During my university years in the early 2000s, I worked part-time with kids at a neighborhood YMCA, which mainly focused on child care. Each year, we hosted a Christmas party for the community.

Most of the people working there were women, so we had to search for a male volunteer to play Santa Claus. We didn't have many choices. John was a tall, twentyish man who was much too thin to be Santa Claus. No amount of stuffing (填充物) could possibly make him look like a common Santa Claus. He was, however, available.

On the day of the party, John put on his costume (戏装) and waited for the children. Many of the children who knew John said, "It's just you, John." If they didn't know him, they said, "You're too thin to be Santa." We thought it might be a bad decision, but then everyone seemed to enjoy their time there, so it didn't really matter.

Then, a lovely little girl entered the room. She was dressed beautifully to see Santa and seemed a little shy. Her mother brought her up to our Santa. "She's deaf," the mother explained." If she could just sit on your lap (大腿) and have her picture taken, she would be happy." John, the skinny Santa, smiled at the little girl, and she sat on his lap.

Then, the skinny Santa began using hand gestures to communicate with the girl fluently, and the little girl smiled happily and answered him quickly with her hands. Their conversation lasted quite a while. When I looked at the mother, I saw that she was crying. In fact, I don't think there was a dry eye in the room. Santa Claus really was there.

There was so much we didn't know about what was happening. This girl had never met John before, and few of us were aware that he knew how to sign—it all added up to a magical surprise.

When Tina Sorg first saw the robot rolling through her supermarket, she thought, "That thing is a little weird." Programmed to detect spills and rubbish in the passages, the robot looked like a printer with a long neck. "It needed personality," said Ms. Sorg, 55, who manages the store's beer and wine department.

So, during one overnight shift, she went out to a nearby arts and craft store, brought back a large pair of googly eyes (塑料眼睛) and, when no one was looking, fixed them on the top of the robot.

The eyes were a hit with managers at her grocery company Ahold Delhaize. They are now a standard feature on the company's nearly 500 robots across the United States.

How this supermarket robot got its funny eyes touches on a serious question: Will robots with friendly faces and cute names help people feel good about devices that are taking over an increasing amount of human work?

Robots are now working everywhere from factories to living rooms. But the introduction of robots to public settings like the grocery store is increasing new fears that humans are being pushed out of jobs. McKinsey, the consulting (咨询) firm, says the grocers could immediately reduce "the pool of labor hours" by as much as 65% if they adopted all the automation technology currently available

Still, most of the retail (零售的) robots have just enough human qualities to make them appear friendly but not too many to suggest they are replacing humans completely.

"There is never going to be this great disaster of job loss," said Peter Hancock, a professor at the University of Central Florida who has studied the history of automation. Throughout history, Hancock added, workers have attacked technologies when they feel threatened, like the 19th-century Luddites, who destroyed machinery in cloth factories. "If you push too hard, too far, people transfer their anger to the technology, and they protest," he noted.

Uggs(雪地靴) are certainly ugly, or at least inelegant. The shapeless boots, pulled on in a hurry, can make anyone look like a slob(懒惰又邋遢的人), which has made them the target of disrespect. It hasn't been hard to find someone strongly condemning them. "Ugg boots are not sexy, " The Independent declared in 2003, "unless you're Mrs. Bigfoot on alone mission across Antarctica to find Mr. Bigfoot." When wearing the boots, a writer of The Gloss complained, "There's nothing to indicate that you don't have square, horrible shoeboxes in place of human feet." In 2015, one coffee shop on Brick Lane in east London even banned ugg­wearers.

And yet, over the years, plenty of strange and unattractive shoes have met with the approval of the fashion establishment. The problem with uggs wasn't that they were ugly; it's that they were common.

But a funny thing happened on the way to fashion's tomb: the universal ugg has not gone anywhere. Uggs have quietly stayed here since their best time. Once you start paying attention, you'll be shocked to discover how many people are still wearing them. They are worn by mothers in town and in the country, by teenagers on Saturday shopping trips and by people in fashion.

Perhaps the secret of uggs' unstoppable success is that, if there is a dividing line between public appeal and private style, it might be a pair of cosy boots. They are certainly comfortable, soft and warm, as if your feet were in the hugging of someone who really loves you. At $150 a pair, they are neither cheap nor entirely out of range. They are casual and indulgent(纵容的).

Somehow uggs, the boots that so many people hate, have managed to challenge the cruel logic of the fashion cycle and carry on whether you approve of them or not.