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Computer Manages Restaurant Workers
9x320 writes "The chicken restaurant chain Zaxby's has started to use computers with software by Hyperactive Technologies to direct employees what to do and when to do it, and to decide how many should come to work. The computer works through the use of sensors, analysis of historic data, and touchscreens. The article compares the software to that in a science fiction novel published only just a few years ago, except the computer, Manna, also carried a voice synthesizer."
Now we go from management that acts like robots, to robots that... well, you get the idea.
We don't need this kind of heavy-handed management, we need more people who can manage and work with their company's talent - just not tell them to move around, and generally act like robots.
I'd imagine that some chains WILL adopt this technology, but people will not take it well to be ordered around, hired and fired, and generally live their lives around the whims of some computer program.
Management is more than telling people what to do, and when to do it - you need to act as a leader as well as a stablizing force in the workplace. A PC running this slave-driver software does neither.
One of the problems with managers is that they are human and thus irrational. The computer will not play solitaire and go golfing instead of developing the end-year financials. It will not continually direct the weakest employees to the most critical jobs. Hell, it will probably be smart enough not to schedule the weakest employees on the businest days, which would be a fucking miracle compared, apparently, to most fast-food managers. It wouldn't schedule people for a training shift on those days, either.
By all means, let the computer run the people in this case. The people are mostly doing jobs that computer could do better anyway. McDonalds uses french-fry making robots in its busiest locations and they knock the humans right out of the box. The only reason they don't use them everywhere is that they're expensive to install and probably to maintain whereas when part-time workers get sick or sloppy you just shitcan them and bring in another underachiever. Regardless, sooner or later the only people actually working in fast food will be truck drivers and machine repairmen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Its not about how good or how bad this is. Its about how this is CHEAPER.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
But good luck getting a bunch of minimum wage high school emplyees to take directions from a computer. Managers have a hard enough time keeping them in line.
When I worked at a Sonic Drive In in 1985-6, we teens weren't any less lazy than the ones today (despite what we tell our teens now). While flipping burgers and dropping fries, I thought about my TRS-80 Model I and my new Model 100, and had a brainstorm. What if the girl at the microphone had a computer terminal, and hit a key for each food item, and then -- get this -- the order would display on a screen in the kitchen! I think I got a pretty good reception for the idea, since I'd just wowed my co-workers and the 20-something manager with the voice synthesizer I'd built for the Model 100.
But nobody thought it would work:
* The heat and grease would kill the electronics.
* Where do you mount a big ol' TV monitor?
* You'll never be able to train the cooks -- they can barely figure out the french fry timer.
* You'll never be able to train the order-takers -- they can barely figure out the bank of speaker switches.
* Special orders would be impossible.
* What's wrong with the slips of paper with orders written on them (#1 HB +O -P)?
I've often wondered two things. One, shouldn't I be a freakin' gazillionaire by now? Two, what's going to be the Next Big Thing in the minimum-wage kitchen. This may -- or may not -- be it.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
It isn't that it's so difficult - it's that it's so easy. Fast food restaurants are pretty predictable environments for many of the tasks of a manager: Scheduling worker's shifts, determining how much of what needs to be cooked when, organizing inventory, etc. A simple program using a bit of historical data would be able to handle much of that, while an intelligent inventory management system can handle the rest.
For things that a computer cannot handle, such as dispute resolution or angry customers - a change in policy allowing employees a bit more latitude in handling customer complaints or a centralized number for disgruntled customers to contact would handle quite a bit. For disputes, a single trained mediator could handle disputes arising across a wide region. To keep employees from slacking off too much, random inspections (but at least once a week) could be done - someone goes into a place and spends an hour going over a checklist.
From an expense standpoint, this would also be cheaper - no manager salaries, no assistant manager salaries. From an employee standpoint, this would be a win: service employees would be able to take a more direct approach to handling customer issues, and would need to spend less time dealing with stupid dictator manager-guy at what is already a shit job.
Personally, I think this is exactly the kind of place to do this.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
As usual, the devil is in the details. Your little home computers DID have many of the problems you mentioned. They weren't built for the environment, so the environment was going to kill them. And where DO you mount that monitor? Sitting it atop a surface is a good way to get it knocked off. And how will an uneducated user manage to type fast enough to enter the order?
The people who are gazillionaires right now are the ones who found solutions to these problems. They built the ruggedized equipment, created the necessary ceiling mounts, developed the picture-based touch screens for the illiterate employees, and broke down the components of a special order to make it digestable by a computer. They then set out to prove these designs, fighting wave after wave of broken and scarred hardware. Ideas that seemed good at the time didn't work out in practice. Financial losses were heavy with the first models, but the kinks were slowly worked out.
Today, nearly every restaurant in existance uses a digital register system of some sort. All because enterprising individuals invested the hard work and the capital to make it happen.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade