Freshii’s new ‘virtual cashier’–who works from Nicaragua for $3.75 an hour
thestar.com
thestar.com
I'm not commenting on whether the customer experience is better or worse - that is an optimization that Freshii is making. Perhaps this technology allows them to serve better food from their kitchen, or perhaps it's a simple cost reduction to maximize profit. Consumers can vote with their wallets.
If your job is something that can be outsourced via video call then the writing is on the wall for the automation of that job. Today you're competing against a worker in Nicaragua, tomorrow you're competing against a generative machine learning algorithm. Instead of focusing on the employers making these efficiencies, we should be focusing on programmes that help up-skill the replaced workers.
yeaaahh... perhaps? maybe? who can tell? it is a mystery.
//scnr
But no, fairly obvious to me that it's not their purpose. This story just smacks of libertarian-brainworm-addled, late-stage capitalism. I know cynicism rarely helps, but I can't help but despise this MBA-run, super-short-term-profits-over-everything-else way of running businesses. Also might be that's why I don't run a business.
You know, civil society isn't free.
The answer to why people are fighting this is that they want to live in a society that places other values higher than squeezing every last cent of profit out of fast food workers.
They believe we should not do that. You believe we should.
Is the society that results from your vision more appealing than theirs?
But within two or three decades many if not most high skill workers are likely to start feeling pressure from AI competition also.
The 3.75/hour is literally more than what many skilled workers make in India. 3.75880=2400 inr. For 20 days =inr 48,000. Annually 576,000.00. To put that into context,
In India you are exempt from paying income tax if your annual income is less than inr 500,000. That covers like 95% or something of india population so if Indians get this job, many many people will get to earn a good bread
Maybe it's the customization? If all I have to do is scan things, then I can do that about as fast as the professional checker, but if I have to make customizations and select from menu options and so on, maybe it's faster, and certainly easier, to let the professional do it.
I wonder if McDonald's, or similar, is taking the audio from their drive-thrus, and the resultant order, and using that to train a machine learning model. If you could train an ML system to be as easy to order from as the standard cashier, and combine that with a screen and an intuitive (and standardized) interface to modify the order, perhaps you could bring more people to self-ordering.
“the great resignation” is a cute catchphrase but misleading. There was basically no net voluntary withdrawal from the labor force, just a rapid resolution of deferred workforce mobility resulting from both sides (employer/employee) being reluctant to start new jobs during the peak of the pandemic and associated restrictions.
Sure, we are sometimes told there are people living on as little as 10 cents per hour. We might even see a picture at times. It's easy to emotionally distance yourself from. Sure, we might donate sometimes and some part of our donation might actually end up with people in need. We sort of have to imagine our good deed had any effect.... why is the CEO earning 300 k?....woah so much spending on advertisement?... O well, what do I know, it might be required.
On the other end, one would much rather work and take care of themselves than depend on hand outs. Hand outs are humiliating. Who wants to depend on hand outs?
Indeed disappointing from that perspective; yet fighting it is also futile.
If they somehow get such a direct remote cashier arrangement outlawed, it'll just be rearranged at most to a set of self-service kiosks with a remote support booth available, or some such further abstraction.
Plus, even the remote cashier and support job will also be transient, as the technology improves.
One of the main reasons capital needs labor to be fixed, so it can exploit wage gradients.
Closer and closer to a cyberpunk future every day lol.
There's outrage around taking jobs from locals in Toronto, but you could do that with fully automated ordering as well (I've run into this in multiple fast food settings in recent times!).
From my perspective, screen-based ordering from multiple kiosks with one or two cashiers is the only way forward, and although from a labour perspective it sucks for locals, it's almost definite that as the number of cashiers required goes down to below one per store, there will be a move to remote models with centralized resources (cashiers assigned to multiple stores) basically acting as intermediaries for the kiosks. It's not even a wage or working conditions issue, it's a labour requirement issue.
Assuming they can even find someone to fill the position.
I know from traveling around the states there is a significant problem in getting people to work in restaurants as they can just go down the street and get an entry level ‘career’.