There used to be many grocery and liquor stores that you handed in a list of what you wanted at the counter and the staff collected it for you from behind the counter. With the way stores are locking up items it seems like we're steadily returning to that era.
All grocery stores were once like that, before Piggly Wiggly invented the "self service" model of grocery store in 1916. It could turn out that the self service model is ultimately a historical oddity of the 20th century.
It's funny how old things become new. From the late 19th century (and in declining amounts all the way up until the 1980s), people in the US routinely would order things from the Sears Roebuck catalog and have them delivered. Local merchants used to complain about how this was taking their business. Of course ironically, Sears got out of catalog sales in the 1990s, shortly before e-commerce took off.
