Why are people against wendys self service kiosk ?

[akris15]

That, and they actually cook their patties, and their meat arrives fresh daily.

And God forbid if you put it in the freezer that's like a mortal sin to a manager

[Varitok]

Oh. And just wait for when cars (trucks) can drive themselves. Our country isn't ready for automation. Education is getting worse and unskilled labor is getting phased out. Not a good formula.

Progress can't be stopped.

[Jotaux]

At the grocery store self checkout kiosks are pretty much standard now. I love them, way more can fit in a small space and usually there's no line. I would probably go to Wendy's just to try it out and I haven't been to a Wendy's in years.

[Deleted]

I feel this is relevant for the store self checkouts.

[Scathbais]

"People are against it" for the same reason they are for $15... because they like totally want to help the poor, man! don't you, like, get it! Pay gets raised and then half the employees get fired? Just those corporate fat kats trying to keep all their ill gotten gains! Dam capitalism! GREED!

I'm sure we can find someway to squeeze racism and transgender rights in there in some way as well, considering how white "Wendy" is... Her and all her privilege...

This is not corporate greed, it is simple economics. For your information, MacDonald's are owned by franchisees (i.e. small business owners). They simply cannot afford a 50% pay raise for their most unskilled and easily replaceable employees.

Blame the democrats for this not the small business owners. A poor black man who is willing to trade his labor for $10 is no longer allowed to do so thanks to democrats. So he can't get a job, can't gain experience and move on to a better paying position. Simple stuff really. As usual politicians don't understand the unintended consequences of their social and economic planning.

[ewokgangbang]

this is what happens when people in entry level jobs demand more money than the job denotes. you get replaced with machines. the same thing happened to all those blue collar chumps in the auto industry. they wanted more money to make cars on an assembly line and instead they got replaced with machines. im glad weendys is doing this and i hope other fast food restaurants follow suit, especially if everyone is demanding $15 an hour. those jobs are for highschool kids to make extra money not for some loser that has 2 kids to support his family

[akris15]

At the grocery store self checkout kiosks are pretty much standard now. I love them, way more can fit in a small space and usually there's no line. I would probably go to Wendy's just to try it out and I haven't been to a Wendy's in years.

Oh I would too I love right now what Taco Bell is doing by having the online order online and pick it up. Personally I think Wendy's would benefit from another poc for ordering food. What I disagree with is people are saying it will replace the front end cashier and I say Wendy's wouldn't do that in the foreseeable future.

That job has too many responsibilities attached to it because it's not part of the drive thru system so he can do these odd jobs. In Wendy's current model from 11-7 the reason say a fry cook can't do it is because he is part of the drive thru and to them Wendy's the drive thru is the most sacred system because it has the biggest turn of customers (i.e. Makes the most money). And Wendy's says how they are modeled is nobody in the drive thru lane can do these odd jobs because it will decrease customer turn. If they start making the fry cook doing previous job of the front cashier that would mean their current internal strategy of nobody from the drive thru team is inefficient. Plus even with the grocery store they still have a dedicated employee to watch over these 4-6 poc stations. Wendy's would never pull a fry cook from the drive thru team to fix an issue with the restaurant because Wendy's cares more about the drive thru performance more

[Fugus]

this is what happens when people in entry level jobs demand more money than the job denotes. you get replaced with machines. the same thing happened to all those blue collar chumps in the auto industry. they wanted more money to make cars on an assembly line and instead they got replaced with machines. im glad weendys is doing this and i hope other fast food restaurants follow suit, especially if everyone is demanding $15 an hour. those jobs are for highschool kids to make extra money not for some loser that has 2 kids to support his family

No, this is what happens when automation can do the job for cheaper than it is worth for a person to do it regardless of what the job is worth.

You make the mistake of assuming the job is only worth whatever you can get away with paying some gullible or desperate soul to do it for when it isn't.

The a job is actually worth how much it brings in or saves a company. THAT is the true value a job is worth. The employees wage is supposed to be a compromise between that and a livable wage so that all involved benefit. The absolute lowest any job is worth is the cost of providing for the person doing it regardless of the job. If the job isn't worth that, than it isn't worth them hiring someone for and if it is something that needs to be done to function, then it is worth a livable wage to the person doing it.

As far as automation replacing jobs due to wage increases, they are already getting replaced by automation regardless of income so trying to kick them while they are down trying to put it off isn't doing the workers any favors. You are just dragging it out and making it even more painful in the process. And FYI, they are automating the "Skilled' jobs away as well and are intending and trying to do so with greater pushes as well.

[Deleted]

well i'm not sure about the source, but you will find a lot of people also avoid self checkout at grocery stores. people desire human interaction, and i suppose in a so-called restaurant it helps preserve the illusion that it's lovingly cooked just for you instead of being part of a machine churning out reheated frozen food.

Actually, you see more people doing the selfservice in grocery stores as time goes on. People don't like change, but once they give said change a chance they usually come around pretty fast.

[akris15]

Ok these were 2005 numbers and I should have brought this up earlier but generally labor was around 700 for the day (5.15 min wage) and our store was targeted for 4800 dollars in sales for the day for what we consider to be a small market store. Using inflation calculator the current that would be about 5800 dollars today. Wendy's back then carried these number of employees: 4 (8-10), 6 (10-11:30), 13 (11:30-2), 7 (2-7), 6 (7-8), 5 (8-11) and 4 (11-1). Any time we were "below target" due to weather someone was sent home so we were always zero on profit or above (i.e. The amount of times I smirked as I was let go and a bus was pulling in, it was like cya!)

[judgementofantonidas]

1 cashier per 4 selfcheckouts to oversee them. I estimate it has 2 express checkouts and 8 others. The self checkouts are usually backed up when it's busy, I find it faster to go through the regular checkouts.

i find it faster to just go to the other fast food place that is inevitably right across the street if the line is too long at the one I was originally going to.

[zenkai]

i find it faster to just go to the other fast food place that is inevitably right across the street if the line is too long at the one I was originally going to.

this wasn't an argument against kiosk, it was an argument against self serve checkout

[judgementofantonidas]

this wasn't an argument against kiosk, it was an argument against self serve checkout

i am completely for automation. I am also all for people making minimum wage learning a trade.

[Linri]

self service kiosk at a wendy's this sounds like a good idea, having something/ someone get my order right is something i expect, not hope for

[Joresh]

Because people are retarded. They think they should be paid $15 an hour to shovel food out a tiny window and then when Wendy's says they'll just use a machine rather than pay an absurd wage they get up in arms

[melodramocracy]

It doesn't "ultimately" replace jobs, someone with a higher skill set will have to maintain and monitor those machines. If it replaced 3 workers making 15 dollars and hour it would take 1 person making 60k+ a year to fix it, the net total is similar.

Yeah, that's not how this works.

[ElDoorO]

Yes, it does. And I related to the industrial revolution in that all that automation did eliminate jobs. Which is what the Kiosks do as well. If the workers have other jobs they can retrain for or not is beside the point for this analogy. When you increased the productivity of the people, you also reduced the number needed for the same amount of work which does eliminate jobs in that regard either by reducing the newly excessive labor or by eliminating future hiring for the workers they now will not need to hit the increased productivity.

No, you don't understand throughput very well. You still have to have that throughput. Machines are only part of the equation currently. They are not the full process. You still need humans, just as many as you did before, to manage that throughput. Unless, of course, you want people to say "fuck that line, I'll go eat at Burger King".
This is why worker productivity is up and we still have places jammed packed with work. People can do more, more things happen. With less people, less things happen. This is how it's always been and always will be.

The only thing that's happening is responsibilities change. This is how it's currently working. You are not *losing* jobs. I'll explain a bit more below.

And they have reduced the workers with such measures when fully deployed. You might not have personally seen it because you are not keeping count on the back end. But most places I have seen typically have 2 to 3 cashiers up front and another person off to the side bagging them as the orders come out and handing them up front. With the Kiosks, it can reduces those 2 to 3 cashiers down to a single one regardless of if they are the one bagging the orders or not.

The only places that have done that are places that already understaff. It absolutely can not reduce 2 to 1 in its current state. A singular cashier still can not do that job PLUS fill orders. What's happened is you don't need 2-3 cashiers, those spare people are now *just* filling orders but they are employed. They were not laid off. This is what I think you're confusing. Like I noted above -- unless you want people to leave because you can't fill the throughput fast enough (remember the kiosks only make it easier to enter requests, not fill them) -- then people WILL leave if they see huge lines.

We had a Taco Bell that usually at midnight and later had a line so long it almost wrapped around another building. I can't count the amount of people that got almost in line and left giving the "fuck this" face. Having to tell that manager they were understaffing because there's NO REASON that line should be moving that slow was fun. Arrogant fucks thought they could shave off a few bucks.. dude.. even if you paid people $15 / hour -- the amount of people you lost would have *easily* paid for that many times over. Congrats on failing high school math manager dude. Now you're fired, let me find someone else who isn't a moron and costing me money.

The Wendy's next to them? Always had a short line and people who said fuck Taco Bell went right into Wendy's (next door'ish). Their lines were never long for very long, and it moved fast. THIS is why you'll always need people and cutting to the bone will mean throwing away profit.

And then when it comes to places like grocery and department stores, I have seen plenty of jobs eliminated. At the local Walmart, when they included 4 self-checkout kiosks there. They now have 1 person watching over all 4 of them (The customer bags their own stuff here) and those kiosks now remove 3 workers per shift who are now replaced by that 1 person watching the 4 self-checkout kiosks. That along is replacing a minimum of 9 workers total throughout the week between all 3 shifts.

Oh, oh oh. Wal-Mart. You're seriously going to use Wal-Mart? The place that has the joke about having 25 checkout lines.. and only 2 open? A place that has a joke about routinely understaffing? With those 4 kiosks, how many lines do you think they closed? I'm curious -- throw out a number.

Even these small things do eliminate jobs in the grand scheme of things. But as I said, I do not see this as a bad thing, I see it as the march of technology and innovation and welcome it. The only thing I see issues with is how we are refusing to adapt to it as a people and instead are trying to punish the working class trying to force them into a situation with a mindset that no longer reflects the world as it is anymore.

No, they don't in the grand scheme. They *move* those jobs. People who made horseshoes learned to work on cars. People who sold milk learned to fix refrigerators.

In the grand scheme of things -- we actually improve in nearly every way. It's *very* rare that automation reduces employee count by any meaningful amount. Further automation is significantly less flexible than humans.

This means, and I think I've already said this, for McDonald's to try pizza or hotdogs -- each and every McDonalds would need to spend lots of USD for the machinery to do that plus the construction people PLUS now re-train maintenance people PLUS write the software.

In the *grand scheme* of things, you're wrong -- it all works out. Plus, anyone who argues that automation is at all related to minimum wage is delusional. They'd have to be to think that companies aren't automating out of the kindness of their heart. The difference between $8.25 / hour and $15 is almost half. That means in 2-3 years they would have done automation anyways.. unless you're about to claim they wouldn't out of the kindness of their heart. Which is what I've heard a few people attempt to argue before backpedaling.

This is why I'm not afraid of $15 / hour. Or, hell, even $20 / hour minimum wage. It's not going to be a make/break for most companies. The sky won't fall. Chicken Little isn't going to come running through your yard anytime soon.

We all win both with automation and a raised minimum wage.

[purebalance]

We can all blame the $15 wage people for this. "Oh you want a huge nationwide increase in pay do you? Sure! I'll just cut the cashier jobs in half and install kiosks" This woman was on Fox trying to say they wouldn't and then backtracked saying they're greedy, well if they're greedy they sure as hell will just pay 1 cashier $15 an hour and install kiosks instead of paying 3 $7 an hour.

I see nothing wrong with this. Tons of places have been using online ordering for a good while now and Panera you can just order and your order is on a shelf to pick up.

[melodramocracy]

Because people are retarded. They think they should be paid $15 an hour to shovel food out a tiny window and then when Wendy's says they'll just use a machine rather than pay an absurd wage they get up in arms

People are retarded, aren't they?

They have no problems with costs of living consistently rising, in turn creating a scenario where current minimum wage is unlivable. They firmly believe that houses should always go up in value, unlike any other 'used' material possession on the planet.

They have no problems with CEO's making hundreds of millions, but plenty of issue with poor folks doing any better (all the while ignoring the localized economic boosts that happen when people actually increase their spending).

They love automation, but really hate the idea that the displaced workers might mean more tax dollars going towards social safety nets.

[madethisfor1post]

Went to a McDonalds that had 4 kiosks and only 2 registers. The registers were lined out the door during lunch rush and no one wanted to use the kiosks. People left the line to go to the A&W next door and the Popeyes across the street.

I'm sure this will change in time but for now people seem to prefer dealing with people.