But of course it's kind of convenient if people at least think that their job can be automated tomorrow: that makes it easier to make them sell their workforce for peanuts today. You just need to hope that they don't realize that it doesn't make a difference once the day comes on which they can be automated away - it won't matter then whether they get $9.50 or $15 an hour, the automation will be cheaper regardless. But by demanding $15 now they will at least have earned a lot more during the decades until that day finally arrives.
I used to work in a kitchen, so maintaining food service grade of cleanliness on robots, sounds frighteningly expensive to me.
Maybe everything won't be automated all at once, but if the economic incentive is there, it will happen. Pizza making robots are already a thing. There's no reason the shake machine can't measure its output to the cup instead of pulling a lever; drink machines in many places already do this. Dispensing the cup too is not a big step.
That machine is, like, 5 machines including an oil moat. With all of them together it makes up something like half the entire store's footprint. It's only remotely viable because that shop mostly only makes one thing. No breakfast sandwiches in the morning, no burgers at lunch time, just donuts.
Plenty of employees are still required just to make the different types of donuts and donut-adjacent items (and also presumably to be there in case a monumental grease fire starts, or the dough machine blows a gasket starts spewing dough all over).
> Pizza making robots are already a thing
Presumably making the frozen ones sold at grocery stores, which might be a meaningful percentage of all pizza sold, but effectively 0% of any other pizzas?
This is an entirely different thing than a McDonalds.
Yes, I could trivially make an automation machine to cook meat, we have them, they're called a charbroiler, similarly, toasting buns is pretty easy. The hard an expensive part is assembling all the parts into a package.
French fry hoppers automatically filling baskets from a frozen mini-closet. Out comes fresh fries.
Same for the cups that they can use in drive-throughs.
I think it’s up to the franchises to buy/install them. Depends on volume/space whether its worthwhile/possible.
Or they just push it to the customer to do it.
With a McDonalds restaurant, you can control your environment almost perfectly. If you throw away the kitchen that was designed to be used by humans, and then develop a kitchen never intended to be used by humans, you can drop a lot of environmental constraints in terms of the automation concerns. Trying to fully-automate the existing kitchen layout will certainly end in disaster.
As you reach 100% automation, it actually starts to get easier because the system is now all oriented in this direction, and you have standardized specifications/interfaces across the board. Also, once you fully-automate a single McD restaurant, the next one becomes trivial because it's simply another copy of the exact same thing.
And I think it’s more than that before we have no humans behind the wheel of cars!
DOM Pizza Checker (Domino's camera 'AI' that checks the pizza toppings are correct) could be used for other things, other than it's 'other' current use of store tracking. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/dominos-turns-its-pizza-check... Stores now get updates ;)
Designing food so it's optimised for cooking has been going on for a while but I suspect there gains there. Even if you can design more food variety for fast food that can be cooked or created efficiency, it can cut out labour at other food outlets as they close and society moves to highly efficient food outlets like McDonald's.
Automation in processes is where it's at. Designing food and processes for mostly automated machines and schedulers.
But you are correct, so far the threat of automation to keep wages low seems to have had more impact than automation.
For argument's sake, let's assume that no jobs can be automated. The cost to the franchise owner to operate goes up, and in response they raise prices -- but at some prices they're going to really start losing business, so they also have to lower costs elsewhere or simply get lower profits. How does it all shake out? The fact is that it has to be paid by someone, and it'll likely mean fewer McDonalds are opened because it'll just be harder to make them profitable.
Maybe you're OK with that trade-off, but it IS a tradeoff that will happen, and it means fewer jobs.
Your analysis presumes that the business owners can and will absorb anything without reacting, as if more value can be extracted but there won't be a new equilibrium. I assume that the franchise owners aren't making the kinds of profits where that is true, I assume they're mostly bumping along on fairly low margins.
But for the sake of it: yes, in a time of practically full employment, I do indeed prefer less workers to make more if this trade-off you assume is even a realistic model of reality (which is a big if, in my opinion).
Here, too. But usually half of them are broken in one way or another, like the touch screen doesn't respond or the receipt printer is out of paper, or something I saw in a TV commercial isn't in the menu structure, or the pricing isn't the same as in an ad, etc... These are things a cashier is still needed for.
As an aside, I find it curious that my local McD only got the kiosks maybe two years ago, but I used them in Germany almost 20 years ago. They are fantastic for when you can't speak the local language.
Edit:
Is the answer to fight for $15/hr or is the answer to go back to school, apply to more jobs, and/or go into a trade?
The vast majority of McD cashiers I see are in no position to go back to school or change jobs. They're too old, low-skilled, physically constrained, or low-education to do that.
I work in an organization that deals with the poor a lot. If you're 50 years old and only have a fifth-grade education and need to survive, you don't have the time to go to school. You're probably working two or three jobs just to have a place to live.
Is a cashier needed, or just an on call tech who oversees a dozen restaurants? I would imagine working on the kinks in the kiosks and improving their reliability to be doable.
And while the store waits a couple of days for the $75/hour tech to show up, $10,000 walks out the door. Better to pay for a $15 cashier.
So if everybody in this situation goes back into school, applies for more jobs, and/or goes into a trade, what do you think will happen? Do you think minimum wage jobs are only being offered because people aren't trying to get higher paid jobs?
Seems to me the goal should be to get a wage where you can afford to go back to school. I don't think it's fair to argue that the kiosks are replacing the cashiers only because they want a $15/hr wage - that's coming whether they want to or not. The only thing that the cashier can do is do their best to collect the resources right now to get out of that situation, and one of those is more earnings.
Without money ? My girlfriend was a cashier. Now she's studying law because my job can provide for us and we have free healtcare in belgium. Otherwise it would be impossible !
> apply to more jobs
That basically mean more slavery since she will apply for job that pay like McDonalds. It wont solve any problem.
> and/or go into a trade
I don't understand what your mean here.
Is it a real thing ? Or just something they do to have a good image ?
He thinks poor people could be electricians helpers tomorrow instead of mcds cashiers if they only applied themselves.
https://www.hln.be/geld/consument/wat-gebeurt-er-met-uw-100-...
I prefer the kiosks, much in the same way I prefer self checkout at grocery stores.
I agree the kiosks are a bit harder for a customer to use, I accidentally ordered something like 80 chicken nuggets the first time I used one, simply because I tried to add extra sauce.
I still prefer them because it's easy to have a bunch of kiosks which means there are shorter lines.
For example plumbers.
On the residential side, you have more solderless fittings, YT videos and even pre-fab bathrooms in a box.
The plumbers themselves will be fine as they’ll just reduce training seats, but that makes it harder to become one.
My local McD just got them, as part of an extensive remodel. By "extensive", I mean that early this year they tore the whole place down and built a new one there, which opened near the end of October.
I've used the kiosks when I can, but for most of November I had to use the human cashiers. Why? Because the kiosks insisted on applying a "discount" that actually raised the price! The cash registers used by the human cashiers would also apply that discount, but the interface there allows the cashier to remove it. The kiosks (and the mobile app which also applies it) do not allow removal.
On the one hand, I am impressed that their software is automatically applying discounts instead of making the customer manually ask for it. I've seen at other places things like a parent order a burger and a drink and their child order fries and a drink, and unless the cashier notices that this is cheaper as a combo (burger, fries, drink) plus another drink, it will be rung up at full price.
On the other hand, come on! It's pretty obvious that if you are going to be looking for discounts to apply, the software needs to have a check to make sure that the total with the discount is not more than the undiscounted price and if it is not apply the discount.
This situation came about at my local McD because to celebrate being at the same location for 40 years, they rolled back prices on several items to '80s level for the month of November. Among the items rolled back were Sausage McMuffins, to $0.79.
Sausage McMuffins and Sausage Burritos are part of the "any 2 for $3" discount. So if your order included two Sausage McMuffins, or included one Sausage McMuffin with one Sausage Burrito, it would decide to apply the 2 for $3. In both cases that raised the price.
A couple times that month I wanted two Sausage McMuffins and a Sausage Burrito. To order that at the kiosk or on the app and get the correct discount ($0.79 for the McMuffins, regular price for the Burrito) could only be done by doing it is 3 separate orders! (Well, I suppose it could be done on one order and then selecting cash payment...that prints a receipt that you take to a human cashier, who can then recall the order at their register and collect payment. I assume that they can modify the order at that point to remove the 2 for $3).
There are places in the world where you can make a living without any particular skill set, but I don’t think the US, or any other first-world country, should really be among them.
The US needs immigration reform to bring more high-skilled people into the country, but it also needs emigration reform to find new homes for people who can’t necessarily make a reasonable living in a first-world country.
The USA has a labour shortage problem. There aren't enough people that want to spend their lives picking fruit, doing maid services, working fast food, and just generally taking care of all the problems that wealthier people pay to have taken care of.
You can pay immigrants rock bottom wages to do this work, which is the status quo in the USA today. They accept it because it comes with the promise of a better life one day. If not for them, then for their children.
If you want to send all those people packing, then get ready to pay $10 for a tomato. No, robots aren't going to help, either.
I don't even want to think of the new suicide rate in that world.
Study visas are virtually unrestricted. But there are more being issued than immigration pathway seats (which are restricted).
Seriously though, countries with labor shortages will allow unskilled people to visit and work for awhile at least (eg Australia).
In a poorer country they would have a decreased cost of living but a decreased earnings and fewer family and friends.
I cannot comprehend the thought process that leads you to come to this conclusion.
Example my wife is disabled we live on my very modest income due to costs of life and medical care we have zero wealth of any kind and a well maintained 2004 car. I think I have $13 in the bank right now.
Where ought I move to increase my fortunes and who would let me who would also pay for my wife's medicine.
Poverty often follows medical issues which then wouldnt see any help. Compare total mortality with projected mortality and you can figure out how many exactly you are murdering.
To facilitate the operation you will have to gut civil rights setting precedents with horrible implications for everyone's freedom.
If you can send someone to a foreign land because they are poor, lame, or merely unsuccessful removing all of their rights merely because their fellow citizens will be richer for it then what rights do YOU have left that are inalienable?
Presumably your rules don't apply to all those who have no wealth or income who depend on others so now dependants are slaves who need fear losing their status if they fall out of favor.
We can apply the same logic to the working poor who now must fear deportation as a result of losing their asses when terminated.
Spousal abuse and labor mistreatment will rise substantially.
Then we must ask what nation would willingly serve as our ashtray of undesirables.
Your idea is like an endless cornacopua of horrible implications. The last time I read a blueprint for a worse outcome it was written by George Orwell.