The Appetizer ... or the Main Course ... of Things to Come?

McDonald's should raise its minimum wage to $15/hour, then install these and get rid of all its cashiers.

 

Don't give them any ideas.

 

If you call yourself a "good tipper", but refuse to tip at the (Subway, Starbucks, etc), what kind of tipper do you call the people who *do* tip at those places?

 

I don't know. I don't know what those people tip in situations that actually call for tipping.

 

I'm shocked they don't already have touch screens to take orders. I think the only thing stopping them is that cashiers can actually take the orders faster.

But, if you continue to raise the minimum wage, you'll see them more and more. It will take a while for people to learn to use them, and they'll phase them in, but they're coming.

I haven't checked in with an actual person at an airport in forever. There's all these people standing in line, and I go straight to an empty kiosk.

The same thing will happen at McDonalds, and other places.

 

So what jobs are going to be available to all the newly unemployed and unskilled workers when restaurants no longer have to employ so many servers/hostesses/etc.?

I agree that this trend is an inevitable change in the food services industry, and a positive one overall.

But unskilled people have to do something to make a living, too. What jobs are going to be available for them?

 

None. Not in the private sector. It's a huge reason why the unemployment rate is so stubborn. The world is a cruel place for unskilled people right now. And unskilled people would do well to repeat that last sentence to their children until they are blue in the face.

This is a reason we need some sort of social safety net that guys like YF decry. You learn a job, then the economy changes on you, through no fault of your own. Happened to a lot of us here.

 

Bit of a stretch there, DW ... if you're unskilled, by definition you don't have job-specific knowledge that an economic sea-change would vitiate.

 

This.

 

I'm already seeing this at Walmart and some grocers. I don't mind, except when the machines don't function properly, which is like 60% of the time.

 

The fact the Wal-Mart self-checkout machines don't always work properly is the reason why you will never be able to eliminate the human element entirely. Somebody has to be available to assist the customer if there's a problem with the machine.

At the Wal-Mart here in town, there is one self-checkout area with about eight stations, supervised by one person. A few of the stations are set up to take credit or debit cards only, thus reducing options for people who want to pay cash or check. And for those who want to pay by check, they still need to have their purchase finalized by the person supervising the whole station.

Now imagine a future in which all checkout lanes at Wal-Mart are self-done and there are about 20 of them open. Does anyone really think that just one person is going to be able to supervise them all, even if everybody is only using credit or debit cards?

The funny thing about machines is this: When you use them to replace one type of worker, you need another type of worker to make sure they function properly. And you can only have so many machines monitored by one person, because if you have the 20 self checkouts and half of them have customers who need help with something, one person isn't going to be able to serve them all, customers will get pissed off and may decide to go elsewhere in the future, meaning Wal-Mart loses business.

And for the self-ordering stations, what happens if you still get the wrong order delivered to you? Do you really think a machine is going to be able to address your issue properly or are you going to want to talk a human being?

In other words, while these self-checkouts and self-order stations may change the way services are delivered, they will never entirely replace the human element. No amount of technology will change that.

 

If you take everyone's job away by installing a tablet, are you still a job creator?