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McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a [W:391]

Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Great. They always screw up my order. I don't even think its that complicated. Mchicken w/ pickles, quarter pounder onions and no mayo.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Great. They always screw up my order. I don't even think its that complicated. Mchicken w/ pickles, quarter pounder onions and no mayo.

I don't even order anything special, they can't manage to put the stuff I do order in the bag half the time. If getting rid of idiots and putting in machines will increase accuracy, I'm all for it.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Aren't you the one who keeps saying there's nothing more to say, yet keeps responding?

OK, I lied. You can file a complaint with the moderators if you like. :peace
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

No, that would be left-wing utopia. Right wing utopia would be not having the government involved at all and people making what they were actually worth.
Right wing utopia would be businesses paying a buck an hour, not having the Government subsidizing a nickel to the employee but business owners themselves collecting those Government dollars.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Right, it will tip the scales and move up the automation by a small amount. There is already a huge incentive to automate. Machines are easier than low skill, 200-300% turnover labor, even if the cost was neutral. Maybe I'm wrong, but we're both guessing here, and I don't think the choice is "decent wage or NO wage" as you imply. It's a good way to keep wages low until the automation, which is inevitable, happens IMO. But I'm a cynic, what can I say.

No, sorry, you are kidding yourself is you think doubling the cost of labor will only move it up "a small amount". It removes all incentive to keep flesh and blood employees. It only changes"a small amount" is there was only a small amount of incentive to keep a human staff. If that were the case then there is no real good argument in favor of keeping human staff.


Well, provide your own, cherry picked ones then.

Every federal plan created in the lat 40 years with the goal of reducing poverty. We have higher poverty now than we did in the 1970s.

Yeah, there are all those good jobs that aren't filled, which is why the unemployment rate is so high, and so many people accept jobs at minimum wage, because there are all these robot making jobs. Give me a break. We've had a few plants open up in Tennessee in the last few years. There are thousands of applications for what are just decent production jobs. People are desperate for decent work.

And you want to give them more minimum wage jobs....



I forget how you debate. You said, " If there is a job for Government it is to promote the modernization of the work force." That's clear enough - promote modernization and nothing else. Except now you say provide social services, I guess, but who the hell knows. I think I'll not go down a rathole on this topic, having to parse every statement for the weasel words.

No, JasperL, you just seem incapable of avoiding your own biased inference to my position on a subject I hadn't discussed. I have still not stated my position on Federal welfare programs, only on what we owe an unskilled worker with regard to employment, the topic we are discussing.

You were bemoaning the plight of the poor unskilled worker who might lose their job to automation, I asked what you think we owe that person... you then launch into a idiotic tangent on welfare and try to state my position on it. Go fly a kite.

OK, so if they replace 100,000 cashiers, how many U.S. jobs emerge to build and maintain the kiosks or whatever? You're making a statement like you've run the numbers. What do they show?

Nope. I am making statements that are patently obvious. An increase in demand for automated tellers will drive a jobs growth in people who work on the building, marketing and delivery of automated teller systems. You, once again, inferred that my argument was that there would be full replacement, and argument I never made. I am just making the point that you are anti-progress in your protectionism, fearful of letting go of unskilled labor because you don't have sufficient vision of the way forward. In other words, you're defending stagnation.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

They are already plenty fast. I went through a McD's drive through tonight and I had the food very fast.

What McD's needs - imo - is cheaper products. That is their edge.

So, every way that they can cut costs without hurting their service/product should be explored.


And as for personalized service? Who goes to McDonald's for the service (I am speaking in general her - not specifically towards you)? Virtually no one. They go for cheap, fast, passable food that tastes reasonably good. If their Big Mac is 25 cents cheaper because it is served by a robot - I guarantee you most people would take it over two bits more for the same burger from a human (assuming it is served as fast and tastes the same either way).

My question is how many hours pay will it take to pay for one robot, or machine to take that persons place?

This is like somebody paying an extra $10,000 for a hybrid car over a gas model to get better gas milage. That $10,000 can buy a lot of gasoline
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Buulsheet. If I had a dollar for everytime I've been told to park and they will bring my order. Sounds like you went during nonpeak time. Go when it's busy and it's a different story.

Don't give McD special orders through the drive through. They can't handle it.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Being searched and scanned is plenty of trouble that I don't want to deal with. I haven't flown since before 9/11 and until the TSA stops violating peoples rights that isn't going to change. Consider it a strike on unjust treatment of citizens. Anyway, the drive was actually kind of enjoyable.

I am sure you made a few people win their license plate game.

You just don't see too many Delaware plate out west.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Please. First off there will ways be a way to accept cash at automated counters. Secondly, that's how things are going. Technology replaces replaceable jobs in a sophisticated society.

There will always have to ba a way to get the order done without the technology.

If somebody doesn't have the item or left it in the car or for whatever reason, there will have to be a way.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Yeah well,once in a while a burger isn't going to kill you. I think it's funny that so many people get all high and mighty about businesses they have moral issues with (like fast food places, Walmart, etc.) and yet these places still get huge market share. Deer season just started here and the wild hogs will be moving soon. We have our preferred local food, but McDonalds is not going out of business any time soon.

Won't kill me but it goes through me like grass through a goose. If I go to town and need to eat on the run I'll go to Subway or Quizno's but those grease-burgers and fries, well, they may not feed me but they sure clean out my system. One a year, just for a reminder...
Archery season opened here on the first, rifles on the 10th. We're so over-run with deer you can take three, two does. No wild hogs, though.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

I was shocked when here in Mexico the shakes were removed from McDonlad's menu.

McDonald's started with a burger, fires and a shake, now it is not available.

Now I want one every time I go, but I can't have it.

They still serve the ice cream and the machine is there, but it is not connected to anything.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

No, sorry, you are kidding yourself is you think doubling the cost of labor will only move it up "a small amount". It removes all incentive to keep flesh and blood employees. It only changes"a small amount" is there was only a small amount of incentive to keep a human staff. If that were the case then there is no real good argument in favor of keeping human staff.

First of all, I don't support a doubling of the minimum wage, but some do, and it would be appropriate in some very high cost locales, but not in my region. $15 an hour is higher than the median wage in many Tennessee counties. And whether I support it or not, it's not going to happen. Maybe to $10, which is what it was roughly 50 years ago.

But we're both guessing on the impact. You like your guess, I like mine.

Every federal plan created in the lat 40 years with the goal of reducing poverty. We have higher poverty now than we did in the 1970s.

OK, and poverty would have been lower without the anti-poverty programs? SS should go away? How about Medicare? Or just welfare and food stamps? Medicaid?

And you want to give them more minimum wage jobs....

Of course that is what I said. Can you quote me? Thanks...

No, JasperL, you just seem incapable of avoiding your own biased inference to my position on a subject I hadn't discussed. I have still not stated my position on Federal welfare programs, only on what we owe an unskilled worker with regard to employment, the topic we are discussing.

OK, like I said, you have to read your posts for the weasel words.

You were bemoaning the plight of the poor unskilled worker who might lose their job to automation, I asked what you think we owe that person... you then launch into a idiotic tangent on welfare and try to state my position on it. Go fly a kite.

Welfare and social services are an "idiotic tangent" in a discussion of poor unskilled workers? And I don't know which thread you're following, but the "idiotic tangent" of social services etc. has been a key part of this discussion.

Nope. I am making statements that are patently obvious. An increase in demand for automated tellers will drive a jobs growth in people who work on the building, marketing and delivery of automated teller systems. You, once again, inferred that my argument was that there would be full replacement, and argument I never made. I am just making the point that you are anti-progress in your protectionism, fearful of letting go of unskilled labor because you don't have sufficient vision of the way forward. In other words, you're defending stagnation.

I didn't infer anything. The point is if McD lays off 100,000 and 500 new robot manufacturing and distribution jobs emerge, that's quite a different story than if 40,000 robot making jobs emerge. I was just trying to get some idea of what kind of replacement levels you anticipated.

And the reason why my "vision of the way forward" is impaired is we have been hearing the conservatives cheer progress as you call it, free trade, modernization, etc. and the results are in and wages at the bottom are declining, flat in the middle for decades, we've offshored production jobs so in this reality those jobs making robots will be in China where workers make $2 an hour and there are no pesky environmental rules, few new jobs are created here, and worker productivity is up with all the automation, but wages for everyone but the very top are stagnant or declining. So the empty rhetoric doesn't convince me anymore - facts aren't consistent with it.

And I'm not fearful of letting go of unskilled labor so much as recognizing it will happen. And the "idiotic tangent" was what to do when that happens? Maybe you support expanding EITC, and support Medicaid expansion and ACA subsidies, and other ways to subsidize the wages at the bottom. Or maybe you agree with the other person who says "Screw em." I don't know, you won't say - you're considering the other side of the coin as an idiotic tangent.
 

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Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

My question is how many hours pay will it take to pay for one robot, or machine to take that persons place?

This is like somebody paying an extra $10,000 for a hybrid car over a gas model to get better gas milage. That $10,000 can buy a lot of gasoline

The development of the machine would be quite expensive, but it will save on employee hours, training, managing, appearance, uniforms. It works 24 hours a day. Doesn't take breaks and rarely calls in sick (bugs, hardware, whatever). And once the machine is made, it would be very economical to manufacture them and get them to the stores.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

ordering burgers/food from a machine
that is supposed to be significant?
i am the last luddite, and even i order pizza online
no human interaction until i show up and pay (cash not debit; luddite, remember!)
and received the hand crafted, hand delivered pie in a box

c'mon people. business is always looking for ways to make their processes cheaper and better. at least the successful ones
machines don't call in sick, come in late, have interpersonal drama issues on the job site, need breaks or vacations or sleep. why would you not use them instead of human labor if you could do so at a lower cost without reducing the quality of the goods/services being sold
low skill requirements are often the easiest to convert to machine manipulated tasks. which is why we need to emphasize programs to train/re-train our nation's work force, starting with those having modest skills
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

There will always have to ba a way to get the order done without the technology.

If somebody doesn't have the item or left it in the car or for whatever reason, there will have to be a way.

There would be humans there, though automation of the counters is likely just going to happen. Many places have fully automated counters and it works just fine.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Then why is there only 6 or so self checkouts and 30+ registers? It only appeals to a certain type of customer and most still prefer the same old customer service. If self checkouts were really so great you would only have 1 or 2 registers but obviously that is not the case.

I've read that this is a way of weaning customers off of personal checkers. I think, from what I read, that it's working. Maybe the chains have been told this is the right number now, per their customer base, by marketing research firms?

It's changing every year so I see it as silly to make the claim you did like it's set in stone. It's like people that said the car would never replace horse-drawn carriages. New technology takes time to be widely adopted.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

... Have you been to a McDonald's as of late? There are usually 4-5 people working them even at peak hours. 1 on counter, 2-3 cooks, 1-2 people cleaning up the place. Just what exactly would McDondald's gain by firing the skinny girl at the front who earns 8.50 and then keeping on the rest of the staff at $15? Okay, so it's making a much needed improvement that seems reasonable and may be economically based. however to use this as an argument for why minimum wage is bad is kind of ridiculous. It's the 21st century, there isn't a single business out there who isn't looking for ways to one up the competition by incomporating tablets, cellphones and online ordering. This was bound to happen whether or not there was a minimum wage debate, just ask miners, autoworkers and the US steel industry. The non-existence of a minimum wage debate wouldn't have meant much to those who got laidoff by the inevitable introduction of computer software that doesn't need sleep or lunch breaks.

Minimum wage isn't necessarily bad.

Doubling it overnight is bad. Raising it to a point higher than ~45% of the average wage is bad.

Let's look at some numbers. 24 hour x $7.5/hr x 7 days x 52 weeks = $65,520. So, $65k/yr just to run a register. This doesn't count payroll taxes, SS/Med, FICA, vacation days, sick days, potential overtime, etc. Three vanilla shifts per day, where nothing ever goes wrong, costs $65k/yr JUST for payroll. No additional taxes for the restaurant. Just payroll.

At $15/hr, the payroll alone to run a register around the clock becomes $131,040. That is just the payroll, no employer contributed payroll taxes, SS/Med, etc.

How much does a tablet cost?
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

The US had something like this in the 1930's.... no person taking your order or handling money.... it was called an automat.

Those existed well into the 60s too.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

BTW, the kiosks at our cafeterias are pretty fancy and offer alot of bells and whistles. (But are not complex to use). They require building, setting up and installing, software and updating, maintenance, and some on-site oversight.

This is a whole 'nuther industry...that can provide more jobs for people, albeit ones with the motivation to get more education and develop more skills than required for flipping burgers. But certainly a foundation for that is provided in free public schooling, to be taken advantage of by all.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

First of all, I don't support a doubling of the minimum wage, but some do, and it would be appropriate in some very high cost locales, but not in my region. $15 an hour is higher than the median wage in many Tennessee counties. And whether I support it or not, it's not going to happen. Maybe to $10, which is what it was roughly 50 years ago.

But we're both guessing on the impact. You like your guess, I like mine.

Your guess avoids logic and real world developments of the last 50 years. I don't "like" mine, it's just what is going to happen.


OK, and poverty would have been lower without the anti-poverty programs? SS should go away? How about Medicare? Or just welfare and food stamps? Medicaid?

It appears the answer is yes in some cases. They don't seem to be helping. That isn't saying that there aren't the possibility of better programs that the money would be better spent on, however, just that the programs of the last 40 years have been abysmally inept.

Mandatory spending between 1993 and 2013 outpaced inflation by more than a factor of three (Inflation was 61%, Mandatory spending rose 200%), and poverty rates didn't change. Surely you don't see this as a success?

Of course that is what I said. Can you quote me? Thanks...

That is the effect of what you advocate. Rather than make more skilled jobs you'd rather protect unskilled jobs.

OK, like I said, you have to read your posts for the weasel words.

Which is, ironically, your weasel-words way of saying you defend your choice to argue using straw men.

Welfare and social services are an "idiotic tangent" in a discussion of poor unskilled workers? And I don't know which thread you're following, but the "idiotic tangent" of social services etc. has been a key part of this discussion.

Yes they are, because when we are discussing JOBS you try to change the subject to a subject that is pretty much the OPPOSITE of jobs.

Me: "Unskilled workers jobs are threatened by innovation, Does the government owe them anything?"

You: "BLAAARG!! YOU WANT KILL WELFARE AND CHILDREN!!!"



I didn't infer anything. The point is if McD lays off 100,000 and 500 new robot manufacturing and distribution jobs emerge, that's quite a different story than if 40,000 robot making jobs emerge. I was just trying to get some idea of what kind of replacement levels you anticipated.

Yes, you intentionally inferred a comment about welfare from a comment I said that had nothing to do with welfare. It isn't a matter of "parsing for weasel words", it's a matter of you learning how to read in general without dumping a truck load of your own garbage on what the other person wrote.

And the reason why my "vision of the way forward" is impaired is we have been hearing the conservatives cheer progress as you call it, free trade, modernization, etc. and the results are in and wages at the bottom are declining, flat in the middle for decades, we've offshored production jobs so in this reality those jobs making robots will be in China where workers make $2 an hour and there are no pesky environmental rules, few new jobs are created here, and worker productivity is up with all the automation, but wages for everyone but the very top are stagnant or declining. So the empty rhetoric doesn't convince me anymore - facts aren't consistent with it.

When have we actually had a situation that matches this free trade and modernization? Jobs are going off shore because it is cheaper, companies are leaving because taxes are lower. You and every other nanny-state promoter ignore the simple fact that it is DEMOCRAT policies that are driving jobs over seas and driving companies to countries with lower taxes.

You also ignore the reason why so many jobs ended up going to China, and the US lost it's edge over Japan in the automotive and technology markets: US Protectionism created s**ty products in the 70s and 80s.

And the manufacturing jobs lost over seas were replaced with a booming services market in IT and contruction. Your way of processing information seems to rely heavily on zero sum logic... sprinkled with a healthy dose of the bigotry of low expectations for low income workers.

And I'm not fearful of letting go of unskilled labor so much as recognizing it will happen. And the "idiotic tangent" was what to do when that happens? Maybe you support expanding EITC, and support Medicaid expansion and ACA subsidies, and other ways to subsidize the wages at the bottom. Or maybe you agree with the other person who says "Screw em." I don't know, you won't say - you're considering the other side of the coin as an idiotic tangent.

I'm considering the other side of the coin as a tangent, and in fact, you are engaging in begging the question in your approach as well as assuming you know my position well enough to argue against it when I haven't said anything.

Also, I am going to rescue your abandoned graphic to make my point:

poverty_age.png

Note that the only decline in the poverty rate in that 40 year span has been in the retirement population, poverty in working age families has increased, and in the end it is a wash with no net change in the national poverty rate.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

The development of the machine would be quite expensive, but it will save on employee hours, training, managing, appearance, uniforms. It works 24 hours a day. Doesn't take breaks and rarely calls in sick (bugs, hardware, whatever). And once the machine is made, it would be very economical to manufacture them and get them to the stores.

They are already developed. That investment has been made. And it brings many jobs with it.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Also, I am going to rescue your abandoned graphic to make my point:

View attachment 67173073

Note that the only decline in the poverty rate in that 40 year span has been in the retirement population, poverty in working age families has increased, and in the end it is a wash with no net change in the national poverty rate.

are you looking at the same graph I am?

It shows senior poverty dropping by more than 2/3 and child poverty dropping approx 20%

It also shows child poverty increasing the most when Reagan and bush* were President
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

They are already developed. That investment has been made. And it brings many jobs with it.

I am not arguing with that. I was responding to the other person's point about development and what the cost vs savings would be. Not sure how many of the jobs created would be entry level jobs, but I honestly haven't thought about that.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

I am not arguing with that. I was responding to the other person's point about development and what the cost vs savings would be. Not sure how many of the jobs created would be entry level jobs, but I honestly haven't thought about that.

Look at it this way: there will still be people in the back preparing the food, cleaning, etc. They can move up into a maintenance type role like they can move into manager. And then perhaps pursue more in the technology skills.
 
Re: McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a mach

Soooooo....if McDonald's can save money, lower food prices and increase sales by replacing humans with robots/automation; you seriously think they won't do it?

And you honestly think the amount they are forced by the government to pay their workers has 'nothing to do with' automation?

Obviously you have no clue how a business actually works...noted.


Good day.

Soooo.... why are they just implementing this when they could have done it already? Why haven't they implemented this in other countries that have far higher minimum wages than the US?

Seems you don't really know what you are talking about... noted.

Good day.
 
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