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?)
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.
Ah I knew the nostalgia reference but didn’t realize at those locales they’re separate roles. It’s possible the places my friends have worked at are just trashy 🤷🏾♂️. But most places I’ve been to I’ve definitely seen my waiter cleaning the tables and stuff, even if they have a lot of staff. I’d say decent odds I do spot bussers as some just disappear into the back, but I definitely see wait staff scrambling around cleaning too and doing all those things between orders.
But I also don’t do much eating out that isn’t trashy chains, and just about every diner I’ve been to has more of a skeleton crew than some haunted ghost ships so I definitely can see that influencing my perception.