Thursday, September 26th, 2024

Time	Event
3:30a	McDonald's Touchscreen Kiosks, Feared As Job Killers, Created More Jobs Instead An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Some McDonald's franchisees -- which own and operate 95% of McDonald's in the United States -- are now rolling out kiosks that can take cash and accept change. But even in these locations, McDonald's is reassigning cashiers to other roles, including new "guest experience lead" jobs that help customers use the kiosks and assist with any issues. "In theory, kiosks should help save on labor, but in reality, restaurants have added complexity due to mobile ordering and delivery, and the labor saved from kiosks is often reallocated for these efforts," said RJ Hottovy, an analyst who covers the restaurant and retail industries at data analytics firm Placer.ai. Kiosks "have created a restaurant within a restaurant." And in some cases, kiosks have even been a flop. Bowling ally chain Bowlero added kiosks in lanes for customers to order food and drinks, but they went unused because staff and customers weren't fully trained on using them. "The unintended consequences have surprised a lot of people," Hottovy said. Even some of the benefits of kiosks touted by chains -- they upsell customers by suggesting menu items and speed up orders -- don't always play out. A recent study from Temple University researchers found that, when a line forms behind customers using kiosks, they experience more stress when placing their orders and purchase less food. And some customers take longer to order tapping around on kiosks and paying than they do telling a cashier they'd like to order a burger and fries. Not to mention the kiosks can malfunction or break down. "If kiosks really improved speed of service, order accuracy, and upsell, they'd be rolled out more extensively across the industry than they are today," Hottovy said. Kiosks have also been threatened as a fast-food industry response to higher minimum wage laws. [...] But the quick-service and fast-casual segments of the restaurant industry continue to grow. Staffing levels were nearly 150,000 jobs, or 3%, above pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest Labor Department data. Christopher Andrews, a sociologist at Drew University who studies the effects of technology on work, said the impacts of kiosks were similar to other self-service technology such as ATMs and self-checkout machines in supermarkets. Both technologies were predicted to cause job losses. "The introduction of ATMs did not result in massive technological unemployment for bank tellers," he said. "Instead, it freed them up from low-value tasks such as depositing and cashing checks to perform other tasks that created value." Self-checkout have also not resulted in retail job losses, the report adds. "In some cases, self-checkout backfired for chains because self-checkout leads to higher merchandise losses from customer errors and more intentional shoplifting than when human cashiers are ringing up customers." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
11:20p	Paralyzed Jockey Loses Ability To Walk After Manufacturer Refuses To Fix Battery For His $100,000 Exoskeleton An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: After a horseback riding accident left him paralyzed from the waist down in 2009, former jockey Michael Straight learned to walk again with the help of a $100,000 ReWalk Personal exoskeleton. Earlier this month, that exoskeleton broke because of a malfunctioning piece of wiring in an accompanying watch that makes the exoskeleton work. The manufacturer refused to fix it, saying the machine was now too old to be serviced, and Straight once again couldn't walk anymore. "After 371,091 steps my exoskeleton is being retired after 10 years of unbelievable physical therapy," Straight posted on Facebook on September 16. "The reasons [sic] why it has stopped is a pathetic excuse for a bad company to try and make more money. The reason it stopped is because of a battery in the watch I wear to operate the machine. I called thinking it was no big deal, yet I was told they stopped working on any machine that was 5 years or older. I find it very hard to believe after paying nearly $100,000 for the machine and training that a $20 battery for the watch is the reason I can't walk anymore?" Straight's experience is a nightmare scenario that highlights what happens when companies decide to stop supporting their products and do not actively support independent repair. It's also what happens without the protection of right to repair legislation that requires manufacturers to make repair parts, guides, and tools available to the general public. Specifically, a connection wire became desoldered from the battery in a watch that connects to the exoskeleton: "It's not the actual battery, but it's the little green connection piece we need to be the right fit and that's been our problem," Straight posted on Facebook. Straight's personal exoskeleton was broken for two months, he said in a video on Facebook. He was eventually able to get the device fixed after attention from an article in the Paulick Report, a website about the horse industry, and a spot on local TV. "It took me two months, and I got no results," he said in the video. With social media and news attention, "it only took you all four days, and look at the results," he said earlier this week while standing in the exoskeleton. "This is the dystopian nightmare that we've kind of entered in, where the manufacturer perspective on products is that their responsibility completely ends when it hands it over to a customer. That's not good enough for a device like this, but it's also the same thing we see up and down with every single product," Nathan Proctor, head of citizen rights group US PIRG's right to repair project told 404 Media. "People need to be able to fix things, there needs to be a plan in place. A $100,000 product you can only use as long as the battery lasts, that's enraging. We should not have to tolerate a society where this happens." "We have all this technology we release into the wild and it changes people's lives, but there's no long-term thinking. Manufacturers currently have no legal obligation to support the equipment indefinitely and there's no requirements that they publish sufficient documentation to allow others to do it," Proctor said. "We need to set minimum standards for documentation so that, even if a company goes bankrupt or falls off the face of the earth, a technician with sufficient knowledge can fix it." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)

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