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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

"Service" roles have been put in a weird state where, because they involve relating to humans, they're difficult to automate. But because they involve doing what you're told, with low room for autonomy and creativity, they're low-status and therefore low paid.

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> they're low-status and therefore low paid.

Pretty sure it's mostly the other way: They're low status because they're low paid.

Jobs are low paid when there is a big supply of people who can and want to do them. Which is pretty much equivalent to the jobs being low skilled.

Since everyone can flip a burger, you don't have to pay much to find someone to do it.

Additionally, the demand may not be sufficient to support higher wages. Even if no one is willing to flip a burger for less than $50 per hour, who is willing to pay for a burger flipped by someone earning $50 per hour?

And yet people are totally willing to contribute to servers earning much more than $50/hr in tips (on busy nights). $50/hr spread across a lot of customers works out to not actually being that much per customer.

Admittedly this is relatively expensive sit-down restaurant service we're talking about here, which is different from the fast food market.

You typically have to pay a lot more if public sector jobs and wages aren't being cut.

It would be trivial to replace servers, but there's an initial cost investment most restaurants can't afford. The obvious transition is those screens you see popping up everywhere. It's going to be the next step are conveyer belts that deliver the food to your table. Industrial automation already exists for this. Need to send it back open the receptacle click the screen to say what's wrong and your order will come back correct.

Except you would need to remodel every exusting restaraunt to have conveyer belts behind false walls. This isnt the next step, it will not happen. Walk up windows for ordering and numbers are already increasing. That is the next step for reducing server numbers.

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