Why should we protect the existence of jobs that are both unnecessary and make the customer experience worse? Aren't we still in the situation that there are more positions for unskilled labor than applicants?

Because we still live in an economic and societal system that requires everyone to have a job and spend more of their money on useless shit.

If we want to truly want to automate away jobs, we should also change our economic system such that people don't have to work like they do today. Without that we'll just create more jobs for everyone to fill, automating away some while cresting others and all we really sis wash shake things up and stress out those involved.

Make work jobs will keep us all poor.

But less poor than not having a job.