https://fortune.com/2023/05/09/wendys-ai-powered-chatbot-drive-thru-orders/
enclose, reduce staff, enclose, reduce staff, enclose, reduce staff
at every stage the worker is more alienated from their remaining labor, made invisible cogs in some mechanical product-turk, at every stage everyone with any kind of difficulty & special needs are further disenfranchised because eventually there's just not going to be anybody to help them. god we need popular ludditism so fucking bad :sadness:
Whatever happened to the automat model? Just a bunch of glass boxes constantly kept staffed by cooks behind a wall.
Way cheaper and more efficient to have bays of food under a heat lamp like a gas station. But most gas stations aren't busy enough to justify a self check out.
Those are still around but they're kind of a gimmicky thing that you only try once before realizing that they suck.
Japan figured out the best version of these with conveyor belt sushi. But in most of those restaurants you can see the sushi chefs and there's still waitstaff for drinks, so it's like they made it as un-alienating as possible.
edit: actually I just realized that Ghost Kitchens are the current cutting edge of the automat concept. Just a kitchen in an unmarked building that you (more likely your delivery driver) pick up food from.
You enjoy conveyor sushi? Care to invest in an entire conveyor restaurant?
too many cooks preparing food that might not be picked up that instant, think just-in-time logistics but with food prep
:no-mouth-must-scream: I have a gun but no service worker to threaten
and you had to say the word "frosty" to them 10,000 times before they would recognize it
"How to get the Wendy's drive thru chat bot to say the N-word, thread 1/488."
i wouldnt hate it if the eventual result wasn't "oh sweet one less person to pay."
Yeah if we had some kind of Universal housing and UBI guarantees then why not replace the clerk with AI - it's a terrible job being a sin eater for treat getters.
But this is just going to fuck already precarious people over so it's pretty much demonic.
being a sin eater for treat getters
I can see the treat getters absolutely revolting over this though and getting it banned. For many people having a little servant is the whole point of going out to eat.
Yea that's the tragedy of all of this. So many jobs that are built around your capacity to absorb anger that should be directed towards management. :citations-needed:
Don't worry, automation means productivity gains and greater employment, which I learned from cherrypicked anecdotes about ATMs.
The outcome will be 3-4X as many Wendy's. More Wendy's' than you want. Have you had breakfast at a Wendy's lately? Well you're in luck!
This is how the Food Wars starts. Taco Bell has been stockpiling weapons for this moment.
It's ridiculous that capitalism turns automation into something bad. Automation, meaning less labor needing to be done, should be great for society. But because the means of production are owned by like 1000 people across the world, all it does is enrich those 1000 while the rest of the world has to fight for scraps.
a frosty is a mlikshake
I literally just had a frosty, and I'm here to tell you that that shit is not a milkshake. Milkshakes can be drank. Frostys are just cheap, slightly bland ice cream that they put in a cup.
There's a certain type of Boomer who becomes confused and hostile when presented with any UI other than "a human I'm allowed to yell at."
Yea, but this could be done with push buttons on a menu or very primitive voice recognition.
I've been trying to get some blinds replaced in my apartment for the past week. My property manager replaced direct repair requests with a third party. The third party has a text chat bot that refused to create a repair request. It made one for a totally different issue, when I said it was the wrong issue it closed it without opening a new one.
The future is gonna suck so bad lmao.
Just let me put the order in on a kiosk, all the alienation, none of the ai grift
If a chatbot forces people to say Frosty and doesn't accept the term milkshake then I absolutely support the property damage that person does in response to it.
Chuds will be screaming profanities at an AI chatbot soon
I'm going to scream at the AI chatbot soon too because it'll inevitably suck.
A burning anger bubbles within me everytime I have to use a shitty self-checkout machine. FUCK YOURSELF I PUT MY ITEMS IN WHICHEVER AREA I WANT YOU STUPID MACHINE.
I'm too much of a wuss to, but I do think that you should be allowed to steal however much they save by not hiring a person whenever you use a self-checkout
I’m too much of a wuss to, but I do think that you should be allowed to steal however much they save by not hiring a person whenever you use a self-checkout
It's called an employee discount and it's perfectly normal.
I'm old enough to remember when eendys was good and the frostys weren't stomach turning disgusting.
I remember when this happened with support units being done by an automated voice most of the time. Only now you can physically attack the mechanical voicebox. Something I think the boomers will be doing a lot of.
This could go a number of ways. One of them being that they end up dropping it after losing customers out of frustration with the AI. This has happened with a few food businesses that outsourced their workers to foreign countries and the end result were customers leaving in droves, forcing them to reverse the decision. Another one is that it could also only effect urban areas but poorer or smaller locations may still have the regular way of operating. There are several towns in Upstate New York that still use the fast food menus from the 90s and early 2000's
