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Freshii’s new ‘virtual cashier’–who works from Nicaragua for $3.75 an hour
- adamkl 4y agohttps://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thestar.com%2Fbusiness%2F2022%2F04%2F26%2Fmeet-the-freshii-virtual-cashier-who-works-from-nicaragua-for-375-an-hour.html https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thestar.com%2Fbusi...
- dmitrygr 4y agoThis was the natural progression. Not sure why the outrage. For those workers there, it’s a pretty good job for a pretty good pay (locally).
- ada1981 4y agoSoon to be remote controlled robots doing all sorts of things benefiting from geo-arbitrage. One of the main reasons capital needs labor to be fixed, so it can exploit wage gradients.
- hemloc_io 4y agoWe originally thought that robotic arms would be used for surgery but instead they'll be used to put tater tots in the microwave for 3$ a day so we don't have to pay service workers. Closer and closer to a cyberpunk future every day lol.
- chitowneats 4y agoThey are used for surgery. The fact that the cost of the technology is decreasing towards the point it can be economically used for tot preparation is a feature, not a bug.
- UncleEntity 4y ago…unless you are the one making tots today and you really love the work.
- thrownblown 4y agoit's not just the wage worker they wont be paying, it's also the taxes and the costs of compliance and hr for large scale orgs.
- failedengineer 4y agoIsn't this a thing on some university campus? I seem to recall robots being driven by Colombians delivering cafeteria food to res.
- ada1981 4y agoWould love to read more about this.
- failedengineer 4y agohttps://www.techidence.com/kiwibots-are-not-fully-autonomous-and-are-controlled-by-operators-in-colombia/ https://www.techidence.com/kiwibots-are-not-fully-autonomous... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Campus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Campus
- aperson_hello 4y agoYeah - That's something like double the average income in Nicaragua ($650/month vs. $340 average and $230 minimum wage). That's a pretty decent local wage and will help drive additional money into the local economy in Nicaragua. There's outrage around taking jobs from locals in Toronto, but you could do that with fully automated ordering as well (I've run into this in multiple fast food settings in recent times!).
- failedengineer 4y agoI find the smartphone app menu model vastly superior to the others. I can take 10 minutes to get an order sorted out (ordering with a family takes far longer than a solo order), and I don't slow down the line of people in onesies-and-twosies who already know exactly what they want. From my perspective, screen-based ordering from multiple kiosks with one or two cashiers is the only way forward, and although from a labour perspective it sucks for locals, it's almost definite that as the number of cashiers required goes down to below one per store, there will be a move to remote models with centralized resources (cashiers assigned to multiple stores) basically acting as intermediaries for the kiosks. It's not even a wage or working conditions issue, it's a labour requirement issue.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoThe phone app model is also better from a public health perspective. Having hundreds of people use the same touchscreen kiosk is a vector for spreading infection, especially since it is used right before eating.
- UncleEntity 4y ago> There's outrage around taking jobs from locals in Toronto… Assuming they can even find someone to fill the position. I know from traveling around the states there is a significant problem in getting people to work in restaurants as they can just go down the street and get an entry level ‘career’.
- aperson_hello 4y ago
- axg11 4y agoWhat do the people who fight these developments expect? Forcing Freshii to employ Canadian workers? I don't see how this is different to any other form of remote work that employs out-of-country workers. I'm not commenting on whether the customer experience is better or worse - that is an optimization that Freshii is making. Perhaps this technology allows them to serve better food from their kitchen, or perhaps it's a simple cost reduction to maximize profit. Consumers can vote with their wallets. If your job is something that can be outsourced via video call then the writing is on the wall for the automation of that job. Today you're competing against a worker in Nicaragua, tomorrow you're competing against a generative machine learning algorithm. Instead of focusing on the employers making these efficiencies, we should be focusing on programmes that help up-skill the replaced workers.
- Beaver117 4y agoI mean we already have so many self checkouts now, does this really help?
- HomeGear 4y agoMcDonald’s already has self-order kiosks. While you can still order from the standard cashier, most customers opt to use the kiosks. I suspect automation will be accelerated by the “great resignation” and the recent push for unions.
- ALittleLight 4y agoI feel you're right about most customers preferring the standard McDonald's cashier - but at the grocery store most customers prefer self-checkout. I wonder what that means. Maybe it's the customization? If all I have to do is scan things, then I can do that about as fast as the professional checker, but if I have to make customizations and select from menu options and so on, maybe it's faster, and certainly easier, to let the professional do it. I wonder if McDonald's, or similar, is taking the audio from their drive-thrus, and the resultant order, and using that to train a machine learning model. If you could train an ML system to be as easy to order from as the standard cashier, and combine that with a screen and an intuitive (and standardized) interface to modify the order, perhaps you could bring more people to self-ordering.
- shric 4y agoIt looks like you misread the parent. They said most customers prefer the self-order kiosks. This has been my experience too.
- ALittleLight 4y agoHuh, I guess I did. Where I live I feel most people ignore the self-order kiosks to order from the cashier.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agoIn India, inr 500/day seems to be the minimum wage these days for unskilled labour. Inr 500= $6.25~ The 3.75/hour is literally more than what many skilled workers make in India. 3.75880=2400 inr. For 20 days =inr 48,000. Annually 576,000.00. To put that into context, In India you are exempt from paying income tax if your annual income is less than inr 500,000. That covers like 95% or something of india population so if Indians get this job, many many people will get to earn a good bread
- frontman1988 4y agoThe only reason Indians or Africans aren't getting this job is time zone difference with the US. There are about 200 million people living on less than 1.9 dollar a day in India.
- dhruval 4y agoAlmost none of those people speak English.
- anusuyaceg 4y ago500,000 income need to pay tax. Income below 250,000 no need income tax.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agoDude. Below 5L its 87a tax relief. No taxes due.
- 6510 4y agoWait.....actual face to face contact with people earning 3.75. This is revolutionary??? Sure, we are sometimes told there are people living on as little as 10 cents per hour. We might even see a picture at times. It's easy to emotionally distance yourself from. Sure, we might donate sometimes and some part of our donation might actually end up with people in need. We sort of have to imagine our good deed had any effect.... why is the CEO earning 300 k?....woah so much spending on advertisement?... O well, what do I know, it might be required. On the other end, one would much rather work and take care of themselves than depend on hand outs. Hand outs are humiliating. Who wants to depend on hand outs?
- hogrider 4y agoSame, it's so downing when I remember I'm working for a spanish client with all spanish coworkers and I'm making 1/10th of spanish minimum wage.
- toss1 4y ago>>“Shipping jobs to an offshore location to pay less than a third of our minimum wage here is just extremely disappointing, and, quite frankly, I’m disgusted a company like Freshii would take this approach,” said Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress. Indeed disappointing from that perspective; yet fighting it is also futile. If they somehow get such a direct remote cashier arrangement outlawed, it'll just be rearranged at most to a set of self-service kiosks with a remote support booth available, or some such further abstraction. Plus, even the remote cashier and support job will also be transient, as the technology improves.
- Jemm 4y agoJust wait until delivery vehicles are driven remotely by people in poorer countries.