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Comment by pizzafeelsright | Hacker News Reader

Replace them all with machines.

$30k a machine over a lazy $40k FTE is an easy call.

What's terrible is the hard working kid who will take $15/hr is barred from working.

I was the kid making $9 CAD at McDonald’s in the early 2010s; it’s certainly interesting to me the same job is paid almost 3x in California. In my experience, while maybe 60% of the tasks at McDonald’s are well optimized for machines, lots still are not and will be a long time before they are. Drive-thru immediately comes to mind - our store was frequently moving 100+ cars an hour, I can’t imagine machines being able to hit that frequency any time soon.

100% automation is certainly the Holy Grail but too much attention is focused on it. Most fast-food operations could be improved with more investment in automation, but they'll need to pick and choose which tasks make sense to automate and which ones do not. A system that allows two employees to do the work that now would take six employees? That's a big win for the company and customers but a loss for the four people who won't be able to find a job.

Also want to be careful to not get into a McDonald's ice cream machine type situation. Whatever McDonald's reason for getting into that pit, be it squeezing franchisees or having been out maneuvered by the machine manufacturer, adding more machines creates more opportunities for that type of failure.

Yes, the thing that people forget is that Automation Breaks. When a McBurger machine breaks, that could be 50% of the store's revenue lost until a technician shows up to fix it. And that technician won't be cheap.

McDonald's is hyperoptimized to the point that I'm positive they've done the math and decided that humans are cheaper.

Why are they lazy

People have bought into the idea that certain jobs are just bad and therefore only bad workers take them. They then like to imagine that the jobs are OK, as long as they are done by children who will go on to better things.

Never mind the fact that these people rely on those workers to feed them even during the school day (and the jobs are usually bad because one is forced to deal with people who look down on you).

It’s a round about way to counteract the obvious question that comes after these kinds of articles (Isn’t even $20/hr only $40k/year full-time?)

No job or position is bad if done well.

Fast food workers are low skill, low entry. Why should they pay beyond the value they bring?

As for "lazy" - that has been my recent experience. I rarely visit such establishments so perhaps my experiences are my own.

It's just a thing you say to elevate yourself over a hypothetical other because that's something you have a need to do. It's just words to make someone feel good, I wouldn't take it literally.

They have FTEs? I thought they avoided having full time employees in pretty much every jurisdiction.

I really don’t understand the drama and slow motion trainwreck about machines doing fast food. It is so obvious and I cant imagine why a new entrant hasn’t just done it and pushed the market forward.

Please tell me some ghost kitchen on Doordash is already doing this and nobody knows, because the current reality is ridiculous.

It's been discussed here before. The reality is that a) most fast-food chains have already automated as much as they can before b) the robots that can do the rest of the work are complicated, are single points of failure, they're single-tasked, and need more maintenance and food-safety cleaning than a human.

If a human fails or doesn't show up for work, it can be quickly replaced. Not so for the robot.

That kid who works what hours exactly?

I worked 5pm-10pm most nights for minimum wage.

I did this as a kid too. It was one of the worst ideas ever. So much time lost that I could have been developing and learning to be a person and it was traded for chump change.

Kudos, So much truth here

Fast food workers are lazy? Is that the truth here?

Compared to a machine, I afraid everyone is a lazy one.

Increasing wage floors for this kind of work will increase the speed at which automation will be adopted by companies

My McDonald's employment ended more than 50 years ago--not too soon for me, and probably, come to that, not too soon for them. I was not lazy, nor were my co-workers. I was not particularly efficient, but it was the third W-2 job I ever held.

I did hold one more fast food job after that, and can tell you that it was not one for the lazy.

(I will add that the job then paid minimum wage--$1.60/hour. That summer, $1.60 would buy 5 gallons of gasoline.)

Some are - and they would be the first to be replaced.

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