Bye bye $15/hr min wage Fast Food jobs

originally posted by: pianopraze
If I saw this, I would ask to the see the manager. Tell the manager I will never eat at your restaurant until you remove these machines, ask if the store owner is there or for store owners email/telephone and tell the store owner the same thing.

We CAN change these things. Look at this last election.

If we do nothing this will be our future.

Yes that's the ticket! Lets kick and scream against technology ans progression! Who wants those things anyway? I assume you are connected to the internet via a rock?

I LOVE using these machines, it's so much faster than waiting in the damn queue!

Now what about the workers? Well they will need to use their brains a little more! Be a bit more inventive! Which is a good thing! Manpower can go to something that is more useful.

Well, this is what you get when you systematically dismantle and discredit labor unions. Lower wages, fewer jobs, more automation, more unpaid overtime, fewer vacations, longer hours, less benefits, and all of us begging for scraps and pennies from our corporate overlords just to survive. We could have stood together and demanded to be treated like human beings, or demanded at least a pot to piss in, but instead we bought into the "Me! Me! Me! Mine!" crab culture forced down our throats from the corporate-owned media.

God, it feels so good to piss on those lower on the totem pole! At least I don't have to partially help pay for the waiter's $15/hour wage so that he can survive! It was all worth it because you know what, in the end, the McDonald's corporation will show higher quarterly profits!

Bye Bye ten dollar big macs and 15 dollar happy meals.

This image is for Australia, but it applies just as well to the US (if anything, it's worse in the US):



No but please, tell me again how the cockroaches scrambling to survive at the foot of the pyramid are the real problem here for daring to question their overlords. Clearly there is no alternative between paying them starvation wages or me paying $15 a burger, nope...

a reply to: Vasa Croe

Sorry, but your friend in TN didn't take any of those photos...

From June 2015

That's for the first image at least. The image is actually a bit older, actually.

Second image is from October 2014

The third image is from this Russian website and story

And the last image is from an April 2015 news story

There's been a lot of talk about these kiosks over the years. McDonalds has been trying them out for several years. They don't seem to really take off though, hence why they keep tweaking them and trying them out in various places.

It does make a great conversation starter whenever the minimum wage/fast food thing comes up in political chit chat though.

originally posted by: TheKnightofDoom
a reply to: Vasa Croe

This isn't about the minimum wage this automation will be effecting 75% of jobs in the next 20 years.
What do you do btw I'm sure you will be jumping for joy when a robot takes your job.
Remember the Luddites.

My specialty is automation analysis of systems and my job is to increase their effeciency.

Is it time for you to switch careers?

originally posted by: Tempter
My specialty is automation analysis of systems and my job is to increase their effeciency.

Is it time for you to switch careers?

Oh cool so there are enough jobs in automation systems for every minimum wage worker at McDonalds to get a job in your field?

You realize that as more people enter your field, they can get away with paying you less and less....

a reply to: Vasa Croe

I cannot wait until everything is automated.

Rich people get paid for their knowledge, poor people get paid for their time.

Words of wisdom for all the socialist lefty college students out there.

Now all you need are some talking heads -

originally posted by: DrStevenBrule
Good.

Maybe this will force entry level skill workers to up their game if they want to support a family.

To some extent, this right here.

I'm so glad I have skills in an industry that can't be replaced by machines. Much thanks to my education and the degree I worked very hard to earn.


And screw McDonald's anyways. I would find any person detestable and pathetic for eating robot made and served D grade fast food. I can't think of anything more terrible than taking these actions just to avoid paying people a fair wage. $15/hr is bullsht because I made less as a lab tech doing molecular biology related research at a highly funded university and business, but come on, couldn't anyone come up with a compromise? Going automated is not going to sit well with the general population in consideration of what's going on politically with low wage workers. Bad choice if McDonald's implements this on a large scale.

originally posted by: Winstonian
a reply to: Vasa Croe

I cannot wait until everything is automated.

Rich people get paid for their knowledge, poor people get paid for their time.

Words of wisdom for all the socialist lefty college students out there.

Well played. I also regret my earlier post as this article is bs as usual. Damn it ATS.

originally posted by: worldstarcountry
a reply to: Vasa Croe

The rolled these out in most of the McD's in my city. They are actually really well developed, and I enjoyed using it. Its too bad the people making the order still found a way to make a mistake.

When selecting Happy meal, it asks for boy or girl. I asked one boy one girl, saw it on the screen, it even printed out on the receipt. Still got two super girls. They fixed it of course, but its like "and this is what they want me to pay $15/hr for??"

Maybe we can get some Atlas robots in there in ten years, and they will know how to read as well??

Because you need to be immune to making a mistake to deserve 15$ an hour? Idk man, I used to be a server and made well over 15$ an hour and still occasionally made a mistake. It happens.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

I have very mixed feelings about all this.

The reason I say that, is that I am all for the future of technology, an era where human beings can apply themselves to real creative and intellectual pursuits as their main focus, an era where currency is irrelevant and where a persons worth is measured not by what they produce but by the simple act of being at all.

However, this system and others like it existing NOW, when people are still working for money, rather than living for the sheer joy of it, does not bode well. Jobs like McDonalds offer are bad jobs, but putting in a year or two at a place like this can really aid a young person with future job prospects at other companies, especially if the management give them a good reference. It is hard enough as it is to find work for many young people, what with governments allowing companies to behave irresponsibly toward the communities they work in and serve, their employees, and the economy in general, AND the sheer level of competition for entry level work.

I remember when I got my first job, which was in the retail sector, having to do with the sale of frozen foods mostly. It was not a great job, but it was a damned good first job. There were many things, back in the day, that I knew how to do, and could have become much better at, given the training and the time to grow, but none of them earn money worth a damn. The job I had though? It was ok at the time. Could have been a stepping stone for someone. But I will not pretend that were other, better, more serious work available, I wouldn't have taken it.

It just was not there. Everyone in every other sector wanted people with ten years experience, or this qualification, or that certificate. There is nothing on the face of the world that I cannot learn how to do, other, perhaps, than anything of a mathematical nature. And yet, none of the skills I had then, or for that matter have now, are what people are looking for really, and I have been working solidly since I was eighteen.

Increasingly, it seems the world is not for the grafter, those prepared to slog it out every day, those with stamina, determination, even in the face of total intellectual oblivion, to continue to get up every day and go to work, get paid and take care of business. Time is soon coming where even those who can prove their intellect, their stamina, their dedication, their honesty and their commitment, will be unable to find a start in adulthood. Good people who might otherwise have gone places, will have to enter into the underground economy in order to find employment worth having, and at some stage, we are going to have to face the reality, that we are killing the best and most noble of our species by starving them of work which benefits them equal to the effort they put into it.

Its been happening for years, but this is a bridge far too far, and by no means do I expect it to be the last.

a reply to: Aazadan

The care sector is a job which will be safe. People will not allow a robot to wipe their bum.

A friend of mine just took and posted these on FB from a McD's in TN. I have to laugh at the irony. While the workers were striking the big corporate food chains were out smarting them. Now what? Sure those $15/hr food jobs will still be there, but not many.... I will be interested to see how many of these go in and how many chains pick it up. Pretty brilliant if you ask me. Likely going to cause a lot of pain for the current, or soon to be not current work force in the industry. At least if you get your order wrong, now you'll only have yourself to blame!

outsmarting them, you say it with such contempt for the worker, for having the gall to strike against the boss.
It's one thing i never understood about Americans how they can have such disdain for certain groups of people just because of, as in this comment they work for minimum wage in the fast food industry.
you do realise that a similar system has been in place in the hospitality industry for over a decade now even longer in Europe!
yes, when your out at your favourite restaurant feeling all self centred and self important if you ever bothered to take a look at the person taking your order, oh thats right in America people that do these jobs are below the people that actualy eat there.
well anyway the person taking your order carries a little black box, this box sends the order to the kitchen via wifi/ blootooth and spits it out of the docket machine.
So although this may effectively eliminate 1-2 cashiere positions and import an express lane option, it is far from the end of the line for the minimum wage earner in America in the fast food industry.
sorry bucko your fantasy of beeing able to berate to the massess on their shortcomings isnt going to come to fruition just yet.

originally posted by: Tardacus
In a service based economy like the U.S. has it`s not a good idea to start replacing service workers with service robots.

Then perhaps people should stop pricing human workers out of the market.

There are only so many minimum wage hikes, additional taxes, mandatory healthcare costs, etc that the market will bear before it becomes economically more feasible to pay the R&D and buy robots to do the job.

This might have happened anyway, but it certainly happened a lot sooner thanks to some of the moonbat policies (ie Obamacare) that have been dredged out of the intellectual septic tank in the last decade.

When machines are doing all the thinking work and all the manual work and all the jobs, how will the economy survive when people aren't earning any cash to buy products manufactured by robots?

All you lot that are rubbing your hands in satisfied glee at the thought of low-skilled workers having no jobs and no earnings are forgetting that the economy is consumer-based and requires people to spend their earnings on goods and living needs, and robots don't earn nor spend one penny and never will.

How will all the businesses stay afloat with a factory full of robots ready to go, but half the nation's now redundant workforce have no earnings to spend on the products the robots are making?

So, when robots are doing millions of unskilled jobs, all those millions of people are now not paying any taxes, not buying any goods, no mortgages, loans, no anything without first having paying jobs. Robots don't pay taxes because they don't have wages, will that mean that those lucky humans that will still have a job have to pay more income taxes to compensate for the void in government treasury?

Skilled tradesmen, service-providers, manufacturers, importers/exporters, financiers/bankers, road-sweepers, litter-pickers - every paying job in society right down to the oldest profession of prostitution, all require people that have money to pay for goods/services, and unskilled low-earners tend to spend all of their earnings which is very good for you business owners/service providers, is it not?

Taking away millions of unskilled jobs and earnings out of the economy could spell the end of many businesses that depend on people spending those earnings.

Good luck with your businesses when this replacement workforce have no need for your goods and services.

Be careful what you wish for.

a reply to: doobydoll

doobydoll,

You do not understand the mindset at play here. These people literally do not care if those without work starve to death. Some of them even hope that those who are affected most by this sort of thing DO die as a result of having nothing, because then, at least, the taxpayer will not have to fund their lives.

This is economic fascism at its lowest, but familiar and inevitable, such is the rot at the heart of mankind.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: doobydoll

doobydoll,

You do not understand the mindset at play here. These people literally do not care if those without work starve to death. Some of them even hope that those who are affected most by this sort of thing DO die as a result of having nothing, because then, at least, the taxpayer will not have to fund their lives.

This is economic fascism at its lowest, but familiar and inevitable, such is the rot at the heart of mankind.

Hello my friend.

You are correct, I do not understand the mind-set at play here. Why can't people see that without low-skilled workers many higher-position jobs would go. Team-leaders, charge-hands, supervisors, managers, human resources and personnel departments, employment agencies, finance departments, etc, these exist because of an unskilled human workforce.

So many people hoping the worst in life befall others whom have harmed no-one, are probably employed by or own companies that depend on the incomes of those same unskilled people.

So many clever and degreed people, so little common sense. It's astonishing.