Wendy's to install robotic kiosks across 6,000 restaurants

originally posted by: Joecanada11
a reply to: JoshuaCox

Unions were a needed thing but they have gotten out of control in some instances. I'm worried though that robots will be replacing 30% or more of the workforce soon. What will people do the rich will have their robots and the rest of us will become completely expendable as we no longer are needed to be drivers or butlers or labproers etc.

There is not one human institution that doesn't have a history of corruption, but that's not what this is about...


It's about campaign donations and defunding the opposition.

The majority of big corporations vote republican, so according to democrats, corporations are evil and must be destrpyed.


The majority of unions donate to democrats, so the republicans began a propaganda campaign to point out every case of union corruption they could find.

Neither is inherently evil, it's all just propaganda.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Definitely it's propaganda on both sides. Of course the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The sad reality is that as robotics become more capable lower class humans will become more expendable. I'm scared for my children. What kind of world will be there for them. What will their life be like twenty years from now.

originally posted by: Joecanada11
a reply to: JoshuaCox

Definitely it's propaganda on both sides. Of course the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The sad reality is that as robotics become more capable lower class humans will become more expendable. I'm scared for my children. What kind of world will be there for them. What will their life be like twenty years from now.

It is sad that we are so brainwashed by out dated thinking. That we are going to throw away the Star Trek type society we are on the cusp of.

Robots doing all the crappy jobs should be a great thing!! We won't need every human to work..we could eliminate the meaningless jobs and focus on leisure, entertainment and innovation.


But we have been trained since birth to hate anyone who works less then we do, so screw them...

Corporate management's legal obligation to its shareholders is the maximization of profits. It has zero to do with creating jobs, creating living wages, creating a healthy national economy, or protecting the nations environmental quality.

As such the kiosks being put in at Wendy's is a reflection of this prime directive. These exist in most grocery and big box stores and have for years. Why? Because they replace workers with machines that cost relatively little after the initial investment and therefor maximize profits.

Arguing to maintain our already low wages or lower wages to third world levels so that our nations citizens can compete with machines is insane.

We need policies that reflect a moral ethic that values people over profits in place of more policies that promote profit over people. Its time to face the fact that the Republicans ended up with Donal Trump as a result of policies that decimated the well being of its base and is also HOPEFULLY why the Democratic Party is going to end up with Bernie Sanders.

Big ups.

originally posted by: dreamingawake
Yup on average now days in a lot of places-bigger cities, etc-people are paying more than 1/3 of their(and or roommates) income on rent.

Financial planners suggest that rent+utilities coming to 1/3 of your wages or less is healthy. For the majority of low income Americans, rent comes closer to 60%. In my case, rent+utilities is 50%.

Lots of times people like to claim that the poor are poor because they make bad decisions with money but necessities cost so much these days that purchasing them falls under the definition of being financially devastating. Shelter should be 1/3, food is supposed to be 15%. Those two things alone come to 80-90% for the poor.

Relating that to these kiosks, I spent most of today on the road traveling and in that time I thought a lot about this looking at the grocery store model. As a rough estimate I would say that the usual package of 4-6 kiosks managed by 1-2 workers have the throughput of 6 cashiers. On the one hand that might look like 4-5 jobs are disappearing, but then I got to thinking. With fewer cashiers, overhead drops a little which in turn lowers prices. Additionally, people do their business faster, and the bottleneck in the company ceases to be how quickly people can pay for things (Walmart being notorious for shorting the necessary cashiers) to how much product can be kept on the shelves. This means more stock results in more sales, which in turn adds jobs. With more sales comes more production which also adds jobs.

In the end, I'm not convinced anymore that these things will cause unemployment (something I've said in the past I'm fine with happening). If Wendys can now process more orders, it means they'll have to hire more people to make burgers, put the orders together, and so on. It's very possible that employment needs break even here or even increase.

a reply to: Animal

Exactly why companies which are traded on wall street are sociopathic in nature. I've worked for publically traded companies before and saw people get laid off in favour of email marketing campaigns. The worst part is that even though they may be making a profit unless it makes the protected target profit it is considered a loss and stock prices drop. Forcing companies to make wage cuts or worse.

Í wonder where this will end. I am not opposed to automation, though I am in the working class. I think it could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how its implemented and what is implemented beside it.

How far will it go?

At some point, nearly everything will be automated and then no one will have a job. What then? No one will be able to purchase anything for the billionaire class to get rich off of. No one will be able to pay taxes (except the small number of billionaires) to fund roads and schools and so on. This makes it clear that we have to at least try to make things equal for everyone (maybe through universal basic income?) or we are going to have a very unpleasant society where a tiny number of elites owns everything, and the rest of the billions of humans on this earth have nothing. Which is a recipe for disaster. Since having a job prevents people from starting revolutions or engaging in crime (as they will if they don't have jobs). I don't think the vast majority of humanity wil just sit back and let these billionaires dictate society and the economy.

a reply to: liliasthesorceress

It could be a good thing. However the elite will not let it benefit everyone. It will give them more power.

In some places there are robotic sercutity guards that patrol and watch and listen for criminal keywords.

originally posted by: Joecanada11
a reply to: Animal

Exactly why companies which are traded on wall street are sociopathic in nature. I've worked for publically traded companies before and saw people get laid off in favour of email marketing campaigns. The worst part is that even though they may be making a profit unless it makes the protected target profit it is considered a loss and stock prices drop. Forcing companies to make wage cuts or worse.

Yup it's the shareholder mentality. Everything is based on quarterly profit increase, not the long term effect on the business or the effect on the community.


Every year, profits must rise for the previous year's investors to profit. So no buisness is ever profitable enough. No matter how much you made last year, this year you need more.

You cannot effect the cost of materials, but you can cut labor and benefits.

Businesses are in the game to make money, giving each cashier cook $15 raise is going to eat into profit. So longer lines, fewer employees,

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Exactly, this is how business works. Lower profit also lowers a companies value, look at Apple...

originally posted by: Brainiac
Businesses are in the game to make money, giving each cashier cook $15 raise is going to eat into profit. So longer lines, fewer employees,

All business eventually comes down to volume. A company that caters to a "premium experience" and charges more for it still brings in 50% more revenue if they have 15 customers in a week than if they have 10 customers.

These kiosks are faster (and more accurate) than cashiers which in turn speeds up business volume. That moves the bottleneck from the point of sale to production, which in turn causes more people to be placed in the production line. The overall effect is that volume increases and revenues rise. Of course, your cooks will now be making $15/hour but now you're increasing your business volume with 1 robot and 1 cook rather than 1 cashier and 1 cook, which is ultimately cheaper.

Another poster earlier brought up robots not being cheaper than minimum wage... yet. I beg to differ. The argument was that the price point for a robot is $7.45/hour but most states are above that in minimum wage, and most cities are as well. A very small chunk of the population makes the federal minimum wage but a much larger chunk makes near the federal minimum wage... lets call it $8/hour. On top of that, the wage you're paying an employee doesn't make up 100% of their costs. There's issues like health care, unemployment, payroll taxes, and so on that you're also paying. All told you're probably paying close to double their wage in costs so lets call it $15/hour right now. If you're open 16 hours a day, filling a position at $15/hour in total costs is $87,600.

How much are the machines going to realistically cost? $30,000 a piece? How long of a lifespan, how many spares? Maybe 2 spares for a group of 3 machines? If the grocery store kiosks are anything to go by, they have atleast a 5 year lifespan. So you're looking at 5 machines over 5 years. At $30,000 each that's a savings of nearly $300,000. If the machines are $50,000 each it's $200,000 in savings. Maybe you spend $50,000 over that time in maintenance and there's still a pretty nice savings there. Even without wages going up they make a lot of economic sense already.

originally posted by: Brainiac
Businesses are in the game to make money, giving each cashier cook $15 raise is going to eat into profit. So longer lines, fewer employees,

But I would argue, those are only precieved profit losses. That in the long run, paying really low wages are destructive to the company.


An old boss of mine often said "you pay peanuts, you get monkeys."


Presently, min wage jobs just take handfuls of warm bodies and throw them at the job. Because they are so cheap, they put nearly no work into vetting them, and will allow bad workers to keep their jobs, knowing how hard it is to find someone else willing to work for so little.

Well training people cost money and a big chuck of low wage workers, quit half way through training. Making it WAY cheaper to keep good employees than it is to keep replacing bad ones.

Also low wage workers don't really care if they get fired. They are getting paid the least their company could possibly pay them. So they have zero loyalty to you. They may steal or just have a total lack of "give a damn."


If you invest in GOOD employees and you treat them well , they don't steal nearly as often. They care if they lose their job, so they take it seriously. You rarely have mistakes or training pay.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: Brainiac
Businesses are in the game to make money, giving each cashier cook $15 raise is going to eat into profit. So longer lines, fewer employees,

All business eventually comes down to volume. A company that caters to a "premium experience" and charges more for it still brings in 50% more revenue if they have 15 customers in a week than if they have 10 customers.

These kiosks are faster (and more accurate) than cashiers which in turn speeds up business volume. That moves the bottleneck from the point of sale to production, which in turn causes more people to be placed in the production line. The overall effect is that volume increases and revenues rise. Of course, your cooks will now be making $15/hour but now you're increasing your business volume with 1 robot and 1 cook rather than 1 cashier and 1 cook, which is ultimately cheaper.

Another poster earlier brought up robots not being cheaper than minimum wage... yet. I beg to differ. The argument was that the price point for a robot is $7.45/hour but most states are above that in minimum wage, and most cities are as well. A very small chunk of the population makes the federal minimum wage but a much larger chunk makes near the federal minimum wage... lets call it $8/hour. On top of that, the wage you're paying an employee doesn't make up 100% of their costs. There's issues like health care, unemployment, payroll taxes, and so on that you're also paying. All told you're probably paying close to double their wage in costs so lets call it $15/hour right now. If you're open 16 hours a day, filling a position at $15/hour in total costs is $87,600.

How much are the machines going to realistically cost? $30,000 a piece? How long of a lifespan, how many spares? Maybe 2 spares for a group of 3 machines? If the grocery store kiosks are anything to go by, they have atleast a 5 year lifespan. So you're looking at 5 machines over 5 years. At $30,000 each that's a savings of nearly $300,000. If the machines are $50,000 each it's $200,000 in savings. Maybe you spend $50,000 over that time in maintenance and there's still a pretty nice savings there. Even without wages going up they make a lot of economic sense already.

I work in restaurants and have for years.

Your right about everything except the cost of the kiosks. You can swap an entire buisness to kiosks for less than 20 grand. The kiosks are down to roughly 2000 apiece. I mean come on, they are no more advanced than your cell phone.

That's why even 2.15$ an hour, servers are being replaced. It's cheaper than 2$ an hour to have kiosks.

originally posted by: WeAreAWAKE

originally posted by: amazing

originally posted by: WeAreAWAKE
a reply to: amazing

I'm not arguing automation, I'm arguing the benefit of automation and when and why automation becomes a better value than human labor. While you are welcome to ignore the facts I stated...you provide no other nor do you state a single example of the "right" causing the problem. So without a logical or fact based rebuttal on your part...I'll just leave that as you have nothing to contribute nor a point to make on those subjects.

The fact that the cost of human labor has been increased by Obamacare, a higher minimum wage, etc. is just that...a fact. The higher the cost of human labor, the better automation looks to a business.

It really isn't very difficult to understand. At least for most.

Oh...and LOL!

Just a couple of points. I never said the right caused automation. I'm just saying it's a natural technological evolution of capitalism and our society. There is no left or right wing agenda, it's just profit.

My second point is that automation was happening way before any minimum wage increase or ObamaCare...It doesn't really matter what the left or the right do, it's going to happen whether we like it or not.

Third why do you insist on making everything partisan? Especially my responses here ...which had no partisan agenda or anything. I was just stating facts.

It's almost like you've been brainwashed by Rush limbaugh or Sean Hannity or something. LOL

Responding to your final paragraph...I actually hate them all. Both sides. And if a Republican were in office, I would be calling out the right. Think of it like this...if the current boss is an ass, I'm not going to be talking about the prior boss being an ass also...I'll just be talking about the current one. The other reason why I really hit the left is they are the ones claiming to be "for the people". If you decide to wear the titled of "defender of the people" and then screw them, while everyone else is screwing them...you deserve a harsher response than the norm.

At least my opinion.

I don't think you would get much argument saying that both parties are corrupt.

You can however debate eack sides policies and propaganda.

The democrats take a real issue, and set up an inferstructure to siphon off a chunk of any tax dollars American tax payers throw at the problem. Sure most of that money goes to a legit problem, but a percent gets funneled to their friends and supporters.

Such as solindra and the proposed carbon tax.


Republicans ignore any and all issues, because their donations come from the people profiting from that issue.

Such as: right to work states, climate change deniers, private prisons, corporate taxes and honestly 1000 other things...all while putting out the worst propaganda imaginable....


Pretty much all politicians are dirt bags, but not all dirt bags are created equal. There is a reason conservative media is the laughing stock of the rest of the world, and it's not because they are the only one telling people the truth lol.


I think Obama is a weak B!¥€H, but we will prob never see the level of corruption perpetrated by the bush administration.....

Come on, lying us into a decades long war. Then giving the Vice Presidents personal company the multi billion dollar rebuild contract for Iraq!!! That just might be the most corrupt act in US presidential history!

originally posted by: liliasthesorceress
At some point, nearly everything will be automated and then no one will have a job. What then? No one will be able to purchase anything for the billionaire class to get rich off of. No one will be able to pay taxes (except the small number of billionaires) to fund roads and schools and so on. This makes it clear that we have to at least try to make things equal for everyone (maybe through universal basic income?) or we are going to have a very unpleasant society where a tiny number of elites owns everything, and the rest of the billions of humans on this earth have nothing. Which is a recipe for disaster. Since having a job prevents people from starting revolutions or engaging in crime (as they will if they don't have jobs). I don't think the vast majority of humanity wil just sit back and let these billionaires dictate society and the economy.

I don't think it'll come to that. More likely many companies will use robotics and more people will become jobless and they'll simply revolt and we will all have to start over or try to fix society for decades to come. Or there will be 2 societies, one for a small group using robotics and the other using human labor. There won't even be low skilled maintenance, there will be robots to do that.

I expect more people to wake up to the problems once cars are fully automated and millions in transportation (by car/truck, train, boat and airplane) will lose their jobs. But even now there have been problems for decades which no one views as problematic. Maybe agreements can be made to evolve to a society where no one needs to work and has free food, clothing, shelter and education (like e-learning). But without some kind of leadership it'll never work; companies will go bust and only a few will remain to cater for the rich while the rest goes on living by the old ways, maybe people will revolt.

I actually couldn't find a good source for this. Anyone?

originally posted by: Joecanada11
a reply to: JoshuaCox

Definitely it's propaganda on both sides. Of course the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The sad reality is that as robotics become more capable lower class humans will become more expendable. I'm scared for my children. What kind of world will be there for them. What will their life be like twenty years from now.

Think about how many jobs the internet has eliminated over the years. Travel agents are largely gone, shopping malls are decimated, no more record stores. Some people will say its progress, but I bet none of the people who lost their jobs would agree. I have worked in manufacturing for many years and I have seen the trend. The holy grail for a lot of machine tool manufacturers is to build equipment that doesn't require operators. Robots. Robots will start to take all the working class jobs, and sentient AI will probably take all the engineering and even clerical and managerial type positions. The irony is, I am sure there are some white collar people thinking they are safe. They aren't. This thing is going to extend to ANY type of work that the ownership class has to pay for. Make no mistake, that's the goal. Its not just the other guys job, its your job too. In the end it will just be the people with capital and their machines. What worries me, is when the elites see the workers as totally expendable, what then? They just eliminate us with their combat bots? Maybe that is science fiction, but so were smartphones, a computer in every house and a global computer network about 30 years ago.

Why not build androids instead who can be essentially mechanical slaves in human form. That way there is a cross compatibility with tools and devices that can be used by both machines and humans. If the human does not wanna do it just swap him out with the android and vice versa. You know those movies in the 50s with the Aliens and their personal androids....it makes sense.This way we can still do humans things for humans and if there needs to a be a special needs machine then so be that but it can be operated by said android as a form of portable labour and AI.

originally posted by: johnnyjoe1979

originally posted by: liliasthesorceress
At some point, nearly everything will be automated and then no one will have a job. What then? No one will be able to purchase anything for the billionaire class to get rich off of. No one will be able to pay taxes (except the small number of billionaires) to fund roads and schools and so on. This makes it clear that we have to at least try to make things equal for everyone (maybe through universal basic income?) or we are going to have a very unpleasant society where a tiny number of elites owns everything, and the rest of the billions of humans on this earth have nothing. Which is a recipe for disaster. Since having a job prevents people from starting revolutions or engaging in crime (as they will if they don't have jobs). I don't think the vast majority of humanity wil just sit back and let these billionaires dictate society and the economy.

I don't think it'll come to that. More likely many companies will use robotics and more people will become jobless and they'll simply revolt and we will all have to start over or try to fix society for decades to come. Or there will be 2 societies, one for a small group using robotics and the other using human labor. There won't even be low skilled maintenance, there will be robots to do that.

I expect more people to wake up to the problems once cars are fully automated and millions in transportation (by car/truck, train, boat and airplane) will lose their jobs. But even now there have been problems for decades which no one views as problematic. Maybe agreements can be made to evolve to a society where no one needs to work and has free food, clothing, shelter and education (like e-learning). But without some kind of leadership it'll never work; companies will go bust and only a few will remain to cater for the rich while the rest goes on living by the old ways, maybe people will revolt.

For all the "socialism is inherently evil" stuff , the only way I see us maintaining a consumer class, is to swap to a system like Switzerland. Every American citizen gets a 2500 allowance every month, and you work (if you can find work) for anything extra.

I just don't see any other viable option.....but we have been raised to bare people who work less than us, so good luck unbrainwashing the Fox News crowd to pass it.