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Of course robots don't serve and cook the food. But at least one front-end person is out of a job. Once upon a time banks experimented with new robot tellers

by brc 13y ago

Of course robots don't serve and cook the food. But at least one front-end person is out of a job. Once upon a time banks experimented with new robot tellers that nobody used, because it was easier to just ask the nice cashier for your money. These robots were even free to use. There was once a time when airport check-in had a couple of weird self-service terminals off to the side...that nobody used. Now with Delta you can't check in with a real person. Rental car companies have got one of those weird check-in robots.... It doesn't matter what the customer wants in the end. If the customer will put up with it and the company can save money, then it will happen.

swang 13y ago
These self-serve kiosks have existed forever and they're not really a recent invention. Yet somehow they are still not very ubiquitous. More efficient? Probably. But when has a business made a fast decision just because something was more efficient? But most likely it is inevitable that fast food will go this route. (Probably not until McDonalds decides to deploy it all across the US), but your statement that at least one "front-end" person is out of a job is not true at all. No one behind the counter is trained only to be a cashier. Pretty much the first thing you do when you work these kinds of jobs is learn how to handle the register because that's the most important thing at a restaurant (getting money from a customer). So how many people is this kiosk actually replacing? Who is to say that having these self-serve kiosks won't just free them up to do something else like cooking food? If freeing them up allows them to serve more customers to make more money then why would the store fire them? There are a lot of things to consider but it seems short sighted to just assume that nixing this task will somehow eliminate an entire spot in the employee roster. Anyways. I just realized how big of a tangent this is, since essentially your example of this was to underlie the fact that people working minimum wage should be appreciative because it can all be automated away, which I disagree with. The whole "ladder" and chopping off the bottom "rungs" is a bit bullshit though since it implies that all the burdens will land upon those same workers.

by brc 13y ago

swang 13y ago

These self-serve kiosks have existed forever and they're not really a recent invention. Yet somehow they are still not very ubiquitous. More efficient? Probably. But when has a business made a fast decision just because something was more efficient? But most likely it is inevitable that fast food will go this route. (Probably not until McDonalds decides to deploy it all across the US), but your statement that at least one "front-end" person is out of a job is not true at all. No one behind the counter is trained only to be a cashier. Pretty much the first thing you do when you work these kinds of jobs is learn how to handle the register because that's the most important thing at a restaurant (getting money from a customer). So how many people is this kiosk actually replacing? Who is to say that having these self-serve kiosks won't just free them up to do something else like cooking food? If freeing them up allows them to serve more customers to make more money then why would the store fire them? There are a lot of things to consider but it seems short sighted to just assume that nixing this task will somehow eliminate an entire spot in the employee roster. Anyways. I just realized how big of a tangent this is, since essentially your example of this was to underlie the fact that people working minimum wage should be appreciative because it can all be automated away, which I disagree with. The whole "ladder" and chopping off the bottom "rungs" is a bit bullshit though since it implies that all the burdens will land upon those same workers.