End of a trade: burger flipper

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by vash

that thing will be a beotch to wipe down every night.

there is a robot to clean the robot.

[billybek]

Flipping burgers isn't a trade, it is a job.

[asphaltgambler]

Well - most fast food restaurants don't even 'cook' their burgers on a grill anymore. It's done by steam, Golden Arches for example been doin it that way for some time - 1 reason why they've lost customers. Burgers don't taste the same.

[asphaltgambler]

Also at 16 - I worked the grill flipping burgers for Micky D's..........tough gig

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by WolfeMacleod

Eventually, it'll get blamed on the Mexicans

Or more accurately, blame the people who decided it would be a good idea to force the free market to over-pay for unskilled labor by raising the minimum wage to silly levels. Thanks to them for pricing the workers out of a job.

If something is too expensive, the free market will find a more effective alternative.

[sammyg2]

Thanks To 'Fight For $15' Minimum Wage, McDonald's Unveils Job-Replacing Self-Service Kiosks Nationwide

As the labor union-backed Fight for $15 begins yet another nationwide strike on November 29, I have a simple message for the protest organizers and the reporters covering them: I told you so.

It brings me no joy to write these words. The push for a $15 starter wage has negatively impacted the career prospects of employees who were just getting started in the workforce while extinguishing the businesses that employed them. I wish it were not so. But it’s important to document these consequences, lest policymakers elsewhere decide that the $15 movement is worth embracing.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/11/29/thanks-to-fight-for-15-minimum-wage-mcdonalds-unveils-job-replacing-self-service-kiosks-nationwide/#268128d74fbc

[RSBob]

More and more American jobs of course will fall to robotics. The auto industry as we all know is a biggie, but so are coal mining machines (which I helped streamline their manufacturing) and on and on. It’s the corporations ever striving to increase profitability to enrich their share holders while the little guy gets screwed. It will only get worse and more and more people will become unemployed. As the most powerful man on earth would say, sad, but not really in this case.

[john70t]

I suspect the $15 is not the primary reason.
But only the tip of the iceberg.

In any properly staffed and busy restaurant, raking in hundreds of dollars per hour, that hourly-wage difference equates to about a minute or two actual loss.
Actually the higher wages might even be a gain when using some economic models.

Happy employees pull in many more happy customers.
Much like dance clubs that pay wild girls or casinos that comp or start-ups faking web attention. (i.e. McDs "I's be lovin' it.")

I think the protest is human rather that factual:
Americans are prone to overdo everything and blow anything out of proportion.
Every single thing has to be documented using triple carbon copy paper.
A bad look is a wrong look. Talk to my lawyer.
"Get the hell out you're fired" has a deeper subjective and reflexive and sex/race/other biased explanation rather than you taking a crap in the lobby.

Corporations feel threatened?
A human employee apparently is more a liability and expense than a machine?
Or will most humans willingly choose Solylent Green even after it's explained to them.