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?)

linky

    • Andrzej3K [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      3 days ago

      There’s so much more to the job than carrying things and putting them on tables though. What if you have questions about the food? What if you want them to give your steak another touch on the grill? The system you’re describing is fast food, which is fundamentally something else (while it certainly has its place).

      • What if you have questions about the food?

        Read the menu? Or ask the person taking your order at the counter?

        What if you want them to give your steak another touch on the grill?

        Tell that to the order taker?

        Sorry but I work retail and I find it so inherently degrading I don’t think it should exist at all. It’s breed a class of completely impatient, helpless people who refuse to do any basic problem solving and so torment minimum wage servants cuz they can’t get their treats. Learn to read a fucking menu!

        • Leegh [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          2 days ago

          I’ve worked multiple jobs in the service sector and I can absolutely tell you that waiters are still needed. The circumstances you are describing are essentially fast food/ small business pop and mum shops as Andrzej3K described.

          However, it doesn’t account for very specialized service jobs that exist in places like fine dining, luxury hotels, airlines, and other specific workplaces.

          As someone who has worked in those fields you don’t have any counters, and menus often don’t tell you everything (for example: if the food contains something a guest is allergic to). I don’t know what country you’re from but in my country, we have something called RSA standards (Responsible Service of Alcohol) that is a legal requirement and must be enforced in the service sector, and last time I checked robots can’t actively assess whether someone is too intoxicated to buy more drinks, you need human servers for that.

          Finally, you need customer-service workers to organize and set-up the spaces that guests will be in, and cooks and bartenders can’t do that because they’ll always be back-of-house doing their own prep. Hell even in cheap dining places, you still need people to set-up the tables because robots aren’t good enough for that.

          I do however, agree that waitstaff have created a breed of guests who are incredibly entitled, self-centred, and incapable of doing work themselves, but the vast majority of them were already like that because of their class position (you think these capitalists don’t treat their subordinates in their own workplaces the same?). That doesn’t mean waiters shouldn’t exist at all. Both can be true.

        • Andrzej3K [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          3 days ago

          If we’re automating the waiter out of existence, how on earth do we still have an ‘order taker’? Surely you can just order on the app, or better yet reheat your own slop at home.

          There isn’t a job that can’t/won’t be made degrading by wage slavery. I mentioned this elsewhere, but teachers are treated like shit in most places, especially outside of the public sector. It doesn’t make the work itself inherently degrading.

          The thing about jobs is that they stand between us and our work. They keep us from being useful to each other until we convince ourselves that in an ideal world we’d all be watching TV and writing fan fiction. But we need work imho — just not as defined by capitalism

          • MizuTama [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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            3 days ago

            They keep us from being useful to each other until we convince ourselves that in an ideal world we’d all be watching TV and writing fan fiction.

            Writing fan fiction is work and I have the patreon subscriptions to prove it!

          • We’ll still have cooks, food prep, bartenders, baristas.

            I’m just saying I don’t see the point in having someone ferry all your food from the kitchen to your table and tell you the soup of the day. I think it just exists to make people feel like waited on royals, or to create jobs small business kulaks don’t have to actually pay proper wages for.

          • redchert@lemmygrad.ml
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            3 days ago

            writing fan fiction

            Writers are workers though, similar to artist they are just artisanal occupied. Its called fan fiction and is deemed by capitalistic hegemony as lesser due to copyright and “non-profit” motive behind those works.

            • Andrzej3K [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              3 days ago

              I’m not denying that. But compare serving someone a meal to writing a story no-one will ever read. One of these acts is profoundly alienating. People should have the freedom to write just for themselves tbc, but I wouldn’t consider that ‘work’ in the same way.

              And I write btw lol