What a great piece. Glad to see it on front page of HN.
I worked for years in retail, in camera shops, and I understand the episodic hilarity and mundane heartbreak of a career in service. But it was washing dishes in a restaurant, my first ever job, that made me aware of the time-pressure intensity of food service, and that it's a lower-risk version of the old space/air travel aphorism: 'Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror'.
You work a whole shift, but only a slim segment of it matters, when work and concentration become hyper-compressed. Dishes break, people break, and there are no breaks - it continues relentlessly like a forced march, without reflection, until the blessed first minutes where you sense that it's beginning to abate.
If you're of a reflective mood, you think to yourself not only that the frantic and merciless nature of the job will never change (even if the restaurant closes, the same experience is happening in an endless continuum all over the city), but that it has probably been like this for as long as there has been civilization - a millennial succession of workers (slaves, the earlier back you go), chopping vegetables and scraping plates (copper plates, if you go back far enough), back to dining establishments and the kitchens of the influential in Roman times, Egyptian times.
It's a strange thing, but participating in these activities that are most visceral and least threatened by automation, they feel like a kind of time travel, or like being in one of the less objectionable circles in hell.
Cost: Wages for food service workers are extremely low. Automation is extremely expensive.
Capability: Industrial machinery struggles to meet many of the requirements of a professional kitchen. Plating alone requires the ability to handle and place aesthetically, both solids of different consistencies and liquids. Avoiding cross-contamination is another concern. Setting aside a set of pans and chopping boards is very different to installing another assembly line.
Flexibility: Typically, automation pays off when you're making lots of the same thing. Most restaurants will change dishes out relatively frequently and don't have anywhere near the volume of an assembly line. Most kitchens will also try to accommodate requests for the modification of dishes and in some cases for things that aren't on the menu at all.
Resiliency: An automated assembly line is much more complicated than an oven or fryer and much more prone to failure. If a frozen burger can jam up the machine you end up paying someone to watch for that happening, plus a much more expensive maintenance worker when you could've just paid the first guy to chuck the burgers on a grill.
Fast food places are likely to get further than most with automation. Although, I'm sceptical of how the economics work out.
Flipping this on it's head: fully automatic coffee machines have existed for decades, as have conveyor belt ovens. Why hasn't Starbucks replaced its cashiers and baristas "easily" in that time?
The answer is likely to be a combination of the financials not making sense, along with a reduction in quality, and the type of service that people go to Starbucks for.
Starbucks workers are human and very rarely are consistent with making drinks/proportions. I would almost consider paying their outrageous $6-$10 per drink prices if I knew there wasn't a 60% chance a new, untrained employee is just "winging it" on making a 3-4 ingredient drink (my girlfriend likes a frozen (blended) frappuccino with caramel drizzle lining the cup, no whipped cream topping, and almond milk)
They get this "wrong" consistency wise/modification wise 70% of the time, multiple stores.
I worked for years in retail, in camera shops, and I understand the episodic hilarity and mundane heartbreak of a career in service. But it was washing dishes in a restaurant, my first ever job, that made me aware of the time-pressure intensity of food service, and that it's a lower-risk version of the old space/air travel aphorism: 'Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror'.
You work a whole shift, but only a slim segment of it matters, when work and concentration become hyper-compressed. Dishes break, people break, and there are no breaks - it continues relentlessly like a forced march, without reflection, until the blessed first minutes where you sense that it's beginning to abate.
If you're of a reflective mood, you think to yourself not only that the frantic and merciless nature of the job will never change (even if the restaurant closes, the same experience is happening in an endless continuum all over the city), but that it has probably been like this for as long as there has been civilization - a millennial succession of workers (slaves, the earlier back you go), chopping vegetables and scraping plates (copper plates, if you go back far enough), back to dining establishments and the kitchens of the influential in Roman times, Egyptian times.
It's a strange thing, but participating in these activities that are most visceral and least threatened by automation, they feel like a kind of time travel, or like being in one of the less objectionable circles in hell.
We've always been at lunch with Oceania!