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Automation Coming To Restaurants, But Not Because of Minimum Wage Hikes
dcblogs writes: McDonald's this week told financial analysts of its plans to install self-ordering kiosks and mobile ordering at its restaurants. This news prompted the Wall Street Journal to editorialize, in " Minimum Wage Backfire," that while it may be true for McDonald's to say that its tech plans will improve customer experience, the move is also "a convenient way...to justify a reduction in the chain's global workforce." Minimum wage increase advocates, the Journal argued, are speeding along an automation backlash. But banks have long relied on ATMs, and grocery stores, including Walmart, have deployed self-service checkouts. In contrast, McDonald's hasn't changed its basic system of taking orders since its founding in the 1950s, said Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic, a research group focused on the restaurant industry. While mobile, kiosks and table ordering systems may help reduce labor costs, the automated self-serve technology is seen as an essential. It will take the stress out of ordering (lines) at fast food restaurants, and the wait for checks at more casual restaurants. It also helps with upselling and membership to loyalty programs. People who can order a drink refill off a tablet, instead of waving down waitstaff, may be more inclined to do so. Moreover, analysts say younger customers want self-service options.
"automation backlash" aka increased productivity is fantastic for the economy .
I mean, maybe I'm just harking back to a past that exists only in my mind, but I seem to recall a time when the journal actually covered business in its pages, rather than regurgitating neoclassical economics talking points all-day every day, attempting to construe every single negative thing as a result of failing to religiously adhere to its principles.
Am I misremembering, and imagining the shift from kinda disagreeably right-leaning to fanatical?
This goes further to demonstrate that automation will take over many menial jobs in my lifetime. This leaves us with a problem - what to do with all the unwanted and unskilled labor? Skilled worker's salaries have not kept up with productivity gains, as such there is no chance they could support service-based economy to offer unskilled workers a living wage.
Sadly, the likely outcome is drop in the quality of life for everyone involved.
At a drive through, being able to fire up an app, hit "send" and have the actual order I want would be nice. I tend not to hit fast foot places, but it would be nice to get something that is somewhat close to what I ordered at the pickup window.
Some dine-in restaurants are experimenting with this as well. Chili's has their Ziosk devices, and those are nice because paying for a tab is just a couple taps and a card swipe, rather than having to flag down the waitstaff, especially if one is in a hurry.
Of course, this isn't a "one size fits all", but it can be useful.
Dammit, I want my 80s cyberpunk sit at the table, order from computer (bonus points for miniature holographic waiter who appears in middle of table), and food is delivered out of hidden conveyor system experience!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
without getting a snide look from the restaurant staff for ordering a big mac _and_ a quarter pounder...
touch: cannot touch `this': Permission denied
Computers don't screw up your order, make you wait unnecessarily while they do coke in the bathroom, pretend like they are your friends, or ask for a tip.
Really sit-down restaurants as a frivolous luxury and could go away without society losing much of anything.
Oh, wait they would automate them anyway, they'd just take a couple more years to do it.
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The faster we automate the economy the faster we address the root of the problem. One day, almost all jobs will be automated. How will we deal with the makers and takers debate? Delaying the inevitable economic/political revolution doesn't help anyone.
Good staff knows how to upsell. That extra appetizer, dessert, beer, etc. Will it be as effective as static ads on UIs?
But basically any jobs replaced will be the most robot jobs in the first place. Just like long ago the most repetitious jobs on assembly lines were replaced by robots and now how the most repetitious jobs in IT are becoming automated. Book keeping is already automated but I can see a time when tax accounting coupled with rules engines and data mining could remove many corporate tax attorney and accounting jobs. Taxes are just rules after all. You might need a few people coverting the tax code to standard set of rules for an optimization engine but the days of large staff pouring over tax laws may be numbered.
But it is just like the WSJ to blame one insignificant factor. There are other factors at play and their coverage is not fair, balanced, well reasoned, or complete.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I want every person who is willing to work full-time to be able to earn at least poverty plus a dollar. I don't care about the skill level of the employee. In this way I ama liberal.
I recognize that you cannot put artificial price controls in place and expect the market to just absorb it. In this way I am a conservative.
My best solution is that we have a tax on the wealthiest to subsidize those that don't have skills that don't allow them to hit pverty level. Some subsidy that will bring lower earners up, but not discourage them from trying to make more.
My rationally is that people are much more productive than they were 100, 50 or even 20 years ago. Part of the promise of automation is that everyone would benefit... shorter hours... higher pay. This never materialized. So, I am fine with a level of socialism for those who are willing to work but cannot make ends meet.
-- MyLongNickName
Maybe the handwaviest hand wave in the history of Slashdot. The author of the introductory text claims McDonald's didn't make the change in response to increasing minimum wage levels, but what is their evidence for this? Citing, for example, banks and ATMs is hardly convincing, because bank tellers are not minimum wage employees.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Currently, the way it's implemented in european country, McD doesn't use it to reduce workforce (you're still required to walk up to a clerk to retrieve your order).
McD uses it to accelerate it service and increase the "number served": by the time you finish typing your order and have confirmed, the order is already broadcast to employee's screen. By the time you finish paying and walk to the queue, your order is already ready.
This cuts drastically the waiting time, and european McD's use to cram more customer served per minutes.
In the long run such stategies won't neceessarily reduce the workforce that much, but on the other hand, they will be used to propel "fast food" to a whole new definition of "fast".
On the other hand, that will probably be quite alienating for the workforce: no more breaks between customers, no more small talk while ordering. Work experience is going to be Charlie Chaplin's "modern times"-style: read the screen, pack the bag, hand over the bag, as fast as possible and repeat so the next customer doesn't need to wait.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
But banks have long relied on ATMs, and grocery stores, including Walmart, have deployed self-service checkouts.
In both cases, automation has resulted in both better customer service and lower labor costs. A higher minimum wage has made the fast food industry finally get off the dime. So to speak.
If we don't need people to do a job, why have the job exist? At what point do we start to look at our modernization's removal of jobs as a good thing? Sooner or later, we have to start recognizing that everyone having a job can't keep being the goal.
Besides, talking to customers is a craptastic job anyways. Enjoy yelling at your screens because you placed an order for 8 people and they missed one of your Diet Cokes or whatever. We don't need a human being to take that shit anymore.
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
There have been tablet-based kiosks at the local Chili's (my wife...don't ask) for about a year now that allow you to order and pay your bill. Like anything else in a restaurant that caters to young families, the kiosks are disgusting, and our first act upon sitting down is to usually been pick up the kiosk and shove it under the table, behind a plant, up on a windowsill, etc.
If we sit down at a restaurant, we're there to tell someone else what we want, and let them push the right buttons, coordinate the food and the drinks, etc. Otherwise, we're basically dining at vending machines.
Plenty of cheaper restaurants here in Japan - chain izakayas especially - have used terminals for ordering for years already. And while they certainly do it in part to reduce staff, the fact is that many customers like it. You don't have to flag down a waiter to place an order, and you can always see exactly what you've ordered, what dishes you've yet to receive and your current tab.
Also, the basic truth is that if your job can be automated, no wage level will compete with it in the long run. If you accept wage cuts to avoid being replaced by automation, you've only bought yourself a few years, and at a lower salary than you're worth at that.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I think the biggest problem with the minimum wage employment scene is that it incentives McDonalds to hire two part time workers instead of one full time... and then commit wage theft.
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness
McD's will of course SAY that the moves are for better customer experience and not a reaction to increased labor costs.
But that doesn't mean the labor costs played no factor.
I'm sure their bean counters did exhaustive analysis of the cost/benefit of the change, where one of the big variables was labor cost. They'd have been irresponsible not to. It's obvious both customer experience and labor costs contribute here.
Editorializing "See, minimum wage isn't a factor! Look! Look!" clearly demonstrates a bias in the article.
Chili's has these little kiosks at your table, a little unwired screen on a stand. Yo can swipe your own card and pay without waiting for a check.
I don't like it. Rarely do I "wait" for a check, and it seems like lazy on their part.
Ahhh, when can I perma-plug in to a virtual net with an autodoc to tend my body?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
In contrast, McDonald's hasn't changed its basic system of taking orders since its founding in the 1950s
When I was a kid in the 1970s, I remember the order-takers at McDonalds would take the order down on a paper pad, then in seconds add it all up with a pencil and present you with the total.
Wonder if the cashiers would even be able to do that today...
There are times when I use a drive-thru. What I absolutely hate is the delay from the time I order until the time my food is ready to deliver to me. The reason: it takes time to cook. I understand that. So the ability to order "over my phone" means that there is an overlap between travel time and food prep time. So, I get to the drive-up line, confirm my order, pay, and then get the food, all in seconds. Instead of waiting in the car line, engine idling all that time. (No, I don't have an electric car...yet.)
This order-by-phone process has become standing operating procedure for me when I'm getting a pizza, because the 20-minute cook time matches my overall travel time to the pizza place. No time wasted. (No, my usual haunt doesn't have drive-up -- I'm expecting that trend to start sometime, too. If you can have drive-up funeral viewing...)
How about this? You enter the drive-up and place your order, only to discover the two people in front of you have large orders...and all you want is coffee, soft drink, or other beverage. You sit and wait...and wait...and wait. Car idling, of course
It used to be that the fast-food restaurants would prepare food in advance, and possibly have to throw out some of that "spec" food. During rush times, they can prepare some things in advance; during slower times, they don't. I think the "new" way is better in some respects, but it plays hob with wait time.
The simple fact is that humans are expensive. Even the cheapest human is going to cost you $20-25,000* a year, and you'll need 3-4 humans to provide a single labor slot for full time service in a business which is staffed 5a-9p 7 days a week. Account for downtime, scheduling, and turnover, plus the continuing reduction in cost for complex robotic or electronic replacements, and you'd be a fool to think humans have any chance at competing for these jobs.
This is the 10 hour a week that computers and robots promised us in the 70s. Except that it's not a 10 hour week, but rather a 40 hour week with only one in four people working, because it makes no sense to hire four people part time when you can get one to do the job.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Folks, automation isn't just taking away menial labor. It is also taking away clerical jobs and even programming jobs.
Quickbooks has eliminated countless accounting jobs since it was first brought to market. I remember the days of an accounts receivable clerk, accounts payable clerk, and inventory people, etc ...
Now it's an $8/hr temp that does data entry and print invoices and mails them a few hours a week. And prints out quarterlies to send to the accountant for taxes and workman's comp stuff.
Programming. With the current version of Visual Studio, I can whip off a GUI front end for a database app and the database itself in a day or so.
It took a team (a couple of devs, a DBA, and maybe some others) a couple of WEEKS to do that back in the win32/embedded SQL days.
My wife's new cliinic has automated the scheduling and the insurance. Back in the old days, she had a couple of assistants to deal with the paper work. Now, it's all software.
And with software that I worked on myself back at McKesson, the practitioners are gonna have to start worrying in the not too distant future.
Automation is affecting ALL professions/work.
I live near Philadelphia, and Wawa has a food counter. You don't have to order, you go to a touch screen, press a few selections, complete your order, and then go to the register to pay for the meal. By the time you pay and come back to the counter, you get your food and get out.
Granted, it isn't the best Italian hoagie in town, but it is the most convenient in town. And everyone loves Wawa.
It just makes sense.
Banks went to ATMs and grocery stores to self-checkout while McDonalds stayed with humans because bank tellers and grocery store clerks are higher-paid than McDonalds' workers.
Raise the wages of McDonalds' workers and they'll be replaced by machines, too.
Because the real minimum wage will always be ZERO.
How many people support increasing minimum wages and believing that will have no effect on jobs also support fighting global warming by increasing the price of gasoline to reduce demand for fossil fuels?
Ever bother to notice how unemployment for young unskilled workers exactly tracks minimum wages? Raise the minimum wage and unskilled workers are priced out of jobs.
But it makes YOU feel good about yourself, right?
The few times a year that we go to Chili's we ask them to take it away as our kid has a nasty habit of ordering the games. At which point, we say please remove from bill since we (parents) didn't order. If they implement a feature similar to iOS that has a person type in a challenge response we might keep it at the table, as it'd help get rid of the 'where's my waiter'
Seems like a good idea to me. I think a majority of errors when ordering food at a place like McDonalds or Taco Bell comes at the interaction between the cashier taking your order and you. Think it'd be nice to just walk up to a lil screen, punch in what i want, pay, and go have a seat while waiting for them to call my number.
Someone posted about Chili's up there using some automation, now there is where I find it inappropriate. When I go to say, a "sit down and be served" restaurant, I want that wait person there doing what they're supposed to do: serve me. It is the reason i came to that kind of restaurant.
People just need to make a distinction between the kind of restaurant that is more of a self-serve, and which kind is a be-served. One can benefit from automation, the other is hurt by it.
One of the big reasons we haven't gone in for automation in much bigger way in the US is the high availability of illegal labor in the US. They're cheaper then robots in many cases at least with current technology... and a good deal more reliable and more capable.
Take the illegal labor out of the labor force and we would have heavily automated a decade ago at least.
So is the current drive for automation somewhat linked to the minimum wage hikes? Absolutely. The reality is that many jobs aren't worth more then people are being paid for them. Some of them are worth a good deal less but they simply must be done and so some people are over paid for them.
Automation is inevdiable and ultimately good for the economy. It will create new jobs for people that repair, manage, install, and build automation systems. It will also increase revenue dollars per capital dollars invested. And that wealth will open up money for new jobs.
Many people fear some dystopia where robots do everything and no one can get a job. But the reality is that money only has value in that you can buy things with it.
Which means those with money will need to spend it for it to have value. And that means if they get anything from people consenting to do what they want... people will have jobs.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There are 10s of thousands of independent restaurants in the US alone that could benefit from the existence of a good Open Source system for ordering and payment automation. I am considering opening a restaurant after I sell out my share in my software business. (Well, after I take a couple years off to travel)
I don't want to get rid of waitstaff, but I want to make them more efficient and create a better experience for the customer. Giving customers who are in a hurry the ability to self order and self pay would do that. It's also annoying and inefficient to have to constantly flag down the server when you need something else. Of course, good training and procedures go a long way to giving great service, but my intention is to enhance great service and make the experience even better. I'd love for the customer to be able to use their phone or tablet, or a house provided one, to ask for drink refills, fresh silverware, napkins, an extra side of dressing, whatever.
It would great if there was some sort of Open Source project that was easy for the average mom and pop place to setup and use.
KFC and Burger King have been using touchscreen order & pay kiosks for some time, and I encountered it in a McD's for the first time about a month ago. The fact that we all use chip-and-PIN debit cards (and some people are already using NFC cards) probably helps - having to include the facility to feed dollar bills into a slot would put a crimp in it somewhat.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I have said for many years that, with an appropriate restaurant-savvy partner, I'd like to open an automated restaurant. In-table PC's to order things, with card-readers.
I don't want to wait for the waiter to come over until I can order a drink. I might have driven a long way and be gasping of thirst before I care about a menu. Press, press, done before I've even taken my coat off.
I want to see the whole menu. The ingredients. A picture. The price. The associated special offers. Does it have pepper on it? A fully interactive menu would be great, and not be covered in the gravy-stains of the last patron, or have bits scribbled out on it. Plus, when something is no longer available, bam, you can't order it. I could even press the "I have an allergy button" and see if anything is incompatible with that without relying on the waiter to run back and forth to the kitchen.
I might want to tip one member of staff, but not know their name (or they happen to have finished their shift by then). Press "tip", select staff member photo (or select "All staff"), type in a reason, swipe card, done. And no arguments over who I intended it for.
I might well want to pay for my own stuff and not have to wait for the end of the meal and argue with friends. Or order a slice of cake to take home as a last minute thought after I've paid. Or split the bill via various common calculations. Or even tag five items as what John has to pay and let him pay that off the bill because he has to leave early. Press, press, swipe. Done.
I might wall desire a human to talk to, if something cocks up. Big green help button lights up the table, which summons a waiter, much like airplane call buttons. The waiter still has to be around to shuttle things from the kitchen, and this way seems easier - and politer - than having to flag him down as he passes with a table full of plates. Press, done.
I might well decide to change the order mid-flow. So long as the kitchen hasn't started on it yet, why not? Until the order's locked in, I can alter it. And I can even "lock" certain portions if one person at the table wants the starter now while the others only want mains and want to argue over it. Press, press, done.
I might want to pay first, or pay once I've eaten everything. I can choose.
I might want to buy some wifi access, or get a code for the toilet (I disagree with limiting toilets to paying customers only, except on an honesty agreement, but some places do just that and your receipt contains your code for the toilet), or donate to the charity associated with the restaurant, or buy the chef's recipe book. Press, press, swipe, done.
I might want to move tables mid-order, or take my drinks outside. Press, press, done and the waiters and kitchen automatically know where I am.
The back-end? The waiters still wait. The bar tabs are still on the EPOS. The kitchen still gets a ticket about what table wants what. And those that want manual service press one button.
We've already automated every part of the experience but the customer's.
WSJ - Don't Worry Old Money: Automation will undercut the minimum wage hikes and keep your portfolio's growth going strong
Seriously, this op ed has more to do with reassuring investors than it has to do with any sort of complaint about the invariable changes that happen in companies. The only pejorative part of it is the usage of "Backfire" or really Fire Back. Did the use similar language over the last decade as energy prices (especially gasoline/oil) has doubled--where, btw, fire related imagery would have been a useful double entendre? AFAIK, no. Because paying more for oil, wood, or any other resource is just an unfortunate, but inevitable, cost of business. And under different circumstances, automation would be lauded (as another post notes, it should increase productivity--by a high fixed cost and a much lower long-term variable cost).
But when the plebs demand higher pay and you feel you can suppress them indefinitely on a person-by-person basis, you start becoming pissed that "Human Resources" have the gall to think they have some sort of right to demand more money, even if it's just to keep up with all the inevitable cost of living increases, plenty of employers become rather livid. Not that this is a new thing, of course. It's just that in the past employers weren't so quick to speak in terms of Backfire, Recessions, and Lost Jobs every time anyone ever dared to ask for a wage increase--honestly, could you imagine them shaking that rattle EVERY TIME there was a cost increase in any other type of supply? We'd consider them borderline insane and simply whiny babies.
And this is why the there's such a heckling against minimum wage laws and unions. They're the two unified forces that not only will have a noticeable cost increase across the board for a lot of companies but they're also not something that can be dismissed on a person-by-person basis. And for all those who argue that we should just accept what the market should bare and not have these minimals or unions, do I begin to bring up the recent story of the Indian immigrants being paid $1.21/hour on 120 hour weeks? No, "the market" is made up of assholes who will take advantage of any situation where they have enough power to crush any sort of opposition. That doesn't necessarily make them evil, but it certainly speaks about how unethical a lot of employers are--their code of conduct is about selfishness and not a more fundamental moral failing.
And here I end my rant.
The idea of the Automat has been around since the start of the 1900's. It did little to affect the employment landscape for fast food workers.
So I'll worry about those grease stained robot overlords when they can figure out how to load their own ingredient bins, until then, cough up the $15/hr McD's.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
What a lie! Is that you Mr. Alinsky?
USA hospitals are required by law to treat people. As we have found out during the Ebola in USA story, many doctors treat patients for free. Even in the USA. If ER doesn't cover it, blame the Democrats who refused to let the Medical professionals handle the patients.
I live in France and these things are in every McDonalds already. I did not realize that they were not common elsewhere.
Ordering at a self-service kiosk is convenient because few people uses them, so usually there's no queue. This may be related to the fact that they only take cards. Ordering from the kiosk also prevent misunderstandings.
I've also used their mobile app and their website to order (for pick-up, they don't do delivery) but the benefits are minimal compared to ordering from the kiosk. Paying with a card on a mobile phone is annoying, especially when 3D-Secure kicks in and I have to copy the confirmation number from the SMS to the app. I'm sure that for McDonalds the main benefit of the mobile and online offerings is that they lock in the customer and prevents her/him from changing their mind on the way to the restaurant (but not really as you pay only if you collect the meal).
Nobox: Only simple products.
So the idea that a higher minimum wage would drive automation is bullshit, as we suspected all along. Companies would automate jobs if they were being paid $2/hour. Humans get sick, they have a bad day and require training. Humans need managers, machines just need maintenance.
It was always a bullshit talking point. How many companies have a receptionist these days? Or a switchboard operator? A higher minimum wage never explained ATMs and online banking.
Maybe it was just Koch brothers brand bullshit all along.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The only reason young people want self service is because the "full service" isn't anything close to a golden shower.
Peter Schiff wrote a very eloquent piece explaining why minimim wage hurts the economy, job growth, and especially the young, unskilled and minorities. Here is part of it:
Low-skilled workers must compete for employers’ dollars with both skilled workers and capital. For example, if a skilled worker can do a job for $14 per hour that two unskilled workers can do for $6.50 per hour each, then it makes economic sense for the employer to go with the unskilled labor. Increase the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour and the unskilled workers are priced out of their jobs. This dynamic is precisely why labor unions are such big supporters of minimum wage laws. Even though none of their members earn the minimum wage, the law helps protect their members from having to compete with lower-skilled workers.
Employers also have the choice of whether to employ people or machines. For example, an employer can hire a receptionist or invest in an automated answering system. The next time you are screaming obscenities into the phone as you try to have a conversation with a computer, you know what to blame for your frustration.
There are numerous other examples of employers substituting capital for labor simply because the minimum wage has made low-skilled workers uncompetitive. For example, handcarts have replaced skycaps at airports. The main reason fast-food restaurants use paper plates and plastic utensils is to avoid having to hire dishwashers.
As a result, many low-skilled jobs that used to be the first rung on the employment ladder have been priced out of the market. Can you remember the last time an usher showed you to your seat in a dark movie theater? When was the last time someone other than the cashier not only bagged your groceries, but also loaded them into your car? By the way, it won’t be long before the cashiers themselves are priced out of the market, replaced by automated scanners, leaving you to bag your purchases with no help whatsoever.
The disappearance of these jobs has broader economic and societal consequences. First jobs are a means to improve skills so that low skilled workers can offer greater productivity to current or future employers. As their skills grow, so does their ability to earn higher wages. However, remove the bottom rung from the employment ladder and many never have a chance to climb it.
So the next time you are pumping your own gas in the rain, do not just think about the teenager who could have been pumping it for you, think about the auto mechanic he could have become – had the minimum wage not denied him a job. Many auto mechanics used to learn their trade while working as pump jockeys. Between fill-ups, checking tire pressure, and washing windows, they would spend a lot of time helping – and learning from – the mechanics.
You can read the entire thing here:
http://www.europac.net/comment...
There was a spirited discussion yesterday about what's happened to the economy since domestic manufacturing got wiped out. Now that the only things we make in the US at any scale are aircraft, military equipment and cars, all the people who used to have nice stable manufacturing jobs were moved to corporate and service jobs. Then routine corporate work was automated, offshored and outsourced. No problem, you say, they can always work service jobs. Well, now service jobs are being automated.
No one is addressing this problem -- there are millions of people smack in the mean of the IQ scale with no hope of becoming decent knowledge workers. The political climate paints everyone who can't find work as a lazy "welfare queen." How does the calculus change when you have a huge portion, and eventually a majority, of people with no way to support themselves and no hope of getting one of the "new economy" jobs? People like to say that people will just adapt, or the market will take care of it, but I think this is one case where the market would really fail. People in the techie set like to learn new things, and assume everyone else does. People in the factory worker or service set go to their job, do exactly what is required of them, and go home. I realize I sound mean, but it's the truth. There is no feasible way to retrain a factory worker who has been doing the same job the same way for 20 years and put him in a job that will produce the same income.
Automation is great, and it's cool what we can do now...I just think it will eventually trigger a lot of very bad unintended consequences.
McDonald's hasn't changed its basic system of taking orders since its founding in the 1950s
Since the WSJ is a Murdoch paper now, its now been saddled with a conservative agenda just the same as fox. However, Mcdonalds has evolved ordering consistently throughout the past 30 years. multi-lane drivethroughs, extending the station model of drivethrough to the dine-in area, wireless communications systems, touchscreen back of house systems, and tap card payments are all recent additions to most stores. Its unrelated, but many McDonalds stores jave an automated fryer robot that drops and pulls fries based on order demand, allowing the drivethrough attendant to pack fries and food as well as take orders.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Now, instead of waiting in line behind some idiot with 6 kids who don't know what they want, change their minds and bitch and moan they can't get breakfast a 11:05, I'll have to stand behind said idiot while they try to figure out what buttons to push and their maniac kids running around trashing the place.
I've seen people spending 5 minutes at the damned all in one soda machines trying to figure out how to get a root beer.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Wait, so I wouldn't have to work to get money? Why would I want to become a productive member of society, then? There's no motivation. I can either get money for free, or I can get marginally more money by putting in full time hours where ever.
As a potentially wealthy person, if all of my "extra" money is to be taxed/stolen and given to non-workers, then what motivation would I have to earn anything "extra"?
Convenient that you suggest taxing rich individuals; I can safely assume you aren't one. "Yea, I think we should give everyone money for nothing, just so long as someone else is paying for it."
Why not quit pretending and just go back to the Automat?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Obama Administration cut payments for charity care to help fund Obamacare subsidies...
Ken
I can't wait for the day nearly all menial labor jobs are eliminated and everyone is given a basic income (something low but still enough above the living wage). That way if you want to earn more money, you can still pursue more advanced positions, while poverty and lack of healthcare will cease to exist (at least, for those who can manage their money). This is after all, the paradise futurists have pined for for many years.
There was a time when their readership was white-shoe, blue-blood Ivy Leaguers who didn't have much appetite for low-rent right wing politics.
Now their readership are low-rent capitalists from the hinterlands who think that cheap greed plays and ideology go hand-in-hand, so that's what they give them.
I used those a total of two time. Most of the time they are out of order. The only two time I used them, I saw customer in the queue being worked *quicker* than my order. In fact if I had stayed in the queue it would have taken half the time ton fulfill my order. A nephew of my colleague which works there told me they itnentionally are sabotaging this because they "know" (despite promise of McD not to fire people) that they this will be used to reduce the work force. So chance is that your order will be ignored to the maximum of time they can ignore it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
The title says it's not because of increasing labor costs, but then points out that places like Walmart and banks are already using automation. Perhaps they found it cheaper than what ever they paid an employee at the time they automated?
It's just the cost of McD's to automate is higher than grocery stores and banks.
This is one of the costs of a minimum wage. We as a society are aware of it. But really the cost to society is not huge. There are many industries that need people, and would pay less than minimum wage if they could. The employer is in a much strong negotiating position.
Ultimately we see the benefit to these people - a pretty larg number - as greater than the disadvantage to those who are employed by inefficient businesses. Yes. It is a problem for them but a business thta can't afford to pay its employees a reasonable wage really isn't a huge benefit to the economy as a whole.
In practice, a minimum wage seems to cause a net benefit.
Well, the dream is coming true: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
I always thought those should come back, especially for fast food. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Those were clearly put in place because it's cheaper to "pay" a machine to do a job like that than to pay (an increasingly expensive) person.
I know that some/many people have a problem regarding people and their labor as a product, but it's a simple fact of life that, in general, when the price of something goes up, people use less of it.
My personal pet peeve with getting fast-food, besides the poor nutritional quality, is the near-constant order errors. McDonalds is by far the worst at this. I attribute it to poor/lack of training for employees working the register and taking the orders. Even seasoned personnel have issues working with the registers, are not aware of the special deals, or just simply make mistakes too often. When I can, I try to persuade friends/family to go somewhere else instead of McDonalds.*
Back in the 1990's I was driving to a Hamfest one early morning when I stopped at a Sheetz gas station for food and fuel. Lo, and behold they had this touch-screen ordering system that printed out my order. My order came up on a display in the food preparation station and the attendants there quickly read the screen and accurately prepared my food. After using it once, I was CONVINCED that it was the future of all walk-in fast-food, maybe even the drive-through. Now that McDonald's is finally implementing this after 20 or so years have passed, it could solve their ordering issues.
Now, McDonald's only needs to improve the quality of their food. Right now it's at the level of SPAM, which is just above Scrapple and just below Dinty Moore Beef Stew.
* Our local McDonald's is by far the worst McDonald's I have ever been to, which includes several international locations as well as many domestic ones. (I believe that gives me the right to claim it as the worst in the world.) It's dirty, slow, and highly inaccurate. Wrong sandwiches, no fries, no drink (I had to ask if they still sold drinks with their value meals.), no cheese, onions when asked to hold them, wrong sizes, etc. I once went 3 years between correct orders there, 2010-13. My family is addicted to them for taste and convenience despite my constant pleading to go somewhere, anywhere else. They went 2-3 times per week as they pick it up on the way back from school events/practices. 2*52*3=312 I complained about them on McDonald's own website and left my phone number. They called while we were out and left a message for us to call them back. The number they gave me was disconnected.
More customers served per minute -> fewer workers required per customer -> fewer workers. This development will inevitably reduce workforce.
I've seen a few of these kiosks in fast food restaurants where I live. They were covered in food and filth. There is no way I am touching those nasty things.
Quote from headline -- " It will take the stress out of ordering (lines) at fast food restaurants..."
Yea, right. Just another place where we will be standing for 10 minutes behind some clueless ID10T trying to figure out how to use the kiosk, just like at the Walmarts with the self service checkouts.
If you know how to use the kiosks, they are fast and easy. But you always get someone who is clueless and cannot comprehend simple instructions on the screen holding you up in line.
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
It might be noted that this move to automation occured _without_ an increase in the minimum wage.
i.e. they are doing it because it can contribute to their bottom line and "enhance" customer satisfaction.
-- time to order in this kind of business is a large part of the expense, hence why they flocked to credit card systems to lose ~3% of their revenue, because it essentially eliminates cash handling time and balancing the books at the end of the shift (for that portion of sales).
(just out of high school, I worked at a Burger King in the drive through (1992). You had to make change in my head,. I could do it without error. Most others could not)).
Try reading the online novella Manna by Marshall Brain...
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Starts like this.... doesn't end up so good.
I know slashdot loves SJWs, but they've irritated the fuck out of me for years here.
I knew the post wasn't technology based when it contains lines like that while it may be true for McDonald's to say that its tech plans will improve customer experience, the move is also "a convenient way...to justify a reduction in the chain's global workforce."
Can't we just discuss the technology about how it would be to order food this way? Why does is always comes down to some retarded "WHAT ABOUT DER CHILDREN" every time? I didn't see anyone complaining about the internet killing the travel agent business, doctors killing the bloodbowl makers business, or when the internet changed the journalism business? Why is changing your ordering capabilities so detrimental to the world?
A convenient way to reduce their workforce? Those bastards! That workforce wouldn't be made up of a bunch of PoCs that desperately need white people to help them would they since they won't survive on their own without a bit of noblesse oblige? Desperately clinging to their jobs with single tears running down their faces? Is sarah mclaughlin singing about them? That's the height of arrogance and insulting.
"Today Fred Smith announced he was cutting back on the number of his girlfriends, deciding that it was easier and more fair to concentrate on one girlfriend, but critics point out that he was conveniently saving money by not spending it on 5 other women. This change will naturally causes economic waves as these other poor women won't have their social lives subsidized any more. Who will help their social welfare? One woman was quoted as saying, 'You used to be able to support a family of four on one boyfriend. Now what am I going to do? Go back to school to learn how to dress like a slut? Do you know many girl's social lives are less than $2 a day? And 1 in 4 women have to date someone in IT? "
Have people ever actually run a business before? They're talking about using kiosks to improve the customer experience, and it desperately needs improving. The phrase "they fuck you at the drive through" isn't new by any means. I'd say I'm lucky if I get my food successfully 50% of the time, and this is from a workforce that cannot manage to follow instructions written...sorry....pictures of instructions on how to make my food and then manage to put it into a bag successfully.
Sorry again, one employee manages to assemble and microwave my food correctly, and the other manages to put it into a bag. And they have a failure rate of 50% in that complicated ordering pipeline. I assume it's because their brain pans are filled with mayonaise.
I, for one, welcome our new kiosk overlords. I'd like the warm fuzzy feeling in my balls when I can push pictures and get what the picture looks like even 75% of the time. I'll take an increase in customer satisfaction any day over having to spell my order out 6 times and then wonder why this person wasn't drowned in a river as a baby.
Smart people work at minimum wage, realize it sucks, and GTFO as fast as they can for better pastures. If you're over 21 and still working at minimum wage, you're either medically retarded or you've made severely bad choices in your life, neither one of which I want handling my "food" or whatever McDonalds calls it these days. Continuing to repeatedly fuck my dining ability because of fear of "DER TECKNOLOGY" is retarded. Why don't we applaud the tecnological innovations that would actually improve our lives, and let people worry about their lives and better themselves without our pretend concern for them?
I'm a satanic clam.
Just because you can argue that it was an inevitable move for McDonald's doesn't mean that the timing wasn't due, at least in part, to a desire to reduce wages. In fact, many of your examples make it clear that the technology has been around for some time -- in fact other restaurants have toyed with automated ordering -- so the fact that McD's is only doing this NOW actually more strongly suggests some correlation to current market forces, be it cheaper, more reliable technology, or more expensive workforce. But no, you haven't given any strong ammunition against the WSJ article.
If you can scan/swipe a card for it to remember your favourite recipes it'll make my wife happy. It always confuses the crap out of the till bunnies when she asks for Burger X without the orange-cheese-that-makes-her-spu and they almost always get custom orders wrong.
Maybe more places will adopt Fritz's cutting edge restaurant automation technology. I know my daughter would love it.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Point of fact: McDonalds as a corporation doesn't sign those peoples' paychecks, at least if their business model hasn't changed since 2000ish. They do franchising, and make money on the fact that franchises have to purchase supplies from the company. This allows them to dodge risk on opening in poor locations, or personnel expenses.
Actually, this isn't how McDonalds corporate works.
The way McDonalds works is it picks your location for you, buys it, builds a McDonalds there, and guarantees you your franchise buy-in back in one year. The franchise buy-in is $1M, which you get back in one year, and then you make that each year thereafter.
They *do* sell you trade dress items - fry boxes with the 'M' on them, and they sell you food supplies - but their primary profit actually comes from their real estate holdings, the fact that they are your landlord, and franchise fees.
Once they do sell you a franchise, they dictate your trade dress, which means corporate pays for remodeling the individual franchise stores (after all, McDonalds themselves owns the property), and when they tell you remodel, expect the crews to show up and just do it, you are at best granted minor choices on things like arrangement of the bathrooms, and the manager's office, and so on. Otherwise, they dictate. This is a typically good thing, since they know how many people will go through in a given amount of time, max, because they have a PhD in mathematics who understands queuing theory work it out.
In addition, you can't buy a franchise unless you have been a store manager, and you can't be a store manager unless you've been an assistant manager, and you can't be an assistant manager unless you've been a shift lead, and you can't be a shift lead unless you've been an ordinary employee. In other words, every step in responsibility requires that you be able to do all the jobs at the previous step in responsibility. This is why when they have walkouts, they typically don't close down over them.
So it's not like this will change the need for employees, from the line on up, or they'll have no new franchise owners, unless they totally rework their entire model. Which they won't do, since their primary profit comes from real estate, them being your landlord, and franchise fees.
This really has nothing to do with the Minimum Wage issue; that's just because the author of the opinion section piece that the OP referenced, since they could care less.
They did however throw $200M in venture funding behind the company providing the automation software and equipment a few years back. Time to recoup their investment there.
I for one prefer a minimum-wage flunky to do my bidding.
Hiring permanent staff has gotten very expensive in other ways too, and McDonald's is seeing the writing on the wall: there will be more mandates, more wage hikes, etc. It makes sense for them to reduce the workforce now already.
The reason I ask that is if they did, why do we not see that any more and do those same reasons apply today?
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
Companies automate when automation is cheaper than hiring someone. That can happen because automation gets cheaper or because labor costs rise. Labor costs rise for many reasons, minimum wage just being one.
Just because A causes B doesn't mean B can't be caused by other factors as well.
Assume that the minimum wage is raised to $15/hr and McDonald's decides not to automate. Many of the current minimum wage workers will be replaced with an equal or smaller number of workers who are more productive. The guys holding the picket signs and protesting will most likely not benefit from the raise. They will have to compete with a larger pool of skilled applicants who will work harder and smarter to get the job done. The people laid off or replaced will find that the minimum wage raise they protested so hard for cost them their job and strains their ability to keep up with what unemployment and welfare pays as cost increase to the balance the new wages.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
You do realize that people aren't, you know, actually, like, supposed to be able to support themselves with the lowest-paid jobs in the country? These are the kind of jobs that used to be done by kids still living at home, not those who expected to make a career and raise a family by saying 'Do you want fries with that?' a thousand times a day?
But with today's fucked economy, that's the only type of job many adults with kids, rent and car payments can find.
Our society has deep structural problems relating to automation that have been ignored for forty years and those chickens are coming home to roost. One of those major problems is that we've given preferential tax treatment to capital gains over income (labor).
We can either have egalitarian democratic society, or we can be like Mexico. I hope the walls on your gated community are high enough and you pay your private security contractors enough not to steal from you.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I know that I really like the system they have at Wawa for ordering subs - you can take your time & order just what you want at the kiosk, then the people making the subs assemble it. They always seem to get it right, and since the ingredients and bread are good they are my preferred fast food even though they are a gas station. There's still a cashier, and people working in the prep area, so the loss of labor isn't that great and the customer experience is way better.
In france Mc Donalds already has self ordering kiosks in most restaurants I have seen.
And I don't see any connection to minimum wages, that is just propaganda of the anti minimum wages morons.
With such a kiosk you can process more orders in less time. You still need to cook the meals and deliever them, though. And depending on the overall process, there is still the work of paying ... and cleaning up the tables etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
After all, when it's the lower level workers, they must pay the minimum to "keep competitive". With the executives, they must pay the maximum to "motivate them to do the best". Also, if you don't pay them, they may not stay in the company and take information with them, so you must pay them lots. But workers must be made to sign a contract to stop them leaving and because you're *generously* letting them work for you, they should be *happy* to sign it!
Poor and rich are grippy little buggers and WILL NOT let go of any of the money they have without a fight.
But the poor must give away most of their money to live.
The rich have much greater leeway to avoid spending. And boy do they hate spending...
Tell me, who is going to be eating at your McDonalds now? There's less people earning, therefore fewer customers for eating out at the cheap end.
At the high end, how many times do CEOs go eating at McDs? And if they did, they still only eat one meal, and there are so many fewer, you're not going to be able to sustain the business on the upper class.
Automation is a way to extract more profit from the efforts of the people who DO the work by those who OWN the business (and do NO work). But they don't sell to other business owners, they sell to workers. Who now have no work. Well, not yet, let some OTHER sucker be left holding the empty bag while I bail out on the uptick!
McDonald's is franchises, i.e., small businesses.
An employer's ethics are irrelevant in a free market as long as they honor their contracts and don't commit fraud, theft, or murder; the whole point of a free market is that unethical behavior is self-punishing.
Furthermore, you think that you're sticking it to the employer if you force them to pay higher wages, but they are simply going to raise their prices and pass the costs on to the rest of us. The increased wages don't come out of their pockets. However, they oppose higher wages because the higher prices they charge lower demand for their products.
Unions are a good idea in principle. The problem with the actual unions we have is the same as the problem with banks: they have managed to get laws passed that give them a monopoly on some market. Minimum wage laws are just stupid.
I was thinking that an ordering kiosk would be helpful. In the McD drive-thru, while you're placing your order over the intercom, there is a screen where you can visually verify your order details without having the minimum wage employee trying to read it back to you. Inside the store, when you place an order, the kid behind the counter ALWAYS echos back the order to you... Even if you order a small drink. Just having a customer-facing display would be useful.
I have long believed that automation at the Subway sandwich shop would alleviate a lot of awkwardness and misunderstood orders. It would also speed up ordering for the customers that have actually been there before and know what they want on their sub BEFORE getting to the counter.
I know slashdot loves SJWs
It's a submission about the WSJ, not SJWs.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
In my experience any type of kiosks like this result in reduced service and longer wait times for certain types of needs. Would you like to get a refill on your drink during the busy time? Want to get a box to take the remainder of your food to go? The kiosk probably doesn't offer that. Do you have a question about employment opportunities? Kiosk doesn't answer that either.
All the kiosks do is eliminate or minimize the interface between the employee and the customer, which isn't always a good thing.
The world turning into Idiocracy, one step at a time.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
A cellphone app (or site), which after you've completed your order either sends it to the store directly, or gives you a scannable barcode. Scan the barcode, and your order is done exactly with what you asked for, you just need to pay (or maybe you can even do that through the app)
For those that commonly order the same thing, save the barcode and re-use it next time.
The west is about to head into massive automation. If Europe and America grant total amnesty to all illegals, it will come to bite these nations in the butt with large amounts of un-educated and un-employable individuals.
What is really needed is for an amnesty path for a small group of the illegals (basically, those that were raised here). The rest need to go back to their homes.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Places like Walmart are putting more people out of work as they implement more Kiosk sef serve checkouts (We hate those).
If we are going to start having that at restaurants, like "Cafe 80's" from Back to the Future 2, then we might as well just make our own food at home.
The Jack-in-the-Box I regularly stopped at for breakfast on the way to work had kiosks for ordering back in '08 or so. Made it convenient if you knew what you wanted and didn't need anything special, I could punch my order in in a quarter the time it took the counter guy to take it. Saved my time, saved the next customer's time, and freed up the counter guy to handle people who had problems with their orders or had a special order. If this was related to the minimum wage hike, they wouldn't've been doing it 6 years ago.
When the minimum wage went up in San Jose, the downtown pizza parlor raised the per-slice price by $0.25 USD and per pie price by $1.00 USD. Business remained steady and the world didn't come to an end. Never mind that states with higher minimum wage have higher job growth
San Jose is the largest city in Silicon Valley, third largest city in California, and 10th largest city in the United States.
Silicon Valley is a terrible example to demonstrate the effects of a minimum wage increase and corresponding increases in local product/service costs. The area is too wealthy, this distorts the reaction to $1 more per pizza.
"The median household income is $90,000, according to the Census Bureau. The average single-family home sells for about $1 million. The airport is adding an $82 million private jet center."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
If you have a strong desire to help drive automation of the restaurant industry, you should get a visa to go to Japan. For some reason, america does not automate restaurants. Japan has been automating restaurants for a long time, including conveyor belt sushi. You might want to talk to the Japanese chain, 'Kura'.
Don't reinvent the wheel. Import it from Japan.
Yes and we could also elect a dictator who would set price controls and order stores to sell certain items. It worked great in Venezuela.
No need to go that far. The US instituted wage and price controls in the 1970s in an attempt to fight inflation, it didn't work.
Sadly, the most informative comment I've read on Slashdot in weeks is about McDonald's.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I don't use self check out lines. They haven't lowered any prices in fact the prices have steadily increased.And smaller box sizes higher prices. Self checkout means Free labor for your supermarket. I don't work for free. I will say I will never use a drive through I have to click buttons for no fn way. Wondering when the public is going to say this is enough. Isn't the food industry soposta supply us with food, not less food for higher profits? Give the consumer less charge more force consumer to buy 2 because the box size was lowered.
Jack of all trades,master of none
... Back in the 50s, 60s, early 70s -- before large scale automation and computerization -- businesses had big labor expenses but somehow managed to stay in business ...
Your argument fails due to what is perhaps the most common caveat in statistics and economics, "all other things being equal". There are huge factors that make those decades different, post-WW2 factors, deferred labor costs, etc.
Yes, by deferring employee costs to future decades. For example a company like General Motors in the 50s 60s and early 70s negotiated lower labor hourly rates by offering increased retirement benefits. Basically the CEOs of the 50s 60s and early 70s effectively shifted costs from those decades to, well, "now". This shifted cost was one of the major factors in GM's "recent" near bankruptcy.
The other factor that you failed to consider is that the US emerged from WW2 with not only the only intact manufacturing base but an expanded and modernized manufacturing base. Plus a population that did not see their savings and often their homes and worldly possessions lost, rather a population that had been earning good wages during the war and had no real place to spend their money so they saved it.
So in the US we had a population flush with cash, a huge demand for consumer goods, and no competition. It was a business environment where a company could survive the dumbest practices.
Now add a huge government stimulus as the Marshal plan helped rebuild Europe and Japan. This created a huge demand for heavy industry goods and services.
This US industrial and manufacturing dominance had a long tail as it took decades for former industrial nations to recover from the war. In other words a lot of the profitability of the 50s 60s and early 70s was part of that long tail of the post war years.
Because we all know McDonald's isn't a publicly traded company which sells franchises for which if the franchises folded because of labor issues there wouldn't be any sort of detriment to the stock price.
No, the whole point of a free market is to avoid unnecessary rent seeking or corruption through governmental interference because a direct buyer-seller relationship tends towards the fairest price. But such inherently ignores things like monopolies and externalities which aren't fully encapsulated in the buyer-seller relationship and why free markets aren't 100% efficient alone.
The whole notion that this is some "sticking it to" anyone is yet another example of us-vs-them mentality which has nothing to do with people demanding a living wage to counter inflation. Meanwhile, the actual cost of products are nothing close to 100% wages so even with across-the-board price increases due to wage increases, there's still a net gain to employees. Besides, the whole "lower demand for their products" only works for elastic products. Yes, it can result in the decline in purchase of luxury goods, but since the whole point is people who are buying what they need and very little of what the want because they don't have the means to buy what they want, an increase in the price of what they need with a great increase in their total wage actually will increase their disposable income. Any thinking to the contrary and one wonders why anyone is paid anything but incredibly marginally above minimum wage. Here's a hint: poor people don't buy expensive (by profit margin) luxury goods.
Monosopy. In any case, if you want to argue that unions could be better regulated in some ways, I agree. The main problem with banks was precisely that there was (1) deregulation to separate investing from regular banking and (2) thinking you mentioned at the start which was warped into thinking that fraud couldn't occur in a free market because it was "self-punishing" (listen to Alan Greenspan in the 90s onward). Obviously, that's not true.
Your opinion, obviously. And I disagree.
They hate it when their plan to kill children is exposed. This used to be a technical site, but now it is just a crappy politics site because their kind tries to make everything about politics. You people are racists.
I think automation of order taking will be great for McDonalds and its employees. The only job being affected is the cashier and even kiosk order wouldn't put that job in jeopardy. Most of the labor at McDonalds is food preparation and cleaning. Kiosks will not be able to perform those functions.
What will happen is the cashier can now focus on preparing the order and delivering them while the line is moving faster because people will be able to place their order quicker at a kiosk.
I stopped by a McDonalds during lunch the other day and they only had two cashiers working a very long line. There were delays because the cashiers are the same people who fix the coffee, assemble the order, and hand it to the customer. If that McDonalds had a kiosk, I probably wouldn't have waited in line for 20 minutes and they would still have those two employees assembling the order and handing them to the customer.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
They pretty much repeat the same talking points on a 6 week rotation and they each get 6-7 figures for it. You could probably pay a few people just above minimum wage to proofread for the right-wing editorial software.
The assumption that minimum wage is a good idea is just wrong. It never solved the problems it was supposed to solve but it did create additional problems. In this story we are dealing with the fact that jobs that produce less then minimum-wage worth will never exist or will be automated.
This is just one side effect of the many minimum wages bring. There are far worse.
Illegal employment that brings workplace slavery is one of the worse impacting the.most vulnerable members of the work-capable public. Sweatshops are full of people like that.
And guess which orders get targeted for that loogie.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
McD's demoed and installed automated self ordering nearly 2 decades ago.
Problems were twofold:
1) people who f**ked up their own orders had no one to blame
2) there are too many customers who are simply too stupid or illiterate to run a touchscreen.
I doubt there has ever been an advance in technology that didn't temporarily displace some workers or cause hardship for specific groups?
You can't just hold back progress out of concern for this minority, vs. forcing them to adapt to change for their own good in the long run.
Anyone who can lose their min. wage job to automation was doing menial labor in the first place. They were getting paid to BE the machine, essentially. I see nothing great about promoting the idea that we're better off letting people act as unthinking machines for low wages than to actually mechanize those tasks and challenge the people a little bit more.
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it takes me 5 minutes to order a coffee, with some help of an employee, instead of 30 secondes near the lady who refuses to take my order, but serves my coffee later.
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The proposed solution to job automation is to keep the minimum wage low? If we assume automation is coming regardless of minimum wage (a reasonable assumption given history), this will result in fewer jobs at the same pay. If we raise minimum wage we will have fewer jobs at higher pay. That higher pay will stimulate more jobs. Even if its less than the jobs loss, it will help. TFA presents a false dichotomy.
I am going to give some examples and while they are not 100% percent verifiable, let' just roll with this and see what you think.
1. Presently my girlfriend is 30 years old and lives with her parents and has a child. She is making more than minimum wage, but can't afford to move out. Drives a hatchback that is more than ten years old. She has an iPhone, but she purchased it because it was free with a contract. This is a story that I can find several times over with various people I know that are making more than minimum wage.
2. If I remember correctly, SNAP doesn't allow for fast food. This might not apply, but in a great many cases, fast food joints are unable to participate in these programs.
3. Most of the people I know have jobs and fall under this category called the, "Working Poor." They work a full time job, but require government assistance because they are still below the poverty level. Please backup your claims though, because now I am curious where you are getting your facts from.
The lower income families spend more money because that's what they do. They are the majority of your consumers. Give them money to get by and we can actually start to cut aid to them. If we don't have to spend as many tax dollars for welfare programs, then we can start to lower taxes. You have a choice. Either take care of the poor by having them work for their income, or provide their income from taxes.
Australia currently has the highest minimum wage, but their unemployment rate is two tenths of a percent higher than ours. Up until very recently they maintained a lower unemployment rate than ours.
Thanks Obama?
Place something witty here
....McDonald's employees should watch the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
It's about what is coming with automation........And it's coming for all of us. And now it will not be like the industrial revolutions (which is basically the first wave of automation).
As to when? Not sure but probably something like in the next 25-50 years.....
When I went to McDonald's in France back in 2010 (to order a "Royale with Cheese") I used an automatic kiosk to order my meal.
The kiosk was available in 5 different languages -- a definitely plus for someone who stopped taking French after grade 10.
On one hand, I can see the absolute value of paying someone a liveable wage such that they are able to live without state assistance. On the other hand, money has to be earned, not given. My experience at McDonald's has never really been pleasant. I'm usually greeted with someone with a frown on their face and they mumble so badly I can barely articulate what they are saying. Finally the order will get screwed up at least once. I think it would be great to have a computer system to place orders. A convenience store chain, Wawa, has this system down to a 'T.' If you go to the deli, you use their touch screen ordering system and the accuracy of the order preparation is great!
The tired buggy whip trope is hilariously out-of-touch with the present situation. Switching from moseying horses about to wiggling a wheel, well, most anyone could and did make that change. Now, updating from mere wheel wiggling to data analytics or database administration or such, why that there probably requires a wee bit more spare time and training and learning and brainpower, and fewer will make that cut to those fewer jobs. I think some folks have been making noises about structural unemployment or the like, and the bell curve suggests that not everyone will via some magic whisk of a well-funded education wand meet those high skill jobs. What to do about such predicaments, well, the rich folks of Rhodes used to given direct cash payments to the poor, and there was the Roman "bread and circus" model ("The Economy of the Greek Cities", Léopold Migeotte), or there's always the social darwinism approach (mmm, cake!) and nothing particularly resolved yet from the "Discourses on Salt and Iron" days, but so these things go.
As for inefficient practices, I need only point to the lobster industry, whose hilariously inefficient capture process as compared to, say, the net-'em-all factory farming of fish (whose previously thought infinite stocks are somehow now collapsing) indicates that mere increased efficiency is not always the best of choices. Nor is forced inefficiency a good thing—I think Milton Friedman made some particularly boneheaded remarks in this area—but there are 7+ billion people who are usually happy to find and do meaningful work, even if it involves a shovel.
Automation is both good and necessary. Nobody gains from having a 17 year old (or, as is increasingly common, a 30 year old) stand behind a point-of-sale system manually taking people's money 8 hours a day. Not the customers, and certainly not the 17 year old. Any task that can be automated should be automated. Humans have significant mental abilities that we aren't yet able to replicate with machines (intuitive leaps, artistic creation, abstract problem solving, etc.), and they should be employed in ways that take advantage of those abilities.
People are worried about the negative effect this will have on employment, but that problem can't be solved by putting it off. This is going to happen no matter what, if only because the automation is or is going to be cheaper for companies than employing humans. The actual solution to that problem is that basic human survival needs to be decoupled from employment.
USA hospitals are required by law to treat people.
Right.... and who writes those laws?
The current politicians in power (and their corporate backers).
Take your typical conservative tax payer. Tell him that the freeloaders are getting free healthcare when he's paying out the nose for it. Tell him of a magical alternative where these freeloaders are kept off the street if they want their free healthcare. Now tell them to vote for McMoney(R) to lower taxes and make the freeloader pay their fair share or face the consequences. Do you think that would resonate?
Come on! No one read the "Stainless Steal Rat?"
Will McD's be charging a premium if you order from the automated system?
It has always pissed me off that banks used automated tellers to cut down on the number of paid tellers an then charge for foreign ATM usage. I really don't have (much of) a problem with the ATM owner charging me for using their ATM, but that MY bank charges me for using some other ATM is outrageous. They save all the way around, no need to maintain a real person or a machine and no need to deal with any of the cash. Greedy bastards.
A good read, this could be the beginning of what Marshall Brain predicted would occur in Manna
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
... they could care less.
That means they do care,
at least a little.
There has been far more work towards building robots that can cook. Front counter staff will soon vanish and back of store employees are already scheduled for dismissal. Some people may not feel that it effects their lives but those folks are in for a huge shock. Skilled career paths are also about to start a rapid dissapearing act as well. Your taxes will be severely effected as well. Those without income will become wards of the state one way or another and there is no way out in the current system. For example if you put a person in prison it costs even more tax money. And then you have the children of convicts which will need support as well. Then when the convict ages you will be supplying him with social services as well and if you do not you will pay for him to be jailed which is worse. This is very much like the medical care problem. If a patient can not get good care they end up in the emergency room which is ultra expensive. It is far cheaper to make certain that the patient gets good care including pharmaceuticals and other required support even if you have to provide housing and food and the like. The worst expenses will be upon you when that person must use the hospitals. So we now must square off and face a reality that we must change the entire system or we will be in chaos and deep poverty and vulnerable to foreign powers as well. Think about it. Armies require lots of money. A poor nation can never defend against poor affluent nations. The so-called conservative that insist that things must not change or that we must roll back the clock is our greatest enemy as his line of thought will doom our nation in short order.
My dad does not always seem to grasp the concept of fast food, at least not the part of the process that takes place at ordering time. He arrives at the front of the line as if to a new planet, one filled with wonder, and choices beyond numbering. He looks at the menu as if for the first time, asks many questions, then retracts orders, revises with new ones, makes requests about customizing each thing ordered, then tacks on more items or changes. At a kiosk? Endless new joys, and menus to explore menus!
What I'd like to see is a FIFO system where people who are behind, say, my dad, can order with an app on their own phone or tablet, and if their order is ready, it starts getting made.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
is to tax the owners of the kiosks and give the money (in the form of "Basic Income") to the people put out of work. There's all sorts of justifications for this ( The intrinsic worth of humanity, the fact that earths natural resources existed before your granddad came along and claimed them, etc). But it mostly boils down to one simple question: Do you have the cojones to let people die miserable deaths from starvation and the elements? If you do, fine. Welcome to psychopathy.
/. post like mine (or yours, for that matter).
Now, as for the hard stuff (e.g. controlling prices and inflation) there are plenty of ways to do that. They're hard, and require effort. You can't wave a magic wand of +1 Ayn Rand's magic laissez faire and have it work out. It requires active participation in the economic well being of an entire populace. It also requires abandoning economic principles (not "moral principles") that aren't working. It means continuously striving to improve and control powerful trends and forces. It's not the sorta thing you figure out with a stupid
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all you have to do is keep redefining "Middle Class". How's that old Steinbeck quote about temporarily inconvenienced millionaires go again?
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There's tonnes of evidence to back him up. You know, unless you believe in magic every effect _does_ in fact have a cause...
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Having more automation not just for fast food but all restaurants for taking orders and for things like requesting another drink would be awesome. I don't eat fast food that much but when I do they screw up my order a lot, this would hopefully cut down on errors at least at the order submission level. More efficiency is great and not just to cut down on the amount of staff needed.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
McDonalds is primarily a franchise operation. They could give a shit about minimum wage, because they don't actually pay those employees. They will make a killing selling automated cahsiers to their franchise holders!
God I'm commenting at the bottom.
This isn't actually how it works, sometimes it works this way, but only by degrees. A minimum wage is a form of price control and the difference between the equilibrium price and the fixed price can be treated as a form of tax or subsidy (in this case a tax), so this makes the question a tax incidence problem.
If McDonalds is operating in an environment where their food can be replaced with many different supplementary goods below their menu price, they actually, in the limit, cannot raise their prices because they would lose demand as people switched to the supplementary goods. If McDonalds offers a good that cannot be easily supplemented, then they have some liberty to raise prices -- but they have little control over this, their ability to raise their prices is constrained by the price elasticity of demand for their goods.
You can go a little further, and we can argue that McDonalds was paying their employees below the equilibrium wage for the work, because McDs was benefiting from either regulatory capture or some externality (an illiquid labor market, for instance), and the amount they were keeping was a pure economic rent. In this case, raising the minimum wage is a form of Pigovian regulation, and is a "perfect" pareto-optimal tax with no deadweight loss.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
To answer your question, see my essay: http://www.pdfernhout.net/basi... ...
"One may ask, why should millionaires support a basic income as depicted in Marshall Brain's Australia Project fictional example in "Manna", but, say, right now in the USA, of US$2000 a month per person (with some deducted for universal health insurance), or $24K per year? With about 300 million residents in the USA, this would require about seven trillion US dollars a year, or half the current US GDP. Surely such a proposal would be a disaster for millionaires in terms of crushing taxes? Or would it?
Now, let's continue to look at this from a millionaire's point of view. The streets might be a lot happier. The families would not be struggling as much, and so the kids would be happier. Why should a millionaire care about other people's happiness? Well, there are obviously moral reasons. But ignoring them, in general, communities would be safer. There would be less resentment towards the rich, who after all, were making this all possible. Nobody would be so poor they had nothing to lose by committing an assault to steal a walled or break into a home. (Assuming drugs were legal, and regulated, there would be less addicts doing property crimes for habits.)
There might be a much larger variety of goods and services for millionaires to choose from, given every unique person had some money so the market heard their needs and even whims. The money would keep flowing, especially because there would be no transaction taxes to slow it down. Entrepreneurial millionaires would be in a good position to benefit from all this demand, creating companies to satisfy all these needs that the market was now listening to.
With all artists, writers, inventors, programmers, and so on freed from the need to worry about earning a daily living, the digital world would blossom with an endless array of free music, free images, free idea, and the physical world would be beautified with free artworks and the streets would be livened with free street productions and plays. So, the millionaire's remaining wealth would go farther, with less entertainment that needs to be paid for. Basically, millionaires would be benefiting, like everyone else, from a robust peer economy and gift economy.
On a personal level, there would be a lot less desire for people to marry millionaires just for the money. For some ugly or nasty millionaires, this might be a hardship. But for most, this would actually be a blessing. They would be less likely to be taken advantage of by social climbers or fortune hunters. Millionaires would have to worry less about their kids being taken advantage of too. With a basic income, there would be a lot less desire by people to marry for money. So, a certain social problem would be greatly reduced in the lives of millionaires. There might still be some of this, but the overall situation would improve greatly.
Similarly, there would likely be less kidnapping. For potential kidnappers or other criminals, when you get $2000 a month in income already, why risk being thrown in jail where your income goes to the upkeep of your prison and you lose your chance of making your own decisions as to how to spend it? While there would still be crimes of passion, total money-related crime might drop way down.
Right now, a profit driven health care system has sized emergency rooms for average needs, and those emergency rooms are often full. With a basic income and more money going on a systematic basis to the health care system, the health care system emergency rooms will no longer be overrun with people there for reasons they could see a doctor for. So, emergency care would be better for millionaires. Millionaires with heart attacks won't be as likely to end up being diverted to far away hospitals because the local hospital emergency room is full.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Those kiosks have already been available in Canada at some Tim Hortons branches for years now. At least four or five years ago I used one to order my lunch in advance at a very busy downtown branch of the coffee chain in Toronto and it printed me a receipt, my number was called and I received my order before some people waiting in line.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Well, yes, you are stating the obvious. But the possibility that they can't raise prices is even worse if you think it through. None of these possibilities will result in people getting paid substantially above what they are worth because that simply is not sustainable.
Yes, when you pull facts like that out of your ass, you can "prove" just about anything. But probably the opposite is true: they are an anachronism and already paid a bit more than they are worth. Companies are simply holding on to them because automation is risky and capital intensive, but the higher you raise the cost of employing them, the faster their jobs will be eliminated.
Automats. I wouldn't call it an anachronism. It's a niche that in the US people want to be served by people. Probably because of too many cold foods that should be hot and no one to complain to.
They are planning on installing "self-ordering kiosks"?? Last I went to MacD, I'm pretty sure I used one, so'eh ...
No. This is about death. The party of death wants to kill everyone that isn't a member of their party. They accelerated their killing under Shrub Jr and now they are proceeding to kill more and more of us. That is the way of the Republicans. This plan by the Republican-ruled McDonald's is about killing people by starving them to death.
We are so lucky the Democrats are here to save us! Obama will import Ebola by not placing travel restrictions on people originating from affected countries, and he'll continue to bring in drug resistant strains of Cholera and Typhus and Hepatitis and Tuberculosis by allowing anyone infected with them in a South or Central American country effective amnesty in the U.S.!
We will all be dead, of course, but at least we will be safe from the Republicans!
Two years ago in Strasbourg France, I ordered McDonalds breakfast for me and my kids on a computer.
Burger King has had iPhone ordering for ages in many European countries.
I think it has taken this long in the U.S. Because it would be too hard to find competent people to deal with computer problems.
Every decision you make in business involves cost. Labor is one of the largest costs in business. In many businesses, it is the largest.
No major decision will ever be made, like automating, without consideration of all costs and benefits.
The writer of this post on Slashdot needs to study the concept of "opportunity cost". And the notion that in all business resources by definition are scarce.
Fast food I can understand (who eats that passion anyway). When I go out to eat at a restaurant or for drinks at a lounge it's for the comfort and luxury of being waited on, a treat for myself and possibly my companion. If I'm doing anything myself I might as well stay home and cook
"automation backlash" aka increased productivity is fantastic for the economy .
Define 'economy' ...
Try to include people, especially those who want to work, in the definition.
It's people not wanting to deal with some half-deaf, inarticulate idiot at the register who will inevitably screw their order up.
So yes, give me a tablet or kiosk - and let me put my own order in. In the end, it benefits the consumer and the business owner.
The only downside is some idiot who can't figure out the kiosk holding the line up.
Idiots will find a way to ruin it for the rest of us.
I hate to say it, but there are some cases where I will seek out a machine over a human employee. For example recently I discovered the wonders of my banks new(ish) ATMs, I can withdraw a little running around money, deposit checks, and check my balance often in 3 minutes or less. The last few times I've went into the office for assistance its taken 15 to 30 minutes for the same activities. Its not really the fault of the employees, they seem to try to move people through as quickly as possible. Its the customers that seem to gravitate towards bank offices, people who have troubles and are seeking to make it someone elses problem as well, older folks who long for a little conversation & businesses with stacks of transactions all who seem to take up residence at a tellers window until every permutation of their situation is explored. Those same people seem to (at least for the most part) avoid a machine because they know they won't get anywhere with it.
There's a device on the table to swipe your own credit card through for payment. Problem: It defaults on 12% tip! TIP? Tip for who? The servers will now be doing even less for the customers!
Why would e race to give everything to the top 1% who are lucky enough to claim ownership of everything?
/. anyway...
I'm not asking for more education to solve the problem because that won't solve it. The problem isn't "how do we train people for new jobs" it's "what do we do with people when there _are_ no jobs?". What do we do when only 20% of us have any useful work to do? What about 10%? 1%?
I've never once seen the right wing give me a good answer that didn't boil down to "let 'em die for my profit and glory" or some form of back door socialism. If you've got the balls (and they psychopathy) to let 99% of the world starve while 1% live like Gods fine. Say it and be done. But then again, your just conservatrolling to my libtrolling. Nothing ever comes of this and we're both broke ass losers posting on
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Govt policies should provide jobs for the masses to prevent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_unrest
Casteism
FTA
As many contributors to these pages have warned, forcing businesses to pay people out of proportion to the profits they generate will provide those businesses with a greater incentive to replace employees with machines.
A GREATER INCENTIVE!!!!!
Sorry for shouting, but is anybody really paying attention in Wash or Wall? I don't much care for H. Ford's social commentary but he did get one thing right, pay the workers enough to buy your product! It's the tragedy of the commons with the whole economy being the commons. Once workers can't afford to pay for goods and services who will companies continue to sell them to? The 1%ers can only buy so much. Leave it to our Banksters and Govsters to completely ignore the single most important economic change for the new millennium.
[...]
Once they do sell you a franchise, they dictate your trade dress, which means corporate pays for remodeling the individual franchise stores (after all, McDonalds themselves owns the property), and when they tell you remodel, expect the crews to show up and just do it, you are at best granted minor choices on things like arrangement of the bathrooms, and the manager's office, and so on. Otherwise, they dictate. [...]
Everything you say other than this is true (former MCD shift manager here, but high school was a long time ago, so I may be mis-recalling). The corporation gives you choice of decor from the "catalog" (yes, there is basically a catalog for interiors) and then you split the bill with them 50/50 for the remodeling/upgrade. But they do tell you when you're going to be doing the remodeling and they do hire the contractors. Usually this also includes upgrades of the old/retrofitted kitchen equipment, which is expensive and provided by corporate approved suppliers only.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
And where do you think this money is going to come from to pay those ridiculous wages?
$25 Big Macs, $18 a gallon milk, 32.50 for a loaf of bread, etc etc etc.....
Some ones got to maintain and fix those machine. Its replacing low wage jobs with higher wage tech jobs
1.4M employees, check.
$16B is for all of walmart, not just the Walton's stock. They own around half.
$8.81 moving to $100/hour almost makes the $8 insignificant, but I'll use $91.19 anyways.
1/3rd are part time.
Using 1.4M employees, that's roughly 1,867M full time hours, 467M part time hours. 2.3B employee hours/year. So increasing average employee pay to $100/hour would cost the Waltons $210B of their $8B of income from Walmart a year. For that matter, raising average pay to $12.29 would wipe out their income period. You could reach $15.77 if you theoretically turned Walmart into a non-profit.
$2/hour to the proposed federal minimum wage increase would seem doable though. It would also increase our tax base - more people paying the higher income tax rates vs the 15% max long term capital gain rate the Waltons almost certainly take advantage of.
I don't read AC A human right
So what affect will this have on the tide of incoming illegal immigrants, as well as those already in the USA? Will they be affected most? Will they return "home" or stop coming if there limited minimum wage jobs? If so, what affect would that ultimately have on costs of all things provided for their support, from welfare, food stamps, subsidized housing to medical care (i.e. emergency room use with no insurance), public schools, etc.?