10 ms·

Her job is already going away; McDonald's around me have already replaced cashiers with kiosks. Unionizing and requiring $15/hr + full benefits is only going to

• SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  > If the answer to fight for $15/hr or is the answer to go back to school, apply to more jobs, and/or go into a trade? Honest question. Seems to me the goal should be to get a wage where you can afford to go back to school. I don't think it's fair to argue that the kiosks are replacing the cashiers only because they want a $15/hr wage - that's coming whether they want to or not. The only thing that the cashier can do is do their best to collect the resources right now to get out of that situation, and one of those is more earnings.
• larnmar 7y ago
  Honestly I think the solution is emigration. There are places in the world where you can make a living without any particular skill set, but I don’t think the US, or any other first-world country, should really be among them. The US needs immigration reform to bring more high-skilled people into the country, but it also needs emigration reform to find new homes for people who can’t necessarily make a reasonable living in a first-world country.
  • gruez 7y ago
    It sounds to me that you're advocating for sending low class/uneducated/low skilled Americans to developing countries. Is this a fair representation of your proposal?
  • tombert 7y ago
    Please correct me if I misunderstood this, but are you seriously suggesting that the way we solve problems of poverty is to just get rid of the poor people?
    • paggle 7y ago
      That doesn’t seem to be what he’s suggesting at all. It seems like he’s suggesting they relocate to a place where they can make a better living, like my parents did by moving to the US in 1971.
      • tombert 7y ago
        Yes, but it seems like the implication is "relocate to a place where they can make a better living, instead of fixing the problems". Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but looking at the sister comments here seems to indicate that I'm not the only one if I did.
      • michaelmrose 7y ago
        Please describe where you think people ought to go live that will accept poor low skill workers?
  • Sebguer 7y ago
    This is one of the most awful things I've ever read on this site, so thanks for that, I guess.
  • codedokode 7y ago
    Why do you think that people without skills will have better life in developing countries? The salaries there are even lower, for example, in Russia hourly rate in McDonalds is $2-4 depending on the city. The only kind of housing the employee can afford is a room in a shared apartment or sharing a room with a friend or living with parents for free.
    • postsantum 7y ago
      I was about to call you out on this, but decided to check first. The starting salary in McDonalds is less than $2/hour. WTF
    • michaelmrose 7y ago
      If your skill set is cashier you will almost certainly be denied moving even to Russia
      • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Who knows, maybe they want to take advantage of cheap unskilled American labor. Seriously though, countries with labor shortages will allow unskilled people to visit and work for awhile at least (eg Australia).
  • Ancalagon 7y ago
    Wow this is incredibly dystopian to think about. Just imagine, you're born into a country that by no will of your own becomes more and more expensive. You're given an inadequate education to function in this country, so you're forced to work menial jobs to make ends meet, and hope that by some lottery stroke of luck you will somehow develop the time or the money or the skills to have a good life. BUT if you don't get this stroke of luck, you are asked to emigrate away from your friends and family?
    • Humdeee 7y ago
      Can you imagine writing your 12th grade anti-deportation exam, and looking around the room and knowing that the lowest ~15% of your peers will be asked to leave the country? I don't even want to think of the new suicide rate in that world.
      • Scoundreller 7y ago
        Canada might have this problem soon. Study visas are virtually unrestricted. But there are more being issued than immigration pathway seats (which are restricted).
  • echlebek 7y ago
    You've already been dunked on by plenty of other people, but I don't think they did a good job of explaining why you are wrong. The USA has a labour shortage problem. There aren't enough people that want to spend their lives picking fruit, doing maid services, working fast food, and just generally taking care of all the problems that wealthier people pay to have taken care of. You can pay immigrants rock bottom wages to do this work, which is the status quo in the USA today. They accept it because it comes with the promise of a better life one day. If not for them, then for their children. If you want to send all those people packing, then get ready to pay $10 for a tomato. No, robots aren't going to help, either.
  • michaelmrose 7y ago
    Why would an unskilled poor person do better in an environment with worse resources to help them? In a poorer country they would have a decreased cost of living but a decreased earnings and fewer family and friends. I cannot comprehend the thought process that leads you to come to this conclusion. Example my wife is disabled we live on my very modest income due to costs of life and medical care we have zero wealth of any kind and a well maintained 2004 car. I think I have $13 in the bank right now. Where ought I move to increase my fortunes and who would let me who would also pay for my wife's medicine.
    • larnmar 7y ago
      To be fair I never said it would be to the advantage of the people we relocate, but it would be to the advantage of the rest of us. Imagine a society with no poverty, no homelessness, next to no crime, etc.
      • michaelmrose 7y ago
        It's not that it would be to their disadvantage it would ruin and kill them. Poverty often follows medical issues which then wouldnt see any help. Compare total mortality with projected mortality and you can figure out how many exactly you are murdering. To facilitate the operation you will have to gut civil rights setting precedents with horrible implications for everyone's freedom. If you can send someone to a foreign land because they are poor, lame, or merely unsuccessful removing all of their rights merely because their fellow citizens will be richer for it then what rights do YOU have left that are inalienable? Presumably your rules don't apply to all those who have no wealth or income who depend on others so now dependants are slaves who need fear losing their status if they fall out of favor. We can apply the same logic to the working poor who now must fear deportation as a result of losing their asses when terminated. Spousal abuse and labor mistreatment will rise substantially. Then we must ask what nation would willingly serve as our ashtray of undesirables. Your idea is like an endless cornacopua of horrible implications. The last time I read a blueprint for a worse outcome it was written by George Orwell.
  • timwaagh 7y ago
    i think you're not wrong in the sense her living standard would be higher in a lot of ways in emerging economies. it does leave the question where the us should source its service workers from.
• reaperducer 7y ago
  McDonald's around me have already replaced cashiers with kiosks Here, too. But usually half of them are broken in one way or another, like the touch screen doesn't respond or the receipt printer is out of paper, or something I saw in a TV commercial isn't in the menu structure, or the pricing isn't the same as in an ad, etc... These are things a cashier is still needed for. As an aside, I find it curious that my local McD only got the kiosks maybe two years ago, but I used them in Germany almost 20 years ago. They are fantastic for when you can't speak the local language. Edit: Is the answer to fight for $15/hr or is the answer to go back to school, apply to more jobs, and/or go into a trade? The vast majority of McD cashiers I see are in no position to go back to school or change jobs. They're too old, low-skilled, physically constrained, or low-education to do that. I work in an organization that deals with the poor a lot. If you're 50 years old and only have a fifth-grade education and need to survive, you don't have the time to go to school. You're probably working two or three jobs just to have a place to live.
  • city41 7y ago
    > These are things a cashier is still needed for. Is a cashier needed, or just an on call tech who oversees a dozen restaurants? I would imagine working on the kinks in the kiosks and improving their reliability to be doable.
    • reaperducer 7y ago
      Is a cashier needed, or just an on call tech who oversees a dozen restaurants? And while the store waits a couple of days for the $75/hour tech to show up, $10,000 walks out the door. Better to pay for a $15 cashier.
      • city41 7y ago
        Doesn’t that imply automation isn’t worth it? If you need full human redundancy, why bother? I think you’re a bit pessimistic on the tech’s response time too.
    • asdff 7y ago
• Phenix88be 7y ago
  > is the answer to go back to school Without money ? My girlfriend was a cashier. Now she's studying law because my job can provide for us and we have free healtcare in belgium. Otherwise it would be impossible ! > apply to more jobs That basically mean more slavery since she will apply for job that pay like McDonalds. It wont solve any problem. > and/or go into a trade I don't understand what your mean here.
  • x2f10 7y ago
    It is not impossible in the United States. This individual qualifies for both Mcdonald's tuition assistance ($2,500 / year) and FAFSA. FAFSA will more than likely pay for her schooling + books if she's starting at a community college.
    • Phenix88be 7y ago
      > This individual qualifies for both Mcdonald's tuition assistance ($2,500 / year) Is it a real thing ? Or just something they do to have a good image ?
      • Scoundreller 7y ago
        Both? Take up may not be big.
  • TurkishPoptart 7y ago
    "Going into a trade" here means to start a training/apprenticeship program to be a carpenter, plumber, electrician, welder, etc. Probably not a viable option for the woman ITA.
  • michaelmrose 7y ago
    He means he imagines that skilled trades people are absolutely willing to pay random people off the street to learn instead of working for companies who want people who have already spent 10s of thousands to pay schools to learn. He thinks poor people could be electricians helpers tomorrow instead of mcds cashiers if they only applied themselves.
• dpq 7y ago
  I suspect we'll see high-paying jobs getting automated even faster, so her newly acquired skills may become obsolete before she graduates (also, she won't be able to afford the tuition fees). I don't think there's an answer to this problem: Nash equilibria cannot be easily beaten unless someone is imposing the rules and enforcing compliance... which probably won't happen.
  • michaelmrose 7y ago
    Lots of skilled trades won't be automatable because of diversity of operation and location. For example plumbers.
    • Scoundreller 7y ago
      There’s no shortage of companies coming out with products that constantly reduce the need for expensive profession X. On the residential side, you have more solderless fittings, YT videos and even pre-fab bathrooms in a box. The plumbers themselves will be fine as they’ll just reduce training seats, but that makes it harder to become one.
• paggle 7y ago
  The price/performance ratio of kiosks etc will fall so fast that the difference between $8/hr and $15/hr will only make a 5 year difference in the adoption of the kiosks.
• Slartie 7y ago
  It's not like they can replace human personnel that easy. Ordering kiosks are the low-hanging fruit, and then comes a long, long stretch of nothing, because it turns out that developing McDonalds-compatible robots capable of preparing burgers and packing up meals is about as easy as developing actually-working autonomous vehicles. And about as expensive. It's probably easier to automate the managers away. Meaning the McDonald's of tomorrow will surely rely on a horde of human personnel for food preparation and related simple tasks for the foreseeable future. But of course it's kind of convenient if people at least think that their job can be automated tomorrow: that makes it easier to make them sell their workforce for peanuts today. You just need to hope that they don't realize that it doesn't make a difference once the day comes on which they can be automated away - it won't matter then whether they get $9.50 or $15 an hour, the automation will be cheaper regardless. But by demanding $15 now they will at least have earned a lot more during the decades until that day finally arrives.
  • Aloha 7y ago
    I think people without any real background in the difficulties of automating purely human tasks (particularly manual ones), consistently underestimate the cost, difficulty and expense of maintenance for said automation. I used to work in a kitchen, so maintaining food service grade of cleanliness on robots, sounds frighteningly expensive to me.
    • stickfigure 7y ago
      On the other hand, you can walk into a Krispy Kreme and watch the machine work. There's no reason that machine couldn't make french fries with a few changes. Maybe everything won't be automated all at once, but if the economic incentive is there, it will happen. Pizza making robots are already a thing. There's no reason the shake machine can't measure its output to the cup instead of pulling a lever; drink machines in many places already do this. Dispensing the cup too is not a big step.
      • Scoundreller 7y ago
        McDonalds already has those. French fry hoppers automatically filling baskets from a frozen mini-closet. Out comes fresh fries. Same for the cups that they can use in drive-throughs. I think it’s up to the franchises to buy/install them. Depends on volume/space whether its worthwhile/possible. Or they just push it to the customer to do it.
• boomboomsubban 7y ago
  >Is the answer to fight for $15/hr or is the answer to go back to school, apply to more jobs, and/or go into a trade? Honest question So if everybody in this situation goes back into school, applies for more jobs, and/or goes into a trade, what do you think will happen? Do you think minimum wage jobs are only being offered because people aren't trying to get higher paid jobs?
• nkrisc 7y ago
  They should take those displaced cashiers and speed up the drive through line or clean up the tables or any of the other vast number of things a human can still do (and from my experience needs doing) at a McDonald's.
• rb808 7y ago
  That's good right? Increased productivity, she'll still get a job somewhere on the higher wage. Win win win.
  • chillacy 7y ago
    The later part isn't guaranteed, in fact unskilled labor lost to automation (jobs requiring high school education) has only been getting worse and worse over time. What happened to the days when you could get a middle class lifestyle with a high school degree with a factory job?
• WorldMaker 7y ago
  An interesting reminder: kiosks don't eliminate the labor of the cashier, they pass the labor on to the consumer. The same amount of labor overall is still happening in that building, just more of it is unpaid.
  • mulmen 7y ago
    I have always done the work of expressing my desired food item. Without a kiosk that desire gets repeated by another person to a computer. With a kiosk that repetition does not happen, the order is directly expressed to the machine. It appears to me there is 50% less labor with a kiosk.
    • michaelmrose 7y ago
      This would be great if every store didn't have a different uniquely bad ui
    • shantly 7y ago
      The McDonald’s kiosks require more work than telling a cashier your order, IME. They’re crap.
      • mulmen 7y ago
        The question is if it requires more effort than using the cash register. I agree the kiosks are a bit harder for a customer to use, I accidentally ordered something like 80 chicken nuggets the first time I used one, simply because I tried to add extra sauce. I still prefer them because it's easy to have a bunch of kiosks which means there are shorter lines.
      • city41 7y ago
        They can be improved, a really nice to use kiosk is definitely achievable. I prefer the kiosks, much in the same way I prefer self checkout at grocery stores.
        • badpun 7y ago
• mrguyorama 7y ago
  Meanwhile those ordering kiosks still require about the same amount of cashier staff as before since they are such a terrible and confusing experience to use. Just another reason to not go to mcdonalds I guess
• michaelmrose 7y ago
  How as an adult do you do this while investing all your energy in staying afloat
• bluedino 7y ago
  The kiosk is in your pocket. Every fast food place has an app now that you can order with before you even get to the restaurant.
• tzs 7y ago
  > McDonald's around me have already replaced cashiers with kiosks My local McD just got them, as part of an extensive remodel. By "extensive", I mean that early this year they tore the whole place down and built a new one there, which opened near the end of October. I've used the kiosks when I can, but for most of November I had to use the human cashiers. Why? Because the kiosks insisted on applying a "discount" that actually raised the price! The cash registers used by the human cashiers would also apply that discount, but the interface there allows the cashier to remove it. The kiosks (and the mobile app which also applies it) do not allow removal. On the one hand, I am impressed that their software is automatically applying discounts instead of making the customer manually ask for it. I've seen at other places things like a parent order a burger and a drink and their child order fries and a drink, and unless the cashier notices that this is cheaper as a combo (burger, fries, drink) plus another drink, it will be rung up at full price. On the other hand, come on! It's pretty obvious that if you are going to be looking for discounts to apply, the software needs to have a check to make sure that the total with the discount is not more than the undiscounted price and if it is not apply the discount. This situation came about at my local McD because to celebrate being at the same location for 40 years, they rolled back prices on several items to '80s level for the month of November. Among the items rolled back were Sausage McMuffins, to $0.79. Sausage McMuffins and Sausage Burritos are part of the "any 2 for $3" discount. So if your order included two Sausage McMuffins, or included one Sausage McMuffin with one Sausage Burrito, it would decide to apply the 2 for $3. In both cases that raised the price. A couple times that month I wanted two Sausage McMuffins and a Sausage Burrito. To order that at the kiosk or on the app and get the correct discount ($0.79 for the McMuffins, regular price for the Burrito) could only be done by doing it is 3 separate orders! (Well, I suppose it could be done on one order and then selecting cash payment...that prints a receipt that you take to a human cashier, who can then recall the order at their register and collect payment. I assume that they can modify the order at that point to remove the 2 for $3).
• topologistics 7y ago
  I have toyed with the idea of making it illegal for companies to replace people with robots and not give those people some other job to do. On the other hand, I have pretty strong feelings about regulation tending to favor large industries even when it is intended to restrict them, because they can afford expensive lawyers who find loopholes and other ways for them to exploit the law.