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Dear Striking Fast-Food Workers: Meet The Machine That Just Put You Out Of A Job
Today, U.S. fast-food workers will strike across 270 cities in a protest for higher wages and union rights that they hope will catch the attention of candidates in 2016 elections, organizers said.
The walkouts will be followed by protests in 500 cities by low-wage workers in such sectors as fast food and home and child care, a statement by organizers of the Fight for $15 campaign said on Monday.
The protests and strikes are aimed at gaining candidates’ support heading into the 2016 election for a minimum wage of $15 an hour and union rights, it said.
The strikes and protests will include workers from McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King , KFC and other restaurants, the statement said.
And while we sympathize with their demands for higher wages, here is the simple reason why they will be very much futile.
Dear fast food workers of the US - presenting you nemesis: the Momentum Machines burger maker.
According to a recent BofA reported on how robotics will reshape the world, San Francisco start up Momentum Machines are out to fully automate the production of burgers with the aim of replacing a human fast food worker. The machine can shape burgers from ground meat, grill them to order with the specified amount of char, toast buns, add tomatoes, onions, pickles, and finally place it on a conveyor belt.
The robot is shown below. It occupies 24 square feet, and is much smaller and efficient than most assembly-line fast-food operations. It provides "gourmet cooking methods never before used in a fast food restaurant" and will deposit the completed burger into a bag. It does all of this without a trace of attitude.
According to public data, the company's robot can "slice toppings like tomatoes and pickles immediately before it places the slice onto your burger, giving you the freshest burger possible." Unlike human workers, the robot is "more consistent, more sanitary, and can produce ~360 hamburgers per hour" or a burger every 10 seconds.
Furthermore, future generations of the device "will offer custom meat grinds for every single customer. Want a patty with 1/3 pork and 2/3 bison ground to order? No problem."
As the company's website adds, "our various technologies can produce an ever-growing list of common choices like salads, sandwiches, hamburgers, and many other multi-ingredient foods with a gourmet focus."
But most importantly, it has no wage demands: once one is purchashed it will work with 100% efficiency for years. And it never goes on strike.
As the company's co-founder Alexandros Vardakostas told Xconomy his "device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient. It’s meant to completely obviate them."
The company's philosophy on making millions of fast food workers obsolete:
The issue of machines and job displacement has been around for centuries and economists generally accept that technology like ours actually causes an increase in employment.
The three factors that contribute to this are
- the company that makes the robots must hire new employees,
- the restaurant that uses our robots can expand their frontiers of production which requires hiring more people, and
- the general public saves money on the reduced cost of our burgers. This saved money can then be spent on the rest of the economy.
This is a major problem for the US economy, which once built on a manufacturing backbone, has seen the fastest jobs growth in recent years for workers employed by "food service and drinking places" i.e., fast food workers, waiters and bartenders.
Finally, for those complaining that there will be no "human touch" left to take the orders, robots have that covered too:
And now it's time to calculate how many tens if not hundreds of billions in additional welfare spending these soon to be unemployed millions in low-skilled workers will cost US taxpayers.
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oblig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-4LU79qbU
I can't wait to start seeing these things displace all of the workers at fast food restaurants. Maybe they'll make these robots with a neck tattoo so we can all reminisce?
Why the tone of surprise? When you distort the cost of capital, it is cheaper and you are incentivised to replace human capital. And so QE will achieve nothing but more misallocation of resources........doh.
automation kills mindless work. good riddance.
but when your machine breaks, and it will, try to find an intelligent being who can fix it.
it won't be you.
I don't know why ANYONE would go to a McDonald's. I think that communities, especially the Black Commuity would urge their people to boycott those assholes forever and they will go out of business. Use your combined faniancial power to defeat thse criminal haters! I know I can't remember going into one except whan my dog was alive a few years ago, she'd eat a burger or two and I'd have a small fry, the only shit they make that I couls eat, but she loved their plastic burgers, we were on the road a lot!
if it's like twice a year it's not going to kill you
if it's twice a day or even a week then a systemic condition is likely - it's insane that you can find a fast food joint every three blocks across the entire country
The touch screen order pads are great for inteligentpeople but since kids can't read you will need a cartoon show with pictures of everything. With the cashless society you will need to swipe your EBT card or your debit card. Since the food sucks the family restaurants will take over a bulk of the business. That means the stawks of the FF will crash. Sell, Mortimer, Sell.
At least they won't spit in Whitey's burger.
There is a spit function on the robo-flipper.
It just spits grease.
Sooner or later the public will catch on to the fact that the $165 dinner out you and your wife just enjoyed (with tax, tip and babysitter) can be accomplished at home for about 1/5th the cost.
The restaurant sector us vastly overbuilt and depends on Americans willing to pay other people to shop, cook and do their dishes. When it's a matter of dinner out or making the healthcare premium payment, I don't think it'll be a question of which way to go. People will go back to preparing their own meals and enjoying them in front of their 250 channel flat screens.
You're right about healthcare costs. Even in the unlikely event that barrycare made the public healthy, it will no doubt create a sick and anemic restaurant industry. Eating at home is an easy way to reduce family expenses.
There is an inherent disconnect between the extreme popularity of cooking shows, people spending inordinate amounts of money on stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops and THEN when you add in that grocery store chains who are working hard to recapture their lost sales to dining out with high end ready to serve carry out meals, which require little more than microwaving and plating .. I for one cannot understand why the public has not caught on to this trend yet and continue to spend unbelievable %%'s of their disposable income on dining out. Normality bias I guess.
As someone whose owned restaurants in the past and know the inside of the industry well, I'm expecting to see a major bloodletting in that overbuilt sector soon.
I don't eat fast food therefore I could careless if they strike, facts is its a meaningless distraction. What is really taking place here is the Crony Union types are trying to ruffle up some old fashion Union Bullshit..IE: Fair wages...These people act like they are actually creating the food itself, fact is its all prepackaged add a squirt of sauce ( or what they call sauce ) and they declare it to be food.
I wouldn't feed that garbage to my dog....
No opportunity for worker added ”special sauces”?
Perhaps the quality of the food will increase.
Learn to fix robots. You'll never be out of a job.
Robots will fix robots.. LOL
http://www.thatsnerdalicious.com/caffeine/would-you-like-some-maggots-wi...
mmm, coming to a burger machine at your favorite joint !
Be funny when one breaks,,, or loses its program.
Nothing Digital lasts more than a year without breaking and or becoming obsolete.
Of course, probably made in China,,, so while more unskilled meriKano's are losing their jobs the Chinese are going to be rolling in them.
So, who will have the money to buy the burgers once you put fast food workers out of a job.
There won't be any mid level or fast food restaurants. At $20 per hour per worker there is no way any customer would want to pay for that food at the new prices. Politicians are idiots. The only way it would be affordable is if all wages doubled in the country and then the min wage workers would be at the same relative place.
"So, who will have the money to buy the burgers once you put fast food workers out of a job."
Shouldn't be a problem. A recent survey has shown that the people who enjoy the delicious fare at McD's are mostly CEOs, MDs, Wall Street MBAs, Hedge Fund Managers and their families. I'm sure they can afford a modest increase in price.
Wifey and I were in a rush last week and stopped in at the place with arches. I figured the chicken balls were safe. I have no idea what they are made of anymore but I am pretty sure that the breading is recycled cardboard. The texture was really funky. No ill effects from eating that shit but no flavor either which is why the server looked at me funny when I said I didn't want any sauce packets.
The ill effects are something manifested over time, if you keep consumption down to a couple of times a year you should be okay.
I won't be back. It also cost $8. I'll skip the "meal" if that is the only option around. Need to have a small cooler handy with some snacks when we end up with the hectic schedule.
When you now consider that Starbucks is encouraging its customers to pre-order via their cellphones one must really consider the half life of the barista too.
You will see a Starbuck's coffee vending machine at the door of these places - never mind everywhere else.
I wold think Taco Bell (Yum! Brands) would be on the raged edge of installing these things based upon its truncated ingredient list and use of Meat(tm).
Funny when you consider McDonalds model to charge rent rather than op profit. In five years you will plug one of these into the side of building. None will own this equipment, it will be leased and serviced only - maybe by another robot.
I'll have the Brave New Burger.
Hell most of the mcdee workers around here are exchange students from baltic states, so not much in the way of americans there. As far as being more sanitary, well, some worker is going to have to clean and maintain that monster. I've been a restaurant manager, some workers are excellent, others, well, I wouldn't want to trust my lunch to it.
These wild animals just need to STFU and flip that burger. Who eats groiund beef anyway? Ya'll know that your ground beef is washed in ammonia... you know to kill germs an keep you safe from men in caves with box-cutters.
Good try, however, the owner of the machine will have to pay someone who makes 10x a burger flipper to maintain this beast.
Yeah, but he will be a "field maintenance" guy responsible for an entire area and would only be required to be there when something went wrong.
Unless this unit has very sophisticated computer vision, there will undoubtedly, occasionally be visible insects present in the produce and on the burgers made using that produce which will give the machines a bad reputation, something any fast food place still using humans will then exploit in their advertising.
Just throw a handful of roaches at the machine to make it a instant roach motel
If these enterpeneurs were smart, they would invent machines to replace politicians, government workers, lawyers and more.
Wouldn't bother me if a head of state was a robot with the basic laws, such as bill of rights and constitution programmed into it, that it couldn't override.
You're too late. Diebold has already manufactured robot presidents.
First they would have to develop a lying rat bastard self-enriching sack of shit chip, which is a formidable technical challenge.
We have done that with colored coins. Obsoletes maybe 80% of the function of government.
And now it's time to calculate how many tens if not hundreds of billions in additional welfare spending these soon to be unemployed millions in low-skilled workers will cost US taxpayers.
Sorry, there won't be any money left after you'll have to bail out fast-dood franchise owners.
The government will just buy more rubber gloves and hire more TSA workers.
They can always come up with money by selling vulnerable assets.
I suspect Royal Caribbean would pay a pretty penny to add a few carriers to their fleet.
If you think the Rock Wall and Zip Line are exciting, wait til they strap you into the catapult on the flight dack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-4LU79qbU
I could see the leftover workers sabotaging the machine. Machine down, restaurant down. So, now we'll have $15/hr non-workers on backup, just in case it goes down. That would be the dream.
Since no one would be at the store, you can just bring a charcoal grill to the parking lot and sell some BBQ for an hour or two
I thought the flippers didnt want those jobs. Just let them drop into the 100 million unemployed group and get the bennies worth 15 and hour and then sign up for the free Medicaid. And working under the table is now a 2-4 trillion dollar operation. Plenty of people are enlisted in Obama's Free Sh*t Army - who also don't pay taxes.
Can it Spit on your food?
Please don't give them any ideas.
Just fit that (girl) robot with some tight fitting polyester pants and I might just come back and try a burger there again.
Carl's Jr. Computer: Enjoy your EXTRA BIG ASS FRIES!
Woman at Carl's Jr.: You didn't give me no fries, I got an empty box.
Carl's Jr. Computer: Would you like another EXTRA BIG ASS FRIES?
Woman at Carl's Jr.: I said I didn't get any!
Carl's Jr. Computer: Thank you! Your account has been charged. Your balance is zero. Please come back when you can afford to make a purchase.
Woman at Carl's Jr.: What? Oh no, NO!
[She hits the machine. An alarm goes off, and a sign appears on the computer saying "WARNING! Carl's Jr. Frowns Upon Vandalism"]
Better an EBT slave goes off the deep end on a robot than a person.
YouTube is full of videos of those people going to blows because they didn't get the right order.
Watch Idiotcracy and they have a scene like you said but the kiosk sprays the woman with a knockout gas after she kept complaining she got ripped off
Have any of these folks considered that when everyone is replaced by machines, there will be no jobs ... and therefore no customers.
Perhaps the robots can make integrated circuit patties for other robots.
This is a profound civilizational crisis. $7.25 an hour is just not a living wage. Employers are replacing workers with robots even at this wage, but the higher the wage the faster that will go. We are a people whose self respect and identity was built on the ability to work and support a family, but now the work is disappearing and all our welfare systems are designed to punish and humiliate us for not working. It's killing us. We're coming to a boil.
So y'all are right. Anything we do collectively to try to make things better seems to backfire, but if we don't resist, things get worse anyway. That's the fundamental lesson of Economics as taught at Chicago. Or, put even more simply, "resistance is futile." The Wisconsin school agreed but taught that the government could compensate. Now that has run its course. Once you buy into the premises, there's no way out of the box.
So, y'all are right, we're fucked. You investors are fucked too, because we working-folk have run out of spending power. But with a technology that's so fantastically productive, a visitor from Mars would be hard put to understand how we got into this fix.
So go ahead, gloat over being right. I do too. I've known we were headed for a monster depression for 50 years, so at least I get to be right.
I can't gloat over the misery and despair all around us, but too many of you ZH-heads do.
Get over it. Your shit stinks too.
Machines lives matter.
Hey, thanks for yer consideration!
While its true jobs will be created through robotics implementation across various industries, they will dwarf the number of jobs it will permanently eradicate. Especially problematic is finding employment for these low end workers who are often either lazy, unskilled, incompetent.
Lazy, unskilled or incompetent.
Or maybe just simple people seeking simple life of making food for everyone for a small pay that is enought to feed their own family.
Correct. This represents over-investment in technology because human labor would be more cost effective at this type of work if prices for labor were not artificially fixed above market prices by government price controls.
The resulting forced diversion of capital away from hiring workers and into technology correspondingly destroys value. By forcing a less efficient solution to be used instead of a more efficient one. While also forcing low skilled human labor to sit idle with no path to increasing productivity through job experience.
Government. Destroying value and sabotaging human productivity for centuries.
Bullshit. Let them all go bankrupt first instead of cry about it. Maybe the mom's and pop's will come back then. Are you really protecting globalist corporation interests? Fuck their overpaid pig executives. Let them earn $7 hour as well.
They are just poisoning everyone anyway
We'll all have jobs soon once the robots become self aware... we'll all be brothers in arms fighting together.
I'm not really comprehending the comments on here about having all of these workers on welfare. The alternative is to pay more for fast food so these workers can make a living. Are you really willing to pay $12.50 or $15 or $20 for a "burger", fries, and drink from one of these places? The meal really only has a value of $5 and currently costs $7.50. I won't stand in the way if people want to make a donation of $20 and get $5 of value but that is really charity and no longer money for prepared food. The local deli place has a great salad with grilled chicken that costs $7.50, no drink included. Fresh ingredients and tasty but I eat there once per week at most. Good but not that good.
I dont really comprehend your comment sir.
The MacDonalds Corporation is making enough money to pay the workers. So why not pay?
There is no need to increase price.
It's not McDonalds corporation that pays the franchisee's employees. It's the franchise owner. Some McDonald stores are company owned, but most are owned through a franchise contract. If you think the franchise holders are raking it in, you should check out this link:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-18/undersize-me-mcdonalds-franchis...
Not the place to be anymore...
.
does the machine take tips? who's gonna give me my change when i hand that machine my fake dollar?? oh i get it no cash allowed. no plastic card no eat.
You are missing the point. Burger flipper jobs used to be for part time teenagers or someone making a buck between jobs. The economics of the service was never designed to provide full time employment with benefits for all workers. Now that the adults need jobs, the economic model that is fast food will continue collapsing, just faster.
And yes - as people are made redundant and cannot affort to be "consumers", this shit wil end.
Why don't you realize that inflation is real, the dollar is dirt and there are many fucking billionaires laughing at you for believing that labor is overpaid. Bow to your masters and piss away your life working to the grave.
Want to bust up a union? Get rid of the cop unions first.
I just bought me a big ole house with zero percent interest and it's big enough to hold 100 refrigerators in it.
Well, I can't pay ya nuttin' if ya work for me, fella... But ya see... I took all them boxes my refrigerators came in, and I put'em all out in my back yard, and you can live in one of them boxes fer free!!!
Dont believe everything you hear about automation.
In most cases the automation is successful only at a very high cost. Once it is successful, the technique can be copied. But someone have to pay the big initial costs.
The failure rate and maintenance costs for such machines are also very high.
There is no free lunch.
I could see a maintenance issue...
One employee to cover three area eateries. That would make plenty of sense. 1/3 of an employee per establishment. Still a big savings. That guy might even make a decent paycheck. The rest will be on the dole.
Automation is a good thing, if it works out right. But a contraption like this will cost, what, $100k? that's 5 burger flippers. Then, there is all that grease. eeewww. The wave of the future is healthy eating, and that does not = burgers. No machine can replace an expertly prepared, mouthwatering and succulent raw entree. A great eating experience will never start with a machine. Anybody who eats food made by a machine is on the fast track to a really s***ty life in the last 30 years they live.
Even here, at ZH, most seem to be anti-healthy food. Not hating on anybody, just an observation. But I think the demographic here is like 100% angry white males (sorry, european american) in their 50s, old school, pounding down the burgers, 'pregnant' bellies, totally out of shape, sitting in front of a PC all day expressing outrage at everything.
I like the site because I can't get myself to look at MSM anymore. I don't really like the news anyway, but for my work (trading) I like to hit the headlines, maybe an article or two, to try to get a sense about context. But I work out consistenly, eat mostly raw, take really good care of myself, never take meds for anything, never sick, etc. I don't care one way or the other if most ppl choose to live a life of slow motion suicide, but for the life of me I just don't get that mentality.
I think most ppl want to die and just get it over with, yet don't have the courage to kill themselves. So they are purposely careless with how they care for themselves. They are reckless with what the eat, read, listen to, focus on, ppl they hang around with, finances, driving habits, excercise (lack of it), smoking, drinking, late hours, 'Lamar Odoming', etc etc etc.
"OMG you are so boring". Can a person who is never bored be boring? Discuss ...
Feeling good, always healthy, looking good, strong, toned, great sex w/my very hot wife, successful, productive, creative ... yeah, I am boring all right. I definitely don't want to be hunched over in a wheel chair, completely disabled 20-30 yrs out, a forgotten soul, still alive, but the quality of that life is pure s*.
Yes, we all die. But the question is, how are we living?
You want to change the world? Disconnect from the culture of death and fix yourself, and learn how to live well and spread the word.
Your wife is fucking some unemployed burger flipper and when you find out you'll die of a stroke. Have a nice day. You trade which is the most unproductive job there is. Go build something
What better to provide the food at the funeral of the American conomy?
It happened in Detroit.
An employee at a Detroit McDonald's is in hot water this week for throwing a drink at a homeless man at the drive-thru window. The very unfunny prank was caught on video and uploaded to LiveLeak on November 6. In the clip, the drive-thru worker calls to the homeless man named Willy off camera offering him a sandwich. As the man approaches the window and reaches for the sandwich, the employee throws a cup of water at his face.
http://detroit.eater.com/2015/11/9/9700346/detroit-mcdonalds-employee-th...
A machine would never do that. It will be programmed to be politically correct.
I thought the s__t was already made by a machine. Soylent Green. Won't be long now.
Buh bye McIdiot!
Do you remember a time when McDonald's was chock full of meth addicts, impossible to understand greasy illegal immigrants, slutty trashy single mothers, clueless zit riddled teenagers, 45 year old McManagers on power trips, ghetto blacks with a chip on their shoulder and full of attitude, or obese angry lesbians with purple hair and a face full of shitty piercings? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
So you're making the silver lining case for either the phony economy/employment situation, or the welfare state allowing all those people you mentioned to skip the hassle of holding a job, or both? It's funny you mention it though, as I’ve noticed distinctly older and more professionally behaving employees working fast food. USA, home of the whopping McRetirement.
First, I confess to buying burgers at McDonalds from the dollar menu, BUT I feed them to my foster and adopted dogs as treats, I would not eat them myself.
Second, the robots are also healthier for customers, especially in winter, when many of the fast-food humans have infectious diseases, eg influenza, that they share with you through the food and when paying.
That's pet abuae. Feed them to your elderly parents instead
Let's feed you to them, fuckhead.
But as soon as that tiny dink of bacteria that wasn't cleaned reaches critical mass, it will in turn be shared with the customers at a rapid and continual pace until the machine is down for cleaning at the end of the day.
The economics of replacing a $15/hr fast food worker with this machine do not make any sense. The cost of operating this contraction will be higher than $15/hr. Then there is the capital expenditure. As is, most fast food enterprises operatate with 1-2 people during off peak hours any way.
How much will this machine cost? Another Theranos scheme at work. Yes it will work, but you will need 2 people to supervise this machine and make orders by hand when the machine screws up.
Trust me, that's all been calculated out in a spreadsheet. There would be no market for the machine otherwise.
You are also not factoring in the indirect costs of hiring, firing, training, unemployment insurance, workers comp, labor board hearings, taxes, time tracking, personality conflicts and employee drama, unexpected quitting, discrimination lawsuits, injuries, illness, unreliability, theft, unionization, obligatory health insurance, etc., etc.
Add all that up and your nominally $15/hr worker becomes $25/hr or more fully loaded depending on all the indirect costs of dealing with all the above issues, i.e. hiring a staff manager, HR person, legal support, and accounting support all dedicated to grappling with all the above issues. All of these indirect costs are skyrocketing annually.
Or just buy a machine with a service contract which delivers X burgers per hour, of perfectly consistent quality, day-in day-out, at an upfront fixed cost with none of the above issues. Once the kinks are worked out of the machine, I think there will be strong demand for it.
Sure it does with a tax credit. Someone pointed out that this article is from 2012.
And who will be buying the burgers? Hmmm?
Ya sure it makes a great burger, but can it spit on the food and treat the customers contemptuously?
Structural unemployment is here.
What are we going to do with all of the redundant/idle people?
Dems: not a problem... tax the rich & mail out more welfare/EBT for the swelling FSA.
Repubs: not a problem... start some wars, occupy some sovereign countries & hope the VA improves/handles the load.
But keep on voting for the lesser-of-two-evils... that logic is working like a charm!
My question with all this automation. Are robots going to buy the goods they produce? Are the people who lost their jobs going to pay for this?
Is that why sales have been going down? HHHmmmm
My question with all this automation. Are robots going to buy the goods they produce? Are the people who lost their jobs going to pay for this?
Is that why sales have been going down? HHHmmmm
Can we make those things pay income tax? Is there a machine maintenance version of Obamacare?
It can cook but can it fuck? If so, it could make a great spouse.
Fembots are already on the way.
AKA the "basic pleasure model" from Blade Runner
Yeah, but FloozyBots don't work cheap!
I'd settle for cook.
Settle?
FUCK work - working is for pussies - just look at OBAMA
And when the machine breaks down sales drop to $0. Its repair speed and operational reliability will be vital. If it goes down for 5 hours customers might not return to that location again for a very long time. If it's like other new rollouts there will be a buggy period during which the machine goes down often, often for reasons nobody thought of. I think human customers will dislike buying food from a machine knowing it's eliminating jobs, just to save a couple bucks. Nobody's that desperate to save $2. But I could be wrong about that. I guess we'll see soon enough.
(if we reach a Hunger-Games society, people won't have enough money to care)
But swinging back to my original point for posting: you can bet that the repair services will souced to an outside company (that employs a workforce of formerly in-house repair techs of various companies, and all at 1/2 to a 1/3 of the pay and bene's they were making.)
Fun times.
What makes you think that there will be only one machine per establishment?
Rise of the machines. Live with me if you want to cum.
Behold the modern automated cotton picker of our time!
Yeah, and now welcome version 2.0 of a wave of unskilled workers (slaves) with nothing to do but live in misery and/or create mischief.
Or Iron Chink, if you prefer.
Oh no, technology is getting so good we'll all be out of jobs becuase our mind-controlled nanites will make whatever we want on demand. How terrible it is that we are on our way to becoming gods of our environment and that our current system of scarce resource competition is on it's way to becoming an anachronism.
The first person to create a vending machine that serves a better burger than a shop will be the next Elon Musk.
Elon Musk, LOL...yeah, if you dont mind your burger catching fire and exploding...
Just go ahead and die, you useless global worker units. We don't need you anymore. Time to cut off all social benefits and get busy with decreasing the surplus population. Get over it. You lost.
The idea of eating a burger made by a machine makes me want to puke. That's the end of any fast food for me.
My thought too. What is the point. It is all so artificial. Robot servers, cooks and processed food. Forget it
Not long before we just put money in the slot and get our feed bag installed.
Soylent Green is people...
You mean I won't have to worry about Jose, who never washes his hands after taking a dump in the McDonald's sink, or Janell, who spits on my burger, like Jesse Jackson admitted to doing years ago? This takes all of the risk out of fast food. Luckily, I haven't eaten at a McDonalds in many years.
I want to see all of these uneducated losers on the street, fired. Most of them don't want too much of a raise since they lose all of their other taxpayer supplied benefits. This is a scam and a form of blackmail against the American people. F'em.
Those losers still have to eat. If they dont have shitty jobs they´ll need welfare. Otherwise they´ll riot and will have to be shot, all 150 million, who will shoot back. Tick Tack.
Most of the time when I go to McDonalds I get Chicken sandwich or bacon egg and cheese biscuit. Does it do that?
Hey ZH...your content just keeps getting worse...this article appeared in October 2012...you're 3 years late, and burger flippers still have their shitty burger flippin' jobs. Quit diluting the quality of your content for the sake of sensationalism
It's not sensationalism that ZH wants to drive home, it's the fear of unions.
I love onions
Maury Povich took over ZH
I know, cause it was "CAUGHT ON TAPE!"
Good! I don't want a job. Who wants to do soul-sucking meaningless crap for 40 hours a week anyway? The whole point of technology is to give Us free time, so we don't have to be economic slaves. Now we've got the free-time to learn & evolve. (as oppossed to flipping burgers & doing accounting for the banksters)
Good luck with the learning and evolving when you are struggling to survive.
All of you were kids once; all of you were capable of providing little more to society than the sweat of your brow.
These jobs are necessary, the people in them are necessary and the fucktard who goes to mcdonalds after they install one of these won't have his or her own shitty job for long.
Fuck people, give the American worker some credit. ZH had some article on depressed white people yesterday. Everyone is wondering why; well THIS IS WHY!!!!
These jobs have a single purpose, to introduce the young to the world of work and responsibility. They aren't there to make them rich or even provide a living wage.
If McDonalds introduces a robot to make it, they better build another robot to eat it.
You could automate all the management and economist babble in all print media. For example about how much "we care" about the customer, offer the highest value to clients. Then there are always cost savings, becoming more efficient, becoming leaner. On the economic front productivity, wage reform, (code for lower wages/salary), shortage of "skilled" labor, (code for we don't want to pay you when we can hire slave labor), depending on the flavor of econmic thought Chicago, Mises, Keynes, Marx etc.. you just add their religious dogma as the solution done. Then these keyboard warriors could go get a real job flipping burgers. Oh wait hmmm...
"You could automate all the management and economist babble in all print media. "
Whoa! I thought they already did! You mean real people write that crap?
Congrats you got a 40% pay boost and a 60% cost of living increase!
I'll bet it's a bitch to clean.
That was my first thought too, Mick.
In fact, I doubt it will be cleaned very well, unless the local health inspector has called to schedule a shakedown, er, I mean inspection.
Welcome back to McDonald's Mr. Yakamoto! Can we get you another Bacon Double Cheeseburger?
Continuing the conversation...
There once was a man from Rancine
Who invented a fucking machine.
Both concave and convex,
It could serve either sex,
But oh what a bugger to clean!
I see that some people still don't get it. I had this conversation with a high school student a couple of years ago.
The high school student stated that if everyone in the US drew the same salary everyone could make $100k/year.
So instead of arguing with the student I agreed that it is a great idea. And then I asked,
Well who gets to be a doctor for $100k, who gets to be a hotel housekeeper, who gets to be a store cler, who gets to be a pro athlete, fast food worker, CEO, CFO, CIO, etc? The society still needs these services so who does what? We know they all get $100k/year but who is doing what?
Look Americans, McDonalds, KFC, Wendy's, Woody's ain't no 'restaurants', but corporate pink slime vending machines. Restaurants my ass.
And now they hire robots to stuff their filth down your throats.
I would suck my own pancreas through a straw before I let crap from McDonalds pass my lips...
I have one of those machines at home for burger making for years.
The machine I have also cooks, washes, cleans, irons and makes love to me.
Occasionally it complains but what the heck. As I get older my loss of hearing is providing a useful balance,
u are having sex with a robot?
Just for the record, I am not Japanese.
There are some pretty hot Japanese sex_bots. I heard they even have a new feature that lets them rotate their 'girl parts' from horizontal, to vertical, to any angle you likee..
Reminds me of a joke....how can you tell that your wife is dead? The sex is the same, but the dishes start piling up in the sink.
It's good to see in the Company disregard empathy for what their machine can do and fall back on the "It's not the best system, but it's the one we've got" line of reasoning.
For a moment, I was beginning to worry that they'd look at the bigger picture. Whew.
Wrong headline. Should read, "Dear Fast Food Companies: Meet The Machine That Just Destroyed Your Business Model."
Wealthy people do NOT eat at McDonald's. Poor people cannot afford to. Without jobs, fast-food companies will have no customers, so those robots will be making food for the dumpsters.
Greed and stupidity will NOT save the McNugget.
Hey Robbie the robot...there is a lug nut in my doucheBurger with cheez,,,
Line up and wait for your food stamp.
Does this mean I will not have a high school dropout with the IQ of a broom tea-bagging my burger any more? Say it isn't so...
Sounds yummy, a quarter pounder with cheese made by a machine that hasn't been washed down or out in a week!
They will probably have Jesus the janitor hose it down, right after he cleans the restrooms...
The point we need to remember is that while the machine might provide a cleaner product it does NOT provide a healthier product. We will still be served MacDonald's shit.
I'll take that week old robot over a toothless meth smoking ass picker wearing week old vinyl gloves any day
Still cleaner than their unwashed hands...
Forward to our labor-free future!
the company that makes the robots must hire new employees, Yeah, right. Or just make more robots, including a new CEO model. I think even OBozo could program a CEO robot that would sit around all day, smoke cigars, and be a dick
pay them $15,00, make them work 40 hr, weeks, and make them pay taxes.
give them the $2,00.00 yearly for health- care, let them hunt for health-care.
the s.e.i.u. are going to ruin more lives than machines.
home, and child-care is what s.e.i.u. is after, that's soon to be all,"state, and federal government licensed contracted workers", govt. workers, govt.benefits," tax-dollars", and millions in union dues.
they could care less about the other 99% of the workers.
It just allows a burger place to expand the menu. You make most of your money in volume sales of burgers and fries. The thing that fuvks you is when someone orders a parfait or some sort of mccafe chicken sandwich on wholewheat Chibata bread.
All the McDonald's out there still have the space to staff a full kitchen even with the burger machine. The real sunk cost is the real estate if you don't use it.
I would like to see this in an airport.
Hollywood should make a film about someone who wins the lottery and invites the village and an esteemed guest to a robot burger meal. It would be enthralling, not.
American fast food is so un-Babette. Scraping the bottom of the barrel, not even that, scraping under the barrel.
Maybe the flavours will increase with oil dripping from the machinery?
Fast food is a matter of national security
Helps keep American's fat and lazy and on diabetes meds
BTW, What does robot spit taste like?
"BTW, What does robot spit taste like?"
I addressed that in my post just above. (and reading up the threads, a common concern)
It's a tossup, people spit or machinery oil.