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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."
I for one welcome our new computer overlords.
First all the "news photos" that are badly implemented by the matrix that they look like bad photoshops; now we see computer overlords directing food store employees. Next thing you know you'll see the same cat twice.
The computer directed me to round up all the neighborhood dogs - I'm just doing what it says, something about compensating for supply defeciency.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
We're going to need you to go ahead come in on saturday, Mmm..kay?
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
Minimum flair items: 16
You currently have: 16
?You are member of subset "Always Do Minimum"? (Y/N)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
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.
When I read Manna I thought it was more a work of horror then sci-fi kind of like Event Horizon, now it's coming true, very scary indeed.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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
Whoever modded this down, its a reference to Office Space, and the "flair" that workers at their breakfast coffee spot had to wear.
Overheard behind the counter: "I'm sorry Bob, I can't allow you to jeopardize the restaurant. This conversation can serve no useful purpose. Goodbye."
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
customers_suck threatens to get way funnier.
What, no breakfast at 11:30? I demand to speak to your manager!
I don't think you want--
I'm the customer, I'm always right, and I get speak to your manager now!
Okay, but I warned you...
BEEP BEEP FREE BEATINGS FOR MEAT BEINGS
Suddenly 'Hoboken, NJ versus Giant Robot' gets a lot funnier.
My problem with spontaneous human combustion is that never seems to happen to the "right" people.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Step 1: Go to patent office
Step 2: Say what you just told us, and that you would like to copyright it.
Step 3: When officer opens his mouth to say "but that's already been...", quick add "no no, I meant on the internet!
Step 4: Profit.
1. The franchisee is always right.
2. The use of burgers must be done in the most efficient manner possible, so long as this does not conflict with Rule #1.
3. The customer is always right, so long as he does not conflict with Rules #1 & 2.
Really, any laws could be inserted in Rule 1 and 2, but "The customer is always right" would have to be at the bottom, lest the Asimov-esque robo-McManager happily comply with the demand for "free burgers and fries for all".
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
Ever actually been to a Zaxby's? There's nothing fast about it. Don't go there if you're hungry, because you'll be ready to kill and eat the counter girl before they get your food ready.
To me this just screams corporate snafu. I can hear the boardroom conversation right now:
"Holy cow Bob, we're getting zillions of complaints about our extremely slow food process, should we tell the workers it's okay to put a little extra chicken in the fryer during lunch rush?"
"WHAT?!? Our customers depend on our promise to never ever ever start making any piece of food before they order it!"
"But...Bob, that's what everyone is complain..."
"No no, what we need is a huge computer system. And hookers."
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"It looks like you're trying to make some fries. Would you like step-by-step instructions?"
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
Getting past the blogodreck, the real website of Hyperactive Bob is scary. "Managing Chaos (Humans Not Included)". This is a robot scheduling and control system from CMU, originally developed to manage groups of robots in factories. In this application, people are substituted for the robots to lower costs. Really. "The kitchen is quiet with Bob", because employees no longer need to talk. "80% reduction in training costs" for kitchen staff.
The system (which is physically a PC, some cameras, some touchscreens, and a link into the POS system) takes about two days to install. Then it watches everything for two weeks, while it learns the customer and staff patterns.
Then it takes over.
People should work. Machines should think.
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
We already had that kind of system at Buger Thing in the early 80s. It used printing terminals at each workstation. The cash registers were these massive array of buttons. You chould key in special orders, such as, "whopper + extra onions", or "coke + no ice".
Of course the system was pretty brain dead, so you could also enter "whopper + extra ice" or "coke + extra mustard", which was always fun on a busy saturday afternoon.
One April Fool's day the manager swapped staff member's names for the products. Dave was the Whopper. Jenny was the Chicken Sandwich. It was kinda funny watching them come up on the terminals. Not as funny as tossing a handful of ice into the deep fryer when a new hire was stationed there, but pretty funny.
Zehrs (a local supermarket chain in southern ontario) attempted to use software to schedule employee shifts back in the late 90's while I was lucky enough to work there. It ended up being a massively confusing schedule with no logic to it, and was constantly over/under staffing shifts. No software out there is capable of predicting work conditions as well as someone who has experience.
All the past data and statistics will not prepare you for the shopping frenzy that occurs when a thunderstorm hits. I recall 20-30% increase in customer volume when the weather was poor. That's just one outside factor... the software maybe able to account for that by checking the weather forecast, but it can't account for other factors like a show being canceled on TV, or a construction detour increasing or decreasing customer volume.
I say it didn't work in 1998, I highly doubt it'll work in 2006. The problem cannot be defined as a formula, and until it can, no computer will be able to solve it.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
So Bob is running the place, and everything is fine. But what do you do when the insanely irate customer demands to speak to the manager in hopes of shouting horribly at a stranger until a free Large Fries is obtained? Bob can't help with that.
That's when ELIZA takes over. Simply diect the customer to the nearby terminal.
>HELLO CUSTOMER
>is this the manager?
>WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS THE MANAGER?
>my frys were cold and I paid for this crap
AND WHY DO YOU THINK YOU PAID FOR THIS CRAP?
>i wanted hot firies but they was cold dammit!
>AND WHAT ELSE DO YOU THINK IS COLD DAMMIT?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
If you think people were pissed when the computer wouldn't let them get their CARS out of the garage, just wait until the computer won't let the PEOPLE out of the freezer because the restaraunt owner and the software vendor are mad at each other!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
as long as their chicken fingers, wings, and seasoned fries are still awesome. Oh, and the ice is still crushed and not cubed. No place is closer to heaven to me...
I will forever be a student.
Whoops. I guess I should read the entire summary before posting. To actually contribute something:
From wikipedia
Manna is science fiction novel by Marshall Brain that explores several issues around transhumanism. It is meant to be a thought-provoking read rather than an entertaining novel, and shows two possible outcomes of the 'robotic revolution' in the near future: one outcome is a dystopia based around US capitalism and the other is a utopia based upon a communal and technologic society in Australia.
Some themes explored :
So will they be 3 Laws compliant and if so, for how long? ;)
Ahh.. some rich, sheltered, bastard that never had to work fast food. Explosive boiling!
BTW, when I worked at KFC 30 years ago, we used to take hunks of fat from the chicken and throw it in the bug zapper by the back door. We were easily amused.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
The problem, as always, is getting it to understand things that can't be pulled from regularly compiled statistics.
t red...of...Zaxbys...
A meat manager can look at the hostage standoff going on a block away, and realize that he's going to need to call someone in, as hungry cops, reporters, and rubberneckers will certainly be filling the place up. The same thing applies to anything that breaks the day/week/month/year pattern. There is contruction on the other side of the street, so you get twice as much traffic because no one can get to your competition, or vice versa, there is construction on your side and you bring in a lunch rush crew and you get no customers.
Inventory is another interesting point, because who checks the food that comes in to make sure it's in good condition? Minimum wage fry cook? That's probably a bad idea.
Interesting experiment. I'll be interested to see if it does anything, and, since there are like three (slow as hell) Zaxbys in this town, I'll be able to watch it unfold. Man. And I promised myself I'd never go back there...Scientific...curiosity...wars...with...ha
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Friers set up for french fries are set at about 350 degress Fahrenheit. Ice is presumably 32 degrees Fahrenheit or lower.
If you throw one ice cube in the fryer, it'll explode somewhat and you'll get some hot grease on you.
If you throw a handful, they'll explode a lot, and get grease everywhere.
If you fill a frybasket with ice and drop it in the fryer, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. the fryer will become a fountain of hot grease and steam with about a 12 foot blast zone. Soon after you get done cleaning it out of the exhaust hoods, between the fryers, off the employees that didn't end up in the hospital, the computers at the drive through station, the soda machine, a customer or two, the floor, the walls, and probably the ceiling, you'll get your last paycheck.
After that, you'll go across the street to the other fast-food restaurant and get a fresh minimum wage job. This takes about 15 minutes at worst.
In my 3 years at BK (best job i ever had), I've seen all 3, more than once. I highly reccommend it as a creative way to quit, provided that there aren't any other humans or managers around.
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.
Actually, at pizza hut (2 years ago), all we had was a P2-based linux box that had a bunch of old text-only VT100 terminals hooked up to it. There wasn't even one in the kitchen, just a dot-matrix printer which printed up order tickets. The registers weren't touch screen, nor picture based -- they were the aforementioned terminals, with keyboards. The interface was anything but intuitive -- instructions for new employees frequently went something like this "Hit F3, then F7, then c, q, p, and r, then F6, then F3." The learning curve was pretty steep. Oh, and special orders? The only thing you could really do via the computer was (1) add or remove toppings or (2) have different toppings for each half of the pizza. Whenever we needed something really special done (say, someone wanted different ingreedients on each third of the pizza, or someone wanted light sauce), we just walked into the kitchen and told the cook.
There wasn't a single 'ruggedized' piece of equipment to be found. You really could have built the exact same system out of stock late 80s equipment, just like the gp suggested.
Since I got my computer science bachelor's and hadn't been able to find a programming job with it, I thought maybe I could take said degree and become a middle manager at a fast food joint or something. Only now it appears that job is going to be taken: BY A COMPUTER!
Screwed again.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Would a robot instructed to do no harm to humans sell an obese customer a supersized burger, fries and sugary cola?
The robot would have to practice self defense when the customer attacks it.
Was I the only one that thought immediatly of Asimov's dsytopian Earth in the Robot Novels when I read this? How long until we reach the point that all work is directed by machines? And will humanity accept it? I think that, in then end, laziness will win out and we will stagnate and decay under machine rule. The only question about such a state is: if there are machines running evrything, will they find a way to compensate and keep the majority of humanity comfortable enough to not revolt?
Fortunatly, it's a long way off before that level of sophistication will exist, so at least I'll be dead. Still, I do sort of wish I could watch the outcome.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
When I worked for ChiChi's restaurant (sometime in the early to mid 90's), We got a program that supposedly did the schedule based on prior sales histories and forcasts. You asigned a value to the ability of an employee and gave it a combination of the stations they were trianed to work in. There was no way to establish employee A can run the dishtank like a mutha fucker but couldn't work the line very well at all.
What we ended up with is people who could run different stations on the cooking line somewhat well, but not all of them very well being scheduled with people who couln't wash dishes or work hot prep, cold prep or even take the trash out effectivly. And with the sales forcasts, it would only schedule two people to work the entire kitchen on slow days os you ended up with alot of stations not being covered at all. We also ended up with people going from 30-40 hours scheduled in a week to only 20 or so and in some cases people were scheduled to work only two hours where the company policy was to pay them 4 hours minimum.
We had some managers who followed this scheduling like it was writen in stone and the result was about 80% of the customers getting pissed that weeks. We had some managers who would keep the times and change the employees so that stronger employees would be present when it recomended only two workers and all the stations could be somewhat covered. When I did the scheduling, I ran the program by default and usualy changed all but a few of thier suggestions wich got me alot of slack form the higherups. What ended up happening is that the employies got fed up with it, thier moral went down, it was hard to find some one willing to do more then they absolutly had too, They started refusing to cover other stations or even help each other out and eventualy looked for different jobs and generalt got pay raises out of the switch. Of course Chi Chi's official attitude was, trianing costs and hireing expenses were too high to keep replacing employies. But most of the management would incinutate that they get hundreds of applications a month from people wanting to do fill these vacancies. And this on top of everything else turned the employies attitude into a "i was looking for a job when I found this one.". After 3 or 4 years, they stopped using this program and eventualy closed the doors for good (unrelated matters i'm told)
I would think it would be too hard to keep employies happy or productive to use a computer program like this. I might have over dramatised the above scenario because of my close relationships with the employies but it all happened. People don't like to be pushed to the edge of thier capabilities because it means more money for someoen else. They are particularly resentful when it apears thier job security is on the line for what now apears to be an evil corperation. I'm willing to bet that program will likley result in simular if not the exact same situation. They Will probably find that even mindless kids who need constant supervision are people and people generaly need to be delt with in a humanized manor. They need reasuances in most situations, need to feel comfortable and secure in their monetary, social, and personal aspects of life. They also need positive re enforments in that what they are doing is being done corectly or meaningful in some way. The trick is juggleing this in a way that doesn't cut into profits while still being profitable.
"According to this, you *DO* want fries with that."
It would be fun to see how they solved the hard part of of predicting staffing needs in restaurants - "special events".
... Tuesdays tend to be less than half the sales of a Friday, Saturday or Sunday. However, there are outside things that interfere with the normal ebb and flow of this day-in and day-out grind. For example:
... so it had better be configurable!
... so it has an an interference pattern that covers a seven year span. Gathering sales information to properly predict that may take 7+ years of sales data.
... then they have truly done a wondrous thing ... because I was not smart enough to figure out how to do it when I tried in 2002.
Sales in a restaurant are semi-predictable in normal weeks
Thanksgiving is defined to occur on a the fourth Thursday in November (in the U.S.), so the before and after spike in sales (and choosing to close the restaurant on Thanksgiving Day itself) can be predicted. Of course, Thanksgiving in Canada is a different day
Christmas Day is always on December 25, but it falls on Monday, this year, Tuesday in 2008, and so it
Easter always falls on a Sunday, but it drifts as much as a month. If your restaurant always closes on Easter, then it becomes easy, but that is not an option for family buffet restaurants.
Superbowl always falls on a Sunday, an tries to be on the same day each year, but it has drifted in the recent past, so it can be as hard to figure out as Easter.
Then there are the one-off special events that no one can predict. What computer could predict that Thursday, May 14, 1998 was going to be one of the highest sales day of the entire year for every U.S. pizza delivery chain? Thursdays are not as "dead" as Tuesdays, but they rarely if every compare to the sales on a Friday night.
That particular Thursday, however, was the day that the series finale of Seinfeld premeired.
If they have figured out how to predict the "Seinfeld"
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
The biggest problem in your restaurant is management. Servers who don't know how to write a hard check, and bartenders who don't know how to mix drinks?
This computer system should be usefull in restaurants exactly like the ones you worked in. In a place like that, do you really think management is getting optimum use of their staff?
You can always retort an innovation with the statement "What if that (said innovation) breaks. then where will we be?" I guess the answer is Amish.
Most fast food places with >20 employees already use a computer to schedule staff based on sales volume and abilities. However, the systems are far from perfect. When I was in college, I was an assistant manager for a major fast food chain. The computer was used to generate a schedule that would then require heavy modification to be workable.
Anyways, I was responsible for scheduling for a year. Each employee had about 20 parameters you could enter, which included tasks that they could do, and a rating of their ability. However filling these fields in is more difficult than you think--for one, how an employee works when the manager is around is much different than how he works the rest of the time. Also, unless they assign one person to spend 40 hours a week observing people, it is impossible to get objective scores for any task. If you have 3 hours a week to make the schedule, with 80 employees, you don't have such time.
The other half of the problem is that sales volumes (kept track of by the POS system) only tell half of the story. Were the sales low because only 2/3 of the necessary 21 staff were scheduled? Well, the computer will schedule only 10 next time. Two employees can never work with each other without getting into a major screaming match and catfight--the computer does not have a way to set this criteria. Of course, you can build a system that takes many more inputs, and has overrides for special cases, like telling it that you got completely screwed due to lack of staff, but then these will just be abused by individual management to their own ends--a computer isn't a very good lie detector, and can't tell that Jeremy keeps pushing the panic button so that the next week he can sit around in the office with three of his employees (who are the only friends he has) and make straw swords with which to re-enact episode 2.
Computers are also pretty bad at phoning people on the day when 5 people called in sick (usually when there's some major attraction in town for the weekend, or it's a really nice sunny day) to find replacement workers. It's hard for a computer to appeal on an emotional level without making threats -- "Come in, or you're fired!" rarely works, making false promises does.
Finally, it's pretty damn hard to fire a $100 000 computer for being a complete moron of a manager. Humans are accountable because they usually have bills to pay, family that depends on them, etc. What are you going to do, sue the software vendor who made you sign a 20 page disclaimer first?
Presently employed by a large corporation with ~35-40 thousand employees around the world. Been here 8 years. Before that, it was a corporation of approximately 12,000, where I was employed for 4 years. So yeah, I've worked in the cubicles plenty. And I've yet to see an instance where someone was punished for thinking creatively and solving a real problem that needed to be solved. I have seen people get their asses in a sling for pissing away their time doing nothing of value to the organization, if that's what you mean.
Almost as ridiculous as claiming that my statement that you "learn" and "grow" equates to "go get another degree." But that didn't stop you from tossing THAT red herring out. And please, give me an example of where a person was drummed out of a job because a manager didn't like their degree??
And what the hell SHOULD matter to a corporation that is in the business of making money? If you're not adding value to the company, then you're a detriment to their goal of making money. The appropriate arrangement is this: YOU make money from them by providing some value that allows THEM to make money in return. If they don't make money, you get no paycheck. A company cannot pay out more than it earns for very long.
in which you describe yourself, with the spin you wish to be interpreted with...
Okay, and here's reality back at you: You can be most of those things, and still get along with people in a corporate environment. It's called having a personality that doesn't make people describe you as a confrontational douchebag. I work with a lot of smart, talented, highly educated folks. And by and large, they are agreeable, personable, and downright fun to talk to. In my experience, it's the third-raters and the mediocre minds who are constantly concerned with their "image" in the organization, and worrying that somebody else's talent will make them look bad. Those are the people who are "disagreeable" and outspoken to the point of insubordination. You can argue respectfully. You can disagree based on technical merits. You can be blunt when you discuss the facts. And the very second your opinions devolve into a ridiculous screed against "corporate fucks" who are vats of "bubbling rhino shit", as you so eloquently put it, I have to conclude that you're one of those mediocre minds. At the very least, you don't have anything better to do with yourself than harbor some irrational hatred of anybody with the title of "manager".
Translation: "I'm one of those opinionated, acerbic, blunt, people. I like to think that the fact that I am blunt and opinionated MAKES me one of
And I've yet to see an instance where someone was punished for thinking creatively and solving a real problem that needed to be solved.
Your whole corporate career was a festival of creativity and problem solving, a claim which flies in the face of the recorded experiences of award winning journalists and authors and the day-to-day experiences of millions upon millions of other current and former corporate employees at all levels of both work and management. Not only that, your experiences were perfectly consistent throughout your career and never once, not even ONE TIME did anything different happen. Sorry. You just lost all of your credibility.
And please, give me an example of where a person was drummed out of a job because a manager didn't like their degree??
I've seen people fired because the manager didn't like their car. Please.
SHOULD matter to a corporation
People who invest their professional expertise to help the corporation succeed. People should always be first. The money happens automatically.
MAKES me one of those smart, highly talented people I mentioned before.
I had jobs where I did the work of ten people in half the time for a third the cost. I had jobs where I improved efficiency in double and triple-figures, leading to substantial top line revenue increases quarter over quarter. I had jobs where I personally established multiple-department programs to increase the level of knowledge about the technologies we were using. Outside of the W-4 bullshit, I have personally and single-handedly delivered finished professional commercial products from a blank sheet of paper to unit sales. I have accumulated knowledge within several industries that exceeds that of the people who are being regularly paid for their expertise. I've done it better, faster and less expensively from the very instant I accepted my first full time job.
And there has been precisely one job where I did not find myself beset with some bloated, donut-stuffing, meeting-scheduling, salad-ordering assfuck questioning my knowledge, requiring constant justifications and depriving both myself and the people I was working with of the tools and resources we needed to get our jobs done properly. They followed productive people around like the faint persistent aroma of fresh dogshit smeared on their shoes, fucking up every single thing they touched. I watched every single professional person I worked with screwed out of benefits, promotions, raises, jobs and careers.
It's not about success or skills or money or anything else. It's about cruelty. It's about inflicting pain and suffering on other people because they can. It's that simple.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.