Mrs. Goofy went to a Thai restaurant last night with friends, they scanned a QR code which led to a menu from which they ordered, selected where to sit and told the computer, and then were served their food by a robot:
It navigated between tables (although there was nothing in the way, hard to say what happens when someone moves a chair back) and then people had to get up and serve themselves from the robot’s trays.
Presumably there’s a human in the kitchen, and someone to bus the tables at the end.
One of the little gifts TFG left for restaurant “JCs” on the last go around, was allowing the “JC”, under certain conditions, to skim a significant amount off of the tips the servers earned, to pay part of the wages for back room staff, rather than pay their full wage out of the “JC’s” own pocket. I can’t help but wonder if the proposal to make tips “tax free”, is a development of that scheme, so more of the server’s tips can be diverted to other people: something like everyone in the place makes the Federal minimum wage, with all the server’s tips dumped in a pool, then the pool split among everyone else, including the “JC”, so the “JC’s” share of the tip pool is tax free to him.
…I posted the X-Files bit in the robotic restaurant recently enough.
A group of friends and I ate at a buffet place last summer. A human wrote up the tickets, and kept our water glasses filled, but, being a buffet, we all went and fetched our food. They automatically added a 15% tip to our bills anyway.
Mrs. Goofy, knowing that I would want to know, asked “How much does one cost?” The guy behind the counter said “Around $50 grand.”
They bought one. I don’t know what they do if it goes on the fritz.
She said there were a total of 3 people there, and yes they tipped, but not much. One female did come around to the table and ask if everything came out all right, so I guess that’s worth a couple dollars, no?
I have a new trash collecting company picking up my stuff. The company distributed wheeled, plastic bins to everyone on the route. The bin is a pain to me, because I have to move my car to get it in and out of my garage, vs just carrying a bag of trash to the curb. Why the bin? Their new trucks have a big hydraulic arm that grabs the bins and tosses the contents in the truck, so they could eliminate the “job” of having a person toss the bags in the truck. All hail the “JCs”, and give them another tax cut, so they have the money to replace more people with machines.
“Their new trucks have a big hydraulic arm that grabs the bins and tosses the contents in the truck,”
Waste Management has been doing that for years here.
Now that the Holidays are approaching, I remember getting a chuckle out of the garbage truck driver, he leaves a note on all of the bins during the lead up to Christmas. He states his name, and says that we can feel free to leave a tip in the envelope that he supplies. That’s some chutzpah,lol.
They have had the technology in Portugal for at least the five years I’ve been here. Not so In Venezuela where they still use old fashioned rear loading garbage trucks.
If it makes you feel better, they still use standard garbage men in my neighbourhood and they pick up daily… including Labour Day, Christmas Day and NY day. All the workers are mostly foreign labour that work a couple year work pass and likely have to go back when their contract is complete…
In Portugal the garbage trucks have two workers. They don’t just empty the bins, they also clean up the site. Here they don’t just deposit trash, they deposit anything they want to get rid of, old furniture, even rubbish from home improvements. These thing are not put in the bins. They need workers to deal with them. Maybe one day Optimus will take over these jobs.
Some may not see the conflict between “JCs” demanding tax cuts, so they can “create jobs”, then the money being used to buy automation to eliminate “jobs”.
As robots become more capable, they are performing an increasing number of tasks in warehouses and delivery centers with varying degrees of aptitude and speed. Machines can load and unload trucks. They can place goods on pallets and take them off. Robots can shift items around in inventory, pick up packages and move goods on warehouse floors. And they can do all this without a human minder guiding their every move.
Yet, even though robots are starting to take over some repetitive and cumbersome jobs, there are still many tasks they are not good at, making it difficult to know when or if robots will be able to fully automate this industry.
Despite the rise in automation, warehouses remain big employers of humans. Federal data show that nearly 1.8 million people work in this corner of the supply chain. While that number is down 9 percent from its peak in 2022, when logistics companies went on a hiring spree to handle the pandemic e-commerce boom, it is still up more than 30 percent since early 2020.
