Tuesday, October 21, 2014

You can take your minimum wage and shove it up your kiosk.

I wanted to recount this story before I completely forgot about it. Plus I'm going to be in a conference tomorrow.

I am not a big fan of Panera Bread, but they do have these cherry turnovers I'm kinda into right now.  So.... late one night we found ourselves at the new Panera Bread in the city next to me. Sure I have one in my town, but they were out of cherry turnovers - and this one had a drive through.

When we got there Mr S. decided to go in rather than us going through the drive through. That way if they were out, we wouldn't have to wait in the drive through line. But it was taking him a super long time to come out. So, I had to text him.

Me - What's going on yo.

Him - There are no order takers. It's all automated. You enter your order at a kiosk, swipe your card, and wait.

Me - What?

You see,  Just the week before I'd gone in there for my cherry turnover fix and it was fully staffed. I did notice they had a stand up kiosk, but there were people taking orders.

Him - No humans at the front desk. Only humans in the kitchen delivering food.

By the time he got out I was fully interrogating him because I was just in there. I didn't have that experience at all. Now apparently, at each station where a human would take an order stood a tablet interface kiosk.

Sure it takes a little longer - but you don't have to pay people to take orders. I'd started to get the impression kiosks were never going to make it.

Personally I think you should all pray to god (if you believe in that - I don't) that robots will take your jobs. At least they need skilled labor to be repaired. Kiosks are fairly simple technology.

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