Back in England, the Puritans were entirely city people. Even those who lived on the countryside were not farmers. So when they came to America, they had to work extra hard to learn farming and adopt that lifestyle, which was made even more difficult by the fact that the soil in the Massachusetts area was hard, rocky and not very fertile.
What is interesting however was that they refused to pick up the farming habits, tools and techniques developed by the settlers who had arrived earlier. Puritans would often complain about the inexplicable justice of "heathen" Americans who were seemingly lazy and were laying around all day, doing maybe a little bit of work here and a little bit there, while still managing to bring in bountiful harvests. Meanwhile, Puritans were breaking their backs from sunrise to sunset working the land and had little to show for it. This behavior came to be known as the "Puritan work-ethic" but in reality it had nothing to do with ethic and everything to do with necessity combined with pure ignorance (i.e. refusing to use more efficient farming techniques).
The history is actually very interesting and has many parallels to your story. You, too, were using superior techniques (i.e. automation) while your coworkers, out of ignorance, shunned it and instead stubbornly continued to do their work manually.
(Another thing that is fascinating was that Puritans were responsible for the banning of many celebrations and holidays, presumably because they themselves had no time to celebrate or take days off from their inefficient work.)