when you are served by human, it just brings certain je ne sais quoi.
i’m baffled both by the angle of attack and choice of an image (is this retweet of musk?)
when you are served by human, it just brings certain je ne sais quoi.
i’m baffled both by the angle of attack and choice of an image (is this retweet of musk?)
Counterpoint: nobody actually wants to wait tables. People do it because they need money.
Automation would be great if we didn’t all need money for survival.
Jobs aren’t the problem. Money is.
In a perfect world, we’d all be happy that robots are doing our miserable work, like waiting tables.
If it weren’t for the need for money, automate away all these stupid fucking jobs. We can all find better uses for our time.
But, without a job, no money. That’s the rub.
Alas, I don’t know what the actual practical solution is. Or if a “Star Trek Socialist Utopia” moneyless future is actually possible at all.
It absolutely is. We could have something not too dissimilar from it right now, there is literally enough of everything people need to fill that need and then some. There’s also plenty enough of even large swathes of “luxury goods” for everyone too. But the greedy hoarders that rule us all won’t allow such a world because then they couldn’t be greedy hoarders or get to rule us all.
I’m with you on all the rest of what you said, though. It is more ideal to eliminate the need for people to have to do the kind of labor they don’t want to do. But I also still think there will always be people who enjoy certain types of labor that most of us would rather not do, like waiting tables. And in a world where mostly only robots did that, what a nice perk for someone who is sitting at a table to get waited on by a real person who greets them and is genuinely interested in helping them out. There’s no reason there isn’t room to make that happen too.
Nobody wants to wait tables under capitalism. Imho in the absence of wage slavery there would still be people who find fulfillment in that line of work - performed on their own terms.
And if we’re taking Star Trek, Sisko’s dad literally runs a restaurant. He serves people food because he wants to!
Fair point, but I’m still highly skeptical of the idea that anyone would actually choose to wait tables—in lieu of any other possible activity—if there was zero financial need to do so.
i can envision a future where you comes out to bring someone their food and talk for a little, sort of like how they do it in europe. obviously bringing some asshole their slop and then fucking off probably doesn’t appeal to too many people.
Why would anyone do anything ever if they could just stay home and goon
The number of retirees who get BS jobs just to kill time suggests people like having some productive way of occupying their time. It’s just if we had near unlimited choice in what that productive time killer was I don’t think many people would op for “bring food to whiny assholes”.
But the power dynamic would be different, wouldn’t it. The assholes are only whiny because they have you over a barrel. What if the only leverage anyone had was whether bodily fluids make it into the dishes or not
I mean if we broaden the scope to include stuff like bartending etc I can see it but just moving plates, bowls, and cups to and from tables? I mean this is probably a really small niche for it. But it feels like the equivalent of arguing for queues because some people have fun interactions in them.
A restaurant near me has robots to ‘move plates’. They still have human waiters though, because there’s more to the job than just carrying things!
Yeah, I’ve been to Japan and the same thing is there, you vastly reduce the amount people doing it and they’d serve a similar role to a bartender doing questions, recommendations, etc. at least at the restaurants near me at least 70% of the staff are just trying to hustle things back and forth.
I don’t think most people consider the new role “waiting tables” even if that is theoretically the role’s core function. Most of what I’ve seen is because they’re considering primarily those that aren’t primary waiting, and primarily operating as human item movers.
Without the item moving component, most consider it functionally a different role, at least in my experience, where it wouldn’t be described as waiting tables.
Ok maybe I should have been clearer with what I meant by ‘waiting tables’ lol
I would note though that the robot depicted in the op is not optimized for carrying plates. It’s built to look human, presumably to replace the human part of the job
Well yeah, but that’s because musk is trying to have a robot that serves every function a human can and Bernie is raging against it with whatever he can, if he was really about it, he’d rage against the little screen robots with the emoticon faces that have trays on top too.
I mean waiter and table-busser are two distinct jobs at most restaurants. There’s overlap in what they do, but still, there is a lot more to being a waiter than moving stuff around. There’s more to it for table-bussers too, but just “moving stuff” is closer to their job description than it is for waiters.
Hmm, most people I know haven’t really made a distinction when they’ve worked them, though I have heard the term before. (Same one as bus boy no?) And that seems to be what the pick above is depicting.
Maybe it’s a regional thing, but I don’t think so. I’ve known a number of people who worked in restaurants, and the waiters and bussers were always separate jobs, very clearly different in their roles. A lot of times someone who was a bussers for a while first would end up becoming a waiter.
Yes, “bus boy” is another term for it, phased out for obvious reasons but I think even back in the good old chuddy prewoke days, they were called bussers too.
But no, the OP image is definitely a waiter since she’s taking an order, a busser would not do that. The waiter takes the order and brings the food (among other things) but a busser cleans the tables afterwards and brings all the used dishes to dishwashers. They set up the place and like has been said, move stuff that needs moving and clean up things that need to be cleaned up. The busser usually has no contact with the patrons/customers. They will more often be seen pushing carts with dishes, both clean and dirty, but the waiters do not deal with that kind of thing.
It also matters what kind of establishment it is. If it’s a little cafe, you’re more likely to have the waiter doing the table cleanup, but I would guess that’s only because there isn’t enough volume to need a busser. The OP pic is of a kind of place that doesn’t exist much anymore unless its as a kind of nostalgia gimmick. It’s a fast food place where a person brings the food out to your car instead of going through a drivethrough.
There is like a chinese restaurant close to my home that has basically replaced all waiters with robots. Most people found it endearing but strange.