A tale of Automation, Dystopia, Depression, and Killing the Human Spirit
Out at the edge of the tourist town where I grew up there is a fast food restaurant. It was right off the highway. It was far enough from the center of town to the point where people were unsure how far the next food exit would be. This was pre-google maps and smart phones. It was also a good 30 miles down the highway in the other direction until you reached the next restaurant. It was the perfect location. It was always busy. During the middle of the hot southeastern summers tourists would pour in on their way to the theme parks or historic monuments which Williamsburg, VA is known for.
These days there is plenty of competition, there are many more restaurants and options available. However this only happened recently. Below are two brief accounts of my experience working the register at the fast food restaurant:
20 years ago:
I was 120 pounds soaking wet. This large adult 30 something male (probably younger than I am now) yelled at me about something being wrong with his order. I was sweating profusely.
“We’ve been waiting in line for 20 minutes. I’ve got hungry kids here! How could you all fuck up something so simple!” he yelled in frustration.
I of course didn’t really care as a teenager. But I was intimidated by such situations. (Ironically as a father of small children I identify with some of the man’s frustrations these days. I’d hesitate to take my frustrations out on another kid though as this gentlemen was doing. )
Unsure of what to do I called for the manager. I peered out into the lobby where a line of people wrapped around the room and out the door. Four registers were open, but the line never shortened.
This man yelling at me was slowing us down. I hadn’t even been the one that had taken his order. Now the rest of the line cursed under their breath (some quite loudly) at yet another delay. The frustration of the crowd was palpable. You could take that sweet creamy anger and spread it over toast.
I hated working the register for exactly this reason. You were the face. You had to deal with the unhappy customers. Hell I didn’t want to deal with the happy customers. I much preferred kitchen work. Head down, cook, clean, go home.
Staring out at the masses I knew it was going to be a long day; seven more hours to go.
12 years ago:
I took my place at the register. A bunch of the kids called out this weekend so I would have to man the register myself. That’s fine. I remembered what it was like. Kids don’t give a shit.
We had just finished the lunch rush. A man in a suit comes up to me.
“Excuse me sir, but I asked for this with no onions.”
He hands me a burger which is 75% eaten. I keep this thought in the back of my head as I reach for the wrapper. I smile and show as much care as I can muster, which is considerable, as I have plenty of experience with these situations.
“Sorry about that sir, please let me replace that for you. Johnny, get me another cheeseburger please. This time no onions!”
The man looks at me with disgust. It’s a look I’ve become familiar with from people as they stop through. He’s looking down on me. Probably thinks I’m an idiot. Probably thinks I’m going to be here for the rest of my life. What if I was? Why would that matter to this asshole in a suit? Plenty of good people have this job. I know my 9 dollars an hour can’t compare to his 45k “desk job”.
I’d been through this so many times now. I fantasized about showing him my credentials. He didn’t know that I’d already done 4 years of counterintelligence work for the Active Army, deployed multiple times. He didn’t know that I was working through my undergraduate degree and that I was an excellent student. He didn’t know that I knew the store manager who had worked there when I was a kid. The same manager that offered me a flexible work schedule with plenty of hours so I could get through school.
He just saw a loser bringing him his french fries.
Present Day
I don’t work in a restaurant any more. I’ve worked in several over the course of my life. In fact I’ve done many kinds of jobs. I’ve waited tables. I’ve worked the doors of bars. I’ve been a brick mason’s assistant. I was briefly in an acting troop. I did help desk support. I was a line cook. As written above, I was deployed several times and wore many hats in the Army.
I’ve gotten my undergraduate degree, as well as a graduate degree, as well as about 8 various technical certifications. I now run an engineering firm and work with scientists and a plethora of different industries from aerospace to medical sciences and everything in between. Interestingly enough, I only wear T-Shirts and jeans if I can help it, with the exception of trade-shows and customer visits where a suit is courteous. I make a decent living. I’m comfortable. Woohoo, yay for me.
This makes me feel okay about the assholes in suits looking at me over the counter years ago. But I also see that many of them were unhappy with their grind despite being perceived as a rung or two higher than I was on the ladder. Perspective is a hell of a thing.
I can say, unapologetically that the job that stressed me out above all others, the one that was most formative overall to me, was the job at the fast food restaurant. It sounds crazy, but it was even more stressful than the deployments to war zones. At least the people that hated me in the war-zones had a fairly logical reason other than assuming I was an idiot and looking down on my dumb fast food uniform.
Working at the fast food restaurant helped me to understand what being judged for no other reason than your station, or appearance could be like; The knowledge that people only see what they want and that the real you is so much deeper. This is an invaluable experience as a straight white male. I am in no way stating that this is an equivalency of any kind to the struggles of my female, minority, gender-queer, or non-straight folks out there (apologies if I butcher categories…my heart is in the right place here). I am merely saying that I was given some small teensy weensy glimpse of being judged unfairly for things out of my control. I am better for it.
Additionally everyone should have a service job and be forced to cow down to hordes of people for a period of time. Want to know what builds character? Biting your tongue when someone says something obviously wrong and stupid and you simply solve the problem, smile, and move on to the next asshole. Now do this for eight hours a day during summer break to an endless line of assholes and eureka, you’ve got a kid prepared for the war…or worse, a grown up career of some kind.
Why am I even saying this?
So now that I’ve taken the stroll down memory lane I’ll get to my point.
I’m sad.
I’m confused.
I’m seeing the end of an era.
It should be noted that I don’t go to fast food restaurants very frequently. I just prefer eating healthier stuff. But every once in a while I get a hankering and say what the heck (and usually regret it afterward).
The other day I went into McDonalds to get some hotcakes for my son and a cup of coffee for myself. I went to the counter and reached for my wallet. There was a single person behind the counter and they pointed behind me.
Her finger was aimed at the center of the lobby where 4 behemoth touch screens and payment pads stood ready for my order. An elderly lady took me through the steps of purchasing my items and I felt good about it.
I sat down in contemplation and thought about it. At first I was positive. Well good, my unsociable ass will be happy with less human interaction. After all they had already done this at Panera and for some reason it didn’t seem like a big deal. Self-check-out lines at every big box store are more and more the norm and I don’t have any problem with that. It helps me to avoid uncomfortable discussions like, “For the thousandth time, I don’t want a Target Red Card.”
Player Piano Futures
So it’s been a long time coming. And from a business perspective it just makes sense. Fewer people needed, more efficiency gained and technically if the order is wrong, it’s the customers fault! It’s a perfect system; lower expenses, more money for the business.
Currently they have someone walking people through the new ordering process but certainly that will evolve out as our culture adapts. And as I sat there thinking about the plausible increases of efficiency I tried to see the positive. I guess their only job will be to make sure everything is clean and the food is spot on?
I looked around the lobby. I was wrong, and the food was taking forever. Oh well, sometimes it’s just not quick. I’m not in a rush. I’m patient. I remember what it was like to work at one of these places. Then I wondered how long it would take for them to automate the food making and the cleaning.
The more I thought about it though the more it didn’t sit right. How many jobs across the nation are now gone or will be gone? There are plenty of good people who for one reason or another have limited skills. They only need so many people in the kitchen. I worked hard to get more of an education I suppose but that’s not for everyone.
The ramifications are huge. If all of the adults in the country were left behind in the workforce than certainly there would be no part time jobs for kids.
Don’t get me wrong. I see the upside of automation. I’m a technologist at heart. I want to solve the world’s problems through science and engineering. An efficiently running system arouses me slightly…mmm sweet sweet efficiency.
However even a cashier or a fast food cook can be great at what they do. My fear is that soon there will be nothing for anyone to do at all. And even if we do create a universal basic income and solve all the monstrous problems with healthcare, education costs, racism, sexism, all other isms etc. and so on…we will be left with only a few having jobs with “meaning”. All of the sudden even a former engineer replaced by AI will be scoffed at by some asshole in a suit the way that asshole scoffed at me when I worked at the fast food restaurant.
The problem is that there is no logical argument against these types of automation. There is only a human argument. We need these interactions with people (even though I kind of hate the interactions). We need our shitty jobs. We need a guy standing on a line cranking a nut down day in and day out so that he can say he stood on that line and cranked 200,000 nuts and by God he did a damn good job at it! We need to have struggle because struggle is growth is meaning.
Even the comradery in the shittiest of jobs and the production of the most menial of products is still meaningful as there is meaning in being productive. Shit, even the human value of coming together and bitching about how shitty your job is with those who share the work, adds value and meaning to your life.
Plenty will say…well with all that free time you can take up basket weaving or whatever which to some degree would be nice. I would get a lot more writing done for one. But I imagine that without having to do something. Without the struggle, it all gets old really fast. I can only sit on the beach with my cocktail and tiny cocktail umbrella for so many days before that gets old.
Now I’m not under any false delusion that struggle is going away. We will always have struggle and we’ve got a way to go with some very serious issues, but I’m saddened by the loss of the cashier in McDonalds, because it’s monumental. It’s a true sign of a paradigm shift. It’s the beginning of something. It’s the end of a lot too. Wendy’s did it too. But McDonalds is the biggest. It means the most (at least to me personally). It made it rea for me.
We’ve seen this coming since the end of World War II. Vonnegut wrote about it in “Player Piano”. I’m seeing it now. All I’m saying is don’t be surprised, and maybe get in line instead of the self-checkout machine every once in a while. And maybe I’m just scared because I don’t know how we’ll cope with these changes just like Netflix killing blockbuster. I feel like we’re alright. I miss going to the store and looking at the back of the box and renting video games etc. buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut streaming is better.
I guess we’ll see. Be good to each other. Everyone is important.