Wednesday, January 25, 2017

What if Robots came to take your job, but there was no one there to care.

There is an interesting thing happening in the service sector here in the Valley. Restaurants all over are closing. Not because of the minimum wage - but because they can't find good people to work.

I've been noticing businesses complaining about this for about a year. It actually takes a lot longer to hire now because it's hard to find people who want to work, or who are even suitable to work.

The owner of a San Jose burger joint which is closing sums it up this way:

“It’s a challenging time,” he said. “There aren’t any more cooks. The tech industry has taken them.”

I know people like to get worked into a lather about robots taking peoples jobs - but what if people don't want those jobs anymore? To be fair, rents are probably not helping, but when I was a kid I worked fast food for like two minutes. Then I was out! Started lying about my age so I could work in manufacturing.

Funnily enough, kids choosing to do that these days might be working on the very robots servicing people at restaurants they didn't want to work for. Just sayin'.

2 comments:

  1. "Funnily enough, kids choosing to do that these days might be working on the very robots servicing people ..."

    I can imagine the fun conversations about "servicing people" ... :-)

    "Ah son, how's it going at the new ... 'teledynamics' services job, is it?"

    "Well, it's tele-something, and we're definitely servicing some people, but you might not want to go around telling people what I'm doing for a living ..."

    "Well why's that?"

    "You know the next-door neighbour's son who ran off with one of the new Google Android Cheerleaders?"

    "Yeah ..."

    "Who do you think fixes those when they break?"

    "I'm not telling your mother what you really do for a living then ... but I have to ask: how's the reliability of those things?"

    "I think it's a bit late for you to start planning a new Google Family."

    :-)

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  2. You know there is a guy that repairs those "real dolls". Right?

    ReplyDelete