Ben ToddBecause nothing gives customers a better warm fuzzy felling in their belly than knowing the servers friendliness is ingenuous and they've been forced to do it.
Pink! Polonium!@monkeyben @Cyberoutsider @pluralistic
Was at a Starbucks recently (yeah, I know) and after the barista had what seemed like an authentic, human interaction with a customer, the manager walked by her and said "nice connect!" like the whole thing was a sport and the employee just scored a point.
Had the sense that SBUX and pick up artists were using the same vile playbook. 🤢
Gaëtan Perrault@pinkpolonium @monkeyben @Cyberoutsider
I think this feels a little icky in multiple ways because it's kind of a squishy topic. Especially at a Starbucks.
In 2026, a Starbucks doesn't really need humans. We have machines that can automate coffee making directly from raw inputs. We have other machines that can take orders directly from a buyer's phone or an on-site terminal or a remote either. Even the food can be dispensed by machine, we have the technology.
A human taking another human's order is like the final defense against three other failed technologies.
At this point, the humans are mostly there to make other humans feel good and connected.
These businesses have hyper-optimized every other part of their operations. They're not competing on price, that market has already been divided up. They're not competing on quality or speed, that's also been divided.
Optimizing the "human touch" is like all they have left.
And it's totally icky.
It feels abusive to all of the humans involved... /1
@pinkpolonium @monkeyben @Cyberoutsider
But I think we're sadly just going to see more of this because I think it actually works for a lot of humans. They like to feel recognized and appreciated by other humans, even when it's fake or mandated by corporate policy.
Even a fake connection is better than the zero connection humans are getting elsewhere. 😥
Sadly, I think it gets worse into the future.
If you put on an investor's hat, the fact that a giant company like McDonald's has failed to mechanize most of its operations kind of feels like a corporate failure.
If you're McDonald's CEO, what do you optimize next? Well robots are getting wildly cheaper and more powerful. We already have burger making machines.
At some point in the next 10-15 years, there are only two human jobs in that place: humans who fill and fix machines, humans who interact with other humans solely for that purpose.
So sadly, I think it gets only worse from here. //
That's why I try and use independents. But if the food business goes all sterile with machines it'll make me think about just doing stuff at home and inviting people round. People eat out for the ambiance, if it's lacking that ambience can be made at home and it would be a lot cheaper.