The plight of the automerchants

By Gvurn Oakslab Beilland, economic historian.
For several years the ever present vending machines the empire maintains have been in need of a revamp without much success. The ministry of boredom and ennui reasoned that a good way to compensate for the lifeless vending machines was to implement a lifelike interlocutor without triggering uncanniness in the user.
The latest in this endeavor was the automerchant, a lifelike simulacrum of a trading professional but with major glaring faults. Automerchants were supposed to be automaton shopkeepers that manage a set inventory and cash reserve that is restocked every two days automatically.
However the device presented a catastrophic number of errors that people took advantage of. 
Users learned that automerchants can be "blinded" by having their vision obstructed by buckets, but wouldn't detect hostility. As such they would keep selling their wares while users robbed their storefronts blind. 
The models were also infamous for making rounding errors in the favor of the seller, selling stacks of objects one by one would result in much higher sale prices than one by one as is standard (for example for ammunition). 
In addition to being poor theft dissuadors, the devices had a hard time keeping track of customers still in the shop, and would randomly go to night time charging stations while customers were still in the shop. Sometimes, customers do not get kicked out at closing time. This lets them take things without being considered stealing, which can then be sold back to the very same shopkeeper whose shop was burgled before its very eyes.
Rounding errors were also common. Automerchants work out the total price of goods differently depending on whether a whole stack of items are sold at once or individually. Picking up a large stack of cheap items and adding them to the sold items stack one by one and the merchant will raise the price by the minimum value rounded up to one per item. The user can then buy the whole stack back for just one.
On the other hand, the machines were incredibly violent towards thievery, resorting to violence, sometimes without contacting the proper authorities, and when they did, often harsher response teams were dispatched, such as lethal autonomous weapon drones.
And finally, they sometimes caught fire through unknown means. Users discovered that when set on fire, left alone and reused, automerchants would renew their entire stock and cash reserves, completely bypassing scarcity and resource balancing protocols.
They are still used today, public outcries of affection and reduction in depression levels in the population insure that these machines remain in service. One can only imagine what kind of AI will emerge from these devices when they reach retirement and become CITAI. 
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