McDonald's Touchscreen Kiosks, Feared As Job Killers, Created More Jobs Instead (cnn.com) 180
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Some McDonald's franchisees -- which own and operate 95% of McDonald's in the United States -- are now rolling out kiosks that can take cash and accept change. But even in these locations, McDonald's is reassigning cashiers to other roles, including new "guest experience lead" jobs that help customers use the kiosks and assist with any issues. "In theory, kiosks should help save on labor, but in reality, restaurants have added complexity due to mobile ordering and delivery, and the labor saved from kiosks is often reallocated for these efforts," said RJ Hottovy, an analyst who covers the restaurant and retail industries at data analytics firm Placer.ai. Kiosks "have created a restaurant within a restaurant." And in some cases, kiosks have even been a flop. Bowling ally chain Bowlero added kiosks in lanes for customers to order food and drinks, but they went unused because staff and customers weren't fully trained on using them. "The unintended consequences have surprised a lot of people," Hottovy said.
Even some of the benefits of kiosks touted by chains -- they upsell customers by suggesting menu items and speed up orders -- don't always play out. A recent study from Temple University researchers found that, when a line forms behind customers using kiosks, they experience more stress when placing their orders and purchase less food. And some customers take longer to order tapping around on kiosks and paying than they do telling a cashier they'd like to order a burger and fries. Not to mention the kiosks can malfunction or break down. "If kiosks really improved speed of service, order accuracy, and upsell, they'd be rolled out more extensively across the industry than they are today," Hottovy said.
Kiosks have also been threatened as a fast-food industry response to higher minimum wage laws. [...] But the quick-service and fast-casual segments of the restaurant industry continue to grow. Staffing levels were nearly 150,000 jobs, or 3%, above pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest Labor Department data. Christopher Andrews, a sociologist at Drew University who studies the effects of technology on work, said the impacts of kiosks were similar to other self-service technology such as ATMs and self-checkout machines in supermarkets. Both technologies were predicted to cause job losses. "The introduction of ATMs did not result in massive technological unemployment for bank tellers," he said. "Instead, it freed them up from low-value tasks such as depositing and cashing checks to perform other tasks that created value." Self-checkout have also not resulted in retail job losses, the report adds. "In some cases, self-checkout backfired for chains because self-checkout leads to higher merchandise losses from customer errors and more intentional shoplifting than when human cashiers are ringing up customers."
Even some of the benefits of kiosks touted by chains -- they upsell customers by suggesting menu items and speed up orders -- don't always play out. A recent study from Temple University researchers found that, when a line forms behind customers using kiosks, they experience more stress when placing their orders and purchase less food. And some customers take longer to order tapping around on kiosks and paying than they do telling a cashier they'd like to order a burger and fries. Not to mention the kiosks can malfunction or break down. "If kiosks really improved speed of service, order accuracy, and upsell, they'd be rolled out more extensively across the industry than they are today," Hottovy said.
Kiosks have also been threatened as a fast-food industry response to higher minimum wage laws. [...] But the quick-service and fast-casual segments of the restaurant industry continue to grow. Staffing levels were nearly 150,000 jobs, or 3%, above pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest Labor Department data. Christopher Andrews, a sociologist at Drew University who studies the effects of technology on work, said the impacts of kiosks were similar to other self-service technology such as ATMs and self-checkout machines in supermarkets. Both technologies were predicted to cause job losses. "The introduction of ATMs did not result in massive technological unemployment for bank tellers," he said. "Instead, it freed them up from low-value tasks such as depositing and cashing checks to perform other tasks that created value." Self-checkout have also not resulted in retail job losses, the report adds. "In some cases, self-checkout backfired for chains because self-checkout leads to higher merchandise losses from customer errors and more intentional shoplifting than when human cashiers are ringing up customers."
Dupe (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder if BeauHD has ever met EditorDavid? [slashdot.org]
This reminds me of Edinburghâ(TM)s driverless (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This reminds me of Edinburghâ(TM)s driverl (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't *NEED* twice as many people. They have chosen to have a driverless bus with a driver AND a ticket operator. Now with a self-driving bus, I get the former, but they could also act as the later - like almost every other bus in the country. They just choose not to.
It's like the Docklands Light Railway. It runs perfectly fine without any staff on trains. But unions protested so they basically create fake jobs to put staff on a driverless train. Often more than one.
Driverless trains operate in many airports in the UK and EU. They aren't manned and don't need to be. But they never used unionised drivers so they don't have that issue.
It's not a technology issue (though I'm absolutely a self-driving skeptic - but they could easily safely operate on limited routes if someone cared, it would just be far easier to do it with a tram than a bus that can steer anywhere). It's a union issue. It's a "must have a human" issue. It's a jobs issue.
It's always been that way. We remove jobs because we realise the job people are doing is far better done by a machine and people actually suck at it. Then we get the people up in arms because that's ALL THEY KNOW HOW TO DO. Then to appease the unions, employers employ a token workforce to do a pointless, demeaning job at great expense but minimum wage and terrible inefficiency.
Mining, car construction, factory workers, and now restaurant staff.
A McDonald's kiosk is FAR MORE EFFICIENT than me telling a spotty teenager my order and them getting it wrong, especially when there are exceptions in the order.
Since the kiosks were introduced in the UK, I haven't had a wrong order and - and I have been tracking this - the number of times I get a meal that's gone cold before its even got to me has gone to zero. The reason for that is simple... the computer remembers what I told it and "presses the right buttons" in the kitchen and there are checks along the way.
McDonald's is now actually a good place to go eat. It's a bit pricey but I often have deals and vouchers in the app that make it less so. But I can go drive there, park up, my order is already in my phone, I tap it on a kiosk, take a number and a couple of minutes later someone delivers the tray to my table. And it's now ALWAYS correct, still hot and faster.
There are still a dozen people behind the counter but they aren't wasting their time interacting with people or waiting for that interaction. They are cooking, stocking, cleaning or delivering food to customers, that's it. It's so much more efficient than it ever was before. They have a literal queue of orders, with no actual physical queue beyond a couple of people who think standing up and tapping their fingers will make their order come quicker, and people are able to put in more orders and grab a seat without waiting for a human to be free.
I'm sure McDonald's could bow to a union and end up putting in people who stand there doing little all day or a token guy with a pad taking orders inside the restaurant the same as they do in the drive-through.
But that's nothing to do with the actual technology or service - that would purely be unions making fusses about obsolete jobs.
Meanwhile the number of gig-delivery jobs where the drivers are literally queuing up in the same McDonald's to collect an order for delivery has exploded. The day we get working drones / real self-driving / etc. all their jobs will go too. And I'm pretty sure that will mean I'll get my delivery order faster, hotter and to the right address more often and far fewer illegal scooters running around London doing so (see BBC news today).
Re:This reminds me of Edinburghâ(TM)s driverl (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm surprised you didn't pick on the last point in TFS:
... similar to other self-service technology such as ATMs and self-checkout machines in supermarkets. Both technologies were predicted to cause job losses. "The introduction of ATMs did not result in massive technological unemployment for bank tellers," he said. "Instead, it freed them up from low-value tasks such as depositing and cashing checks to perform other tasks that created value."
I could understand their other points, but that one (unemployment of bank tellers due to ATMs), though it may not have happened right away, definitely happened. Entire branches gone; Multiple branches in areas gone; Where there are tellers, they are hardly any of them. They were freed up to perform other tasks, for sure... tasks at other employers.
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Entire branches gone; Multiple branches in areas gone; Where there are tellers, they are hardly any of them.
This is correlation, though. Which doesn't imply causation.
Other possible causes: the rise of online banking & the decline of physical cash & checks.
I mean, when is the last time you have needed to go to a bank or even use an ATM in the last few years?
These days most people I know only ever go to a branch if they need to apply for a loan, open an account or renew their mortgage. And I think that applies to ATMs as well. I honestly can't actually remember the last time I used an ATM. Probably at a Co
For now (Score:2, Insightful)
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McDonald's has been using kiosks for at least ten years. I believe that everybody is as used to them as they're going to get.
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'McDonald's has been using kiosks for at least ten years. I believe that everybody is as used to them as they're going to get.'
Where I live in the EU as well, a dozen or more kiosks can handle more customers than 3 people.
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'McDonald's has been using kiosks for at least ten years. I believe that everybody is as used to them as they're going to get.'
Where I live in the EU as well, a dozen or more kiosks can handle more customers than 3 people.
That depends entirely on how well designed the GUI is.
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McDonald's UI isn't too bad. I suspect it bears a resemblance to the one used on cash registers, which was developed over the course of many years for minimum wage drones who would rather be in the back smoking pot than earning money to buy it, so it has to be simple.
There's a Taco Bell near home where you can really only order on the kiosk, which is the only place you can see a menu. That's a little annoying, but then, so are most of the employees.
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I've been using them for a long time. The mcdonalds experience is so shit now the only time I go is when I think some mcdonalds might be a nice change of pace and then they remind me why I don't go there anymore. I'm starting to learn my lesson and go anywhere else.
Ordering on your phone...in the restaurant... (Score:2)
That is the true revolution. A kiosk is only good when your phone runs out of charge. The solution of that is having chargers on every table. The best solution is when your don't have to get up from your table to get your food but rather they bring it to your table number. No lines at all except in actually preparing the food.
Re:Ordering on your phone...in the restaurant... (Score:5, Informative)
The best solution is when your don't have to get up from your table to get your food but rather they bring it to your table number. No lines at all except in actually preparing the food.
That is exactly how McDonald's does it. There's table-markers hanging on the kiosk and you punch in number of the marker you are taking to display at your seat when you order. They bring your order to you.
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Unless they run out, or their kiosks get so little use they don't bother to put the tents out.
Ordering on the phone, with permanent numbers assigned to each table, would mitigate that. For those that have smart phones and are willing to use them thus.
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The UK McDonalds does that as well. At our local McDonalds, you can:
Order at the counter (though you'll have to wait, not usually very long, for a member of staff)
Order at the kiosk, get your food at the counter, and take it to your seat.
Order at the kiosk, take a marker and sit at a table, and your food will be brought to you
Order on the app, get your food at the counter, and take it to your table
Order on the app using the numbers on the table, and your food will be brought to you
That's not counting the dr
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Unless they run out, or their kiosks get so little use they don't bother to put the tents out.
Ordering on the phone, with permanent numbers assigned to each table, would mitigate that. For those that have smart phones and are willing to use them thus.
The tents turned out to be superfluous. I use the kiosks, and while the "choose your table and take a tent" option is still there - but now unused - it turns out that it is just easier for the person bringing out the food to call out the order number. Which makes sense, rather than having to walk all over the restaurant looking for a table tent.
My guess is that the next software update won't have the tents at all.
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People in China are far less resistant to having companies, and the government, track everything they do.
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What I usually do with McDonalds (and most of these fast food joints) is use my phone to order and, depending on the situation, either ordering a in-house pickup (i.e., I'm dining there) or a curbside. I haven't used a drive through in quite a while. If I was dining in, I probably would still do the same thing, unless by using a kiosk I got the food delivered to my table.
That said, I've been to Olive Garden a few times in the last few months. They have tablets at the table. There are a lot of problems with
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Tablets at the tables at fluffed up casual dining places like red lobster and olive garden is so dumb.
If they're gonna do that they might as well stop decorating the insides of the restaurants and have the staff dress in fast food uniforms as it instantly shatters any illusion of class when you pick up that grease booger encrusted tablet and it asks if you wanna pay $2 to play space invaders, do you wanna donate to charity, oops hold on the UI is a little glitchy and laggy, now we're ready to take your card
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A kiosk is only good when your phone runs out of charge.
If your phone is out of charge then you can;t use the kiosk either, because you need the phone to pay.
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It's looks like you're American.
In most of the rest of the world no one uses written checks anymore. They're considered untrustworthy. It's all electronic transactions requiring a password and/or a biometric identification, the transfer of funds, whether by credit card, debit card, savings account, payments account, meal cards, or whatever, instantly confirmed.
The one interesting trait of the American bank system is that it's set in a permanent state of being 20 years behind everyone else technologically. T
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Are you an expat or something because checks have been out in the US for awhile now. You can pay with your phone here most places and it's getting close to not needing a wallet except to drive.
But man when i leave the house light with no wallet I still tuck a credit card into a little pocket on my phone case. If dude's dead phone is getting him issues at mcdonalds then it's on him. Also I don't think dead phone batteries have been been an issue in my life for awhile.
Homeboy is a bit odd.
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They used to make a phone case that was another phone. Not sure if that's still a thing.
Some of them also support 2nd profiles or app sandboxing.
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Are you an expat or something because checks have been out in the US for awhile now.
Not American. I'm writing from what I read my American friends tell of how things work of there. Sure, you all use checks way less than you sued before, but you still do use checks. Heck, some tell me about how they pay rent by physically sending their landlords a check in the mail or, more "modernly", a photo of a signed check via SMS or e-mail.
Something like that is strictly unheard of here in Brazil. We get by e-mail a PDF describing the charge with a QR code or barcode in it. Copy the barcode and open y
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Are you an expat or something because checks have been out in the US for awhile now.
Not American. I'm writing from what I read my American friends tell of how things work of there.
Okay, well, your friends are not necessarily correct. Not to diss on them, but the picture youpaited in your original post painted us 'Murricans living in 1930. Barely out of the caves, and struggling to live in a world of our betters using paper checks because there wasn't much choice, being behind the rest of the world.
Sure, you all use checks way less than you sued before, but you still do use checks.
Just curious. Keeping in mind that I haven't written a check since the 1990's, and I use all of the modern methods like autopay - I live on my credit cards and pay them off every month so
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I hate to burst your bubble that no one
Again: Hyperbole [wikipedia.org].
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Are you an expat or something because checks have been out in the US for awhile now. You can pay with your phone here most places and it's getting close to not needing a wallet except to drive.
But man when i leave the house light with no wallet I still tuck a credit card into a little pocket on my phone case. If dude's dead phone is getting him issues at mcdonalds then it's on him. Also I don't think dead phone batteries have been been an issue in my life for awhile.
Homeboy is a bit odd.
Odd indeed. Although my SO for some reason still likes checks, she is finding it increasingly difficult to get new ones, and I tell her often that that is the future of checking. Checks are very rare, even here in the hinterlands.
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Me, I like the convenience of writing a check and mailing it - particularly for utilities, car payment, insurance, etc. I don't have to wait in line in meatspace to make my payment. And no, I don't want to create yet another online account with username (which someone has already snagged) and password. Where would I keep my password? On my "secure" smartphone? Yeah. I'll pass. Autopay? See my first sent
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Check this other reply [slashdot.org] of mine.
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It's looks like you're American.
In most of the rest of the world no one uses written checks anymore.
I'm not certain where you got your idea that 'Murricans are all using checks, but a check is a unicorn now.
My SO still writes out checks, but that's her stasis, and in no way shape or form is that a normal thing now. Takes forever to get new checks, the banks would much rather use standard electronic methods now. But she's in a vanishingly small group now.
Just curious - you wrote "no one" Are checks banned in the rest of the world?
I've read interviews with American bank executives saying they don't adopt state-of-the-art technological innovations other countries use because they think it'd be confusing to the average American, so they wait decades to being them into the US and, when they do, they roll them slooooowly, observing veeeery carefully whether "dumb" (in their view) average Americans are grasping it before sliiiightly increasing the rate of rollout.
Wonderful story Bro! Can you provide the citations? Americans are so s
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where you got your idea that 'Murricans are all using checks
Copy-pasting #1: "Check this other reply [slashdot.org] of mine."
Just curious - you wrote "no one"
Copy-pasting #2: "Literacy these days... ~ sigh ~ Here, let me help you: Hyperbole [wikipedia.org]. You're welcome."
Can you provide the citations?
For your strawmanning of my point? No. For what I actually said? Sure! [krebsonsecurity.com] Though, given your behavior in your reply, I imagine you'll focus first and foremost into nitpicking about something or other to pretend not to concede the point, or to pretend to win Internet points, or both. Be my guest! :-D
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Europe became a godless place much earlier due to WWI.
Why would you want a godfull place? Godfull, especially of the Christian persuasion, are places are dictatorships ruled by sadistic megalomaniacs whose main pastime is to viciously torture a majority of the population while surrounded by yes men who all deeply enjoy watching and hearing the boss work on his victims, the criteria for whom to make a victim being whether the person approves or disapproves of the boss in general, and with his torturing practices in particular.
Godless places are much better. Way
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"You still write checks don't you."
What fucking fast food joint accepts a personal check?
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Hahahaha if anyone thinks I'm going to use my phone. Even QR code menus are starting to go out of style.
It's really something that these clowns thought charging an extra $1 so they could pay people was gonna make people stop going and now the dollar menu is like the 5 dollar menu and the experience is like going through the DMV but now it's ok.
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While there, I saw nobody use the kiosk.
I think I know why...
Last time I went to Mcdonald's, I didn't see the kiosks
Maybe that had something to do with it. Do you also struggle to lace your shoes when wearing flip flops?
Other places I've been I've never seen anyone use the kiosk.
Did you try going to places with kiosks?
Howl! That sounds like one of the LadyJ vids on Youtube. She's a woman with one of those commanding butterscotch voices who gives commentary on stuff some idjits say.
Really worth celebrating? (Score:2, Troll)
Staffing levels were nearly 150,000 jobs, or 3%, above pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest Labor Department data.
Three percent over a period of 4 years?
Let's compare that with population growth since early 2020, and let's acknowledge all the "better than fast-food" restaurants that shuttered their doors due to COVID and never came back. But then again, post COVID lockdown, McDonalds (for example) is now believed to be too expensive for an ever-growing segment of the US population.
3% growth over 4 years, that's all?
Re:Really worth celebrating? (Score:5, Interesting)
What are you bitching about? With McDonalds' massive price gouging over the last few years, their revenues and profits have skyrocketed by almost 40% compared to pre-pandemic levels while adding only 3% more staff. That's the definition economic success.
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massive price gouging
That's the definition economic success.
It's also the definition of a company that will see massive drop offs in long term profitability due to short term greed, but Americans always redefine that as "someone else's problem."
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I'm rich and mcdonalds is too expensive for me. They don't deliver on anything now.
It's not fast, not consistent, not cheap.
The quality was never great but I dunno it's gotten to the point where I'd rather air fry some frozen fried crap than get chicken mcnuggets.
There's "jobs" and "Jobs with earning prospects" (Score:2)
Lots of cheap, low paying jobs with no earning prospects.
They're better off mopping toilets.
Re:There's "jobs" and "Jobs with earning prospects (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: There's "jobs" and "Jobs with earning prospect (Score:4, Insightful)
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Getting a job where the most strenuous exercise you get is picking your butt does not command $30/hour.
And this is why $10/hour jobs for plunging toilets go a wanting.
EVERYONE wants the "cool" job in an air conditioned building where you sit in front if a computer all day playing solitaire and get an assistant to help you do TOUGH stuff (like pay attention) and bang them on the desk the way all the "Work in an office" shows telll you how it works.
NOBODY wants to be told "The toilet backed up and there's sh
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Ah yes ArmoredDragon he started with a heavy stick he found when he woke up in the woods, went down to the adventurers guild, and through hard work and dedication he learned calculus from books he found on the body of a dead wizard and eventually saved up enough gold to pay for his CS classes.
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Ah, the myth of the starter job. Countless adults depend on jobs like these to pay their bills and raise families and it has always been like this. There are large numbers of adults working these jobs today, there were when I was a kid, and there were when my dad was a kid (and so on).
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McJobs are for teenagers to earn some extra spending money.
You're such a dipshit boomer sometimes man.
Who you think is working the store at lunch rush on Wednesdays?
Anyhow back in the 90s I worked at mcdonalds for a week because my dad thought it would teach me the value of work. There actually was some career pipeline for lifetime burger flippers that paid pretty good if you were stupid enough to jump through the hoops. That might sound like I'm agreeing that a career in burger flipping is doing it wrong but the distinction is that even if you're a teenager it's
Pulling the plug on these interfaces... (Score:2)
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(In America) the kiosk is slower to use than ordering at the register. Piss poor programming on top of Windows.
The kiosk program oozes the feel of lazy Object Oriented design and linear thinking, ie almost everything in memory gets trimmed upon screen refresh. Then it rebuilds/repopulates the data structures from scratch.
Automation is not a panacea (Score:2)
It's possible to get cash from a teller, or a supermarket, or paying via EFTPoS. When a self-check-out doesn't work, that means waiting until an employee sees and fixes the problem.
The ability of machines to do all the work has been grossly over-estimated: They run-out of paper/coins, some part becomes dirty (scanner) or defective (produce scales), or is simply ignored by the customer (bagging-scales), or fail to boot. Customers, have their own glitches; holding the product wrong, operating the EFT inc
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Every time I go to the supermarket, whether it be Kroger or Costco, or whatever, I usually buy some kind of alcohol. I go maybe twice a month to buy these things. At most of the places, there is like one cashier, and the rest are these self-serve checkouts. If I go through a self-checkout, as soon as I scan my beer I have to screw around and wait for someone to get off their ass and walk up, not even check my ID (I'm an greybeard now), and scan their ID. On those other two times a month I'm not buying alcoh
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while it's illegal to drink the thing going down the highway, the way people dri
Mickey D's idiocy (Score:2)
What they need to fix is the apparent grift someone in the C suite has on their ice cream machines. When a componet of your business is so unreliable that customers need an app to know where they can find a working soft serve machine, it's time to slam the door closed on that cozy little arrangement and man up.
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Get real ice cream instead of waiting for a corp to fix machines.
the taylor ice cream machine is rigged to make (Score:2)
the Taylor ice cream machine is rigged to make Taylor $$ on tech call outs and parts.
Kiosks are for simple things or seldom things (Score:2)
A kiosk can dispense mall shopping advice and discount codes because you won't have a line of people waiting for it. Or a restaurant that has only a small handful of items, and/or no substitutions. When the menu gets complicated, then it's just a hassle for the customer. Having soda only dispensed by a machine for in-restaurant customers makes sense, that's a pretty simple selection process. Having them do all of their own ordering, even in a fast food joint, is irritating to many of them. If they can go so
McDonalds used to use Xenix to run registers (Score:2)
The registers used to be (POS-shaped) dumb terminals, all hooked to one Xenix system in the office.
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Hahahah the one thing I was interested in during my week at mcdonalds.
By that time they'd moved on to SCO.
Grifts of a feather.
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Pretty sure in between MS Xenix and SCO Unix they ran SCO Xenix.
I used to run it myself... on a 286-6 with 1MB RAM and a 40MB disk. It was my UUCP node. SCO had a weird but good UUCP. I knew the head of the Xenix development team (about a double handful of SCO peeps were in the scruz geek scene.)
Self checkout costs them more than shrink (Score:3)
Yeah, there will be more shrink from error and theft, but the big loss on self checkout is people who simply don't buy anything because the self checkout kiosks are a) unreliable, b) complicated, c) annoying, and d) less capable (most do not take cash). That's four strikes on bad customer service.
The places that are weathering the current downturn the best are the ones that have doubled down on live customer service, not those who have tried (often unsuccessfully, as noted in TFA) to cut costs by shitting all over customer service.
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It's the germs that put me off. Those touch screens are filthy and rarely get cleaned. McDonald's is finger food, so the last thing I want is to be touching something hundreds of other people touched, some of them after using the bathroom and not washing properly.
I wish fewer public things had touchscreens. I carry a touchscreen stylus in the car for parking ticket machines and the like, but it doesn't always work. Physical buttons can always be pushed with it. The calibration on them is often way off too,
Customer training? (Score:3)
customers weren't fully trained on using them
Um... You don't get to train your customers.
I've used the kiosks at one fast food place a couple of times. There are a couple of problems, maybe insoluble. The kiosks have to be usable by basically anyone, so they are "dumbed down": click on the pic. Only, the pics all pretty much look the same, and anyway (unlike Japan) the pics look nothing like the food you actually get. So you have to read anyway, but the pics dominate the screen. Anyway, any simplicity is destroyed by the fact that they are trying to upsell. So you have to read carefully to get what you want, reject all the upselling offers, and then double-check your order to be sure it is correct.
For customers who know what they want, the kiosks are a lot slower than ordering from a person. Walk up to the counter, smile, say hello-elephant-menu-medium-with-diet-coke, pay, done in seconds. At the kiosk, this same process takes minutes. And they have to have staff anyway, to help the people who get lost in the kiost menus.
Re:Customer training? (Score:5, Funny)
>> Um... You don't get to train your customers.
Why not ?
Customers do the work, they should get training.
they should also get free health insurance, and 30 days paid vacations a year, and a decent retirement plan.
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There's a retirement plan after you eat enough greaseburgers and fries and giant sodas? Sounds like heaven, I need to get in on this!
Unless it's real heaven, which is an infinite reward that must be avoided at all costs.
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The Creimer early retirement package.
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OK OK but! (Score:2)
The Kiosks Do Not Create Jobs (Score:3)
According to TFS the number of jobs is the being kept the same. Reassigning a worker to different tasks is not creating more jobs. A job is paid labor. The kiosks actually do reduce paid labor (jobs); it is the mobile service business line which is unrelated to the kiosks that require more labor. If the kiosks were not there to save labor hiring would have increased.
They tend to have bad interfaces (Score:2)
There are millions of people who know how to use the standard McDonalds point of sale system. Maybe they should have a button that switches the gui to that design which is faster and better for the millions of people who know how to use it.
No standards, that's for sure (Score:2)
At least part of the problem with those kiosks is lack of standardization and/or stability of design. Just when I start to get muscle memory for self-checkout at one store, I go to another and end up looking like an idiot because my usual store lets me put things on the scale and punch in, but another one freaks out, or it doesn't prompt when I expect it too. I had this happen at Whole Amazon a while ago. Pretty embarrassing to be staring at the thing like a deer in the headlights while my mind wandered,
They are not doing it right (Score:2)
What they need is an assembly line of very stupid kiosks. The stations are
1. Burger
2. French Fries
3. Salad
4. Drinks
5. Incidentals
6. You get your food
7. An automatic wrapper encases you in a slice of cheese, some wax paper, and sticks you in a paper bag before booting you out the door.
The Untrained Excuse. (Score:2)
but they went unused because staff and customers weren't fully trained on using them.
The Touchscreen Generation of online checkout addicts have never been “trained” on how to use a large touchscreen? To order and pay for product with? That’s hilarious.
McDonalds may be able to partner with Taylor and corruptly fuck us all out of ice cream for years, but this is a stretch.
jobs at /. (Score:2)
"I'm loving it" (Score:2)
Voice (Score:2)
Why can't the kiosks use voice recognition and if the customer is incoherent they can patch in someone from Zimbabwe to help?
Extra sauce side-eye (Score:2)
Kiosks suck (Score:3)
It takes 3x as long to order the same thing through their idiot displays and MUCH longer for the order to materialise. And the process is festooned in selling up and antipatterns. I counted 4 attempts to selling up on me I ordered a burger a week ago in an airport branch of BK. Even human servers used to be trained to sell up once only. Oh and special offers are buried in shitty apps which are a clumsy and annoying nuisance on top of the kiosk.
I realise McDonalds & Burger King really don't care if they waste the customer's time like this (fast food is SO yesterday) if they save on employee wages. But at the same time, if customers get pissed off by the wait times / lack of immediacy, or the selling up booby traps, or the impersonal nature, or the moribund menus then no wonder sales are sagging.
Re:change? (Score:5, Informative)
I do, for one. I prefer to pay in cash whenever possible. For a couple reasons.
- I hate the idea of big-corp being able to track everything I buy, all the time. They already try to log everything I touch on the internet, everywhere I go with my car, and (facial-recognition willing) everywhere I walk. They don't need my shopping list also.
- just because I'm doing something that might not be suspicious now, doesn't mean it won't retroactively become suspicious later. An extreme example, and I know it's not quite the same thing, but years back some random dude went to a porn site and posted crappy stuff, and nobody cared. Now it's 15 years later, those posts have just been dug up, and it's going to cost him even a chance at winning the North Carolina governorship. Best to proactively avoid leaving trails in the first place.
- finally, "they" might be able to cancel your credit cards, but they can never stop merchants from accepting your cash.
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I agree with everything you say, and would also add that cash avoids the sneaky surcharges that are often added on to card transactions, even more so for tap and pay.
But those are all "selfish" reasons.Sensible, but ultimately selfish. One UNselfish reason to carry cash is so you can help someone out. If you need to give a guy on the street some money to buy a train ticket, hot drink, bus fare, meal etc, he probably doesn't have a smartphone or a tap&pay pad (and if he does, maybe he doesn't really need
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The tracking is a good point, but the rest of your post is very much in the realm of conspiracy nutcasery.
It's not about being suspicious. It's about being socially acceptable. Crapping about being a Nazi on a porn site was as bad 15 years ago as it is now. Nothing changed. No one is suggesting you use your credit card to pay for your hookers and drugs at a Nazi convention. The overwhelming majority of things (especially food) won't ever be considered suspicious, and ... well I have better things to do with
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You obviously haven't lived through a regime change, where the past of previously upstanding citizens is dredged up and re-eveluated through the lens of the new values.
Unlikely indeed, but the 90s were quite wild in that regard in central Europe. As was 1968.
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That's so shallow, I question, what you've done with your life? This thread started with the question "Who the fuck carries cash?" It's like you spent every day with several wads of cash hidden in your mattress. Everyone without an emergency fund, has a very different experience.
If the card doesn't work, you have to go to a bank: Correction, you have to go to the bank holding your money. Some banks have branches hundreds of kilometres apart: That's a lot of driving, so you better not have car-troubl
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An extreme example, and I know it's not quite the same thing, but years back some random dude went to a porn site and posted crappy stuff, and nobody cared. Now it's 15 years later, those posts have just been dug up, and it's going to cost him even a chance at winning the North Carolina governorship.
This is very, very different from how you describe your hypothetical concern of your actions "becoming suspicious". This particular gubernatorial candidate (Mark Robinson) has described himself as a "black Nazi" and has said that if slavery is reinstituted (as he thinks it should), that he would "certainly buy a few". This stuff was disqualifying even when he was posting it ~10+ years ago. It didn't suddenly "become suspicious later".
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inally, "they" might be able to cancel your credit cards, but they can never stop merchants from accepting your cash.
Never is a very very long time and there are pushes to remove cash already. I seriously doubt your prediction is true.
with cards / bank some transactions are run as an (Score:2)
with cards / bank some transactions are run as an cash advance with lots of fees
Re: (Score:2)
its 2024... who the fuck carries cash?
My Gen Z daughters, in their early to mid 20s.
It's possible, albeit very unlikely, that my paranoid tinfoil hat tecchie brain rubbed off on them ... but then my one daughter wouldn't use TikTok. Yet they, and according to them a lot of their friends, are starting to prefer cash because according to them, they don't trust banks.
I think it's a form of protest, or trying to be the change they want to see. They're concerned about the disappearance of cash, over-reliance on technology and are feeling like the ec
Re: (Score:2)
All poor people here in Brazil, and I mean ALL, have smartphones, bank accounts, and bank apps on their phones that allow paying for anything via QR codes.
And all businesses, literally ALL businesses, including informal street vendors who run from police when they see a police car turning the corner, have in turn POS devices or checkout smartphones that create such QR codes. This includes subway and train stations, and even, increasingly, buses.
Poor people are the most enthusiastic users of this technology.
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All poor people here in Brazil, and I mean ALL, have smartphones, bank accounts, and bank apps on their phones that allow paying for anything via QR codes.
Shouting your absoulutism authority doesn't make it so. If anything, it makes your argument weaker because it means it's far easier to refute. (In your case, we only need to find one poor person in Brazil without all four requirements.) And no, I'm not going to bother giving you a link. You didn't give one yourself.
Way, way more than the middle and upper classes, who still mostly prefer using cards -- with biometric authentication, an old technology by now. And no, absolutely no one writes checks. That was old 20 years ago, and is positively pre-historic by now.
Can't be a bigot without getting some Ageism in there too huh?
Because NFC requires complex configuration
What? It's literally just tap when done right. Everything else is setup by the admins which no user should ever see. By comparison
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we only need to find one poor
Literacy these days... ~ sigh ~
Here, let me help you: Hyperbole [wikipedia.org]. You're welcome.
Re: (Score:2)
Touch screen, eat. Not everyone washes their hands for supper you know. Finger licking bad..
I hadn't thought of that, good point.
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Oh they can afford staff. As in they can pay them and make a profit. They just can't do that and show enough YoY growth to justify the kind of Christmas bonus that buys a yacht with a hooker dispenser