans closure on all of their favorite characters, but the Cloud 9 store that's been our home for six seasons finally shutters. The store is closed so it can be turned into a fulfillment center, with most of Cloud 9 retail shifted online and the majority of workers losing their jobs. In a way, the employees' fears about technology eventually replacing them were realized.
"I think they always knew what was coming," Shanes said. "They were justified in a lot of ways. Their worst fears came true, and we don't get to see the effect of that on the customer and on the retail experience."
"It's unfortunate that the show was cancelled, because we would have had to show the fulfillment center had we gone forward. And we've watched videos of robots in fulfillment centers — there are sometimes dozens of them in the warehouse, and it's crazy when you see how efficient and well orchestrated it is. I mean, it's like watching a robot ballet," he explained. "But you don't see a single employee in sight."
Ultimately, the characters each found their own happy endings outside of Cloud 9, but Superstore gives us all a distressing look at what the future of retail, customer service, and workplaces could look like if we don't remember to value humans over tech.