Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

https://dirt.fyi/article/2023/06/bad-waitress

by PaulHoule • 3 years ago

413 141 3 years ago

cafard3• 3 years ago

I don't know. I never graduated to waiter, but I worked as a busboy a few times. I have much sympathy for wait staff. My recollection is that the waitresses were always decent to me.

Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." One of my other low-paying jobs was as a copy editor, and I have seen how commonly schools have failed to teach PhDs to be good writers--I don't see why the randomly selected waitress should be better. I should say that the demands of the two jobs are quite different, anyway: the waitress has to be able constantly switch attention to multiple people and multiple tasks, the writer (or programmer) has to be able to focus on one thing for relatively long times.

PaulHoule2• 3 years ago

School actively teaches people to be bad writers.

doodlesdev• 3 years ago

How so?

JohnFen2• 3 years ago

Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter."

Yeah, I don't buy that either.

I know that the best software engineering work I've done in my entire life happened when I was working as a hotel housekeeper, before I was programming professionally.

It was because cleaning hotel rooms is a purely physical, and highly repetitive job. Every day at work, I was mentally "checked out", working on difficult programming problems in my head while my body just robotically did the work.

Once I was programming professionally, I no longer had the luxury of spending so much time deeply thinking about programming problems.

refulgentis• 3 years ago

Is that an example of you:

A) being a waitress learning to be a writer?

B) an intellectual learning to be a waiter?

I would have thought A, but you imply it's B.

That's interesting to me, because when I was a waiter, I certainly didn't feel B. My high school classmate who went to Cornell and I spent an hour or two a day with senior year pretended they didn't remember me. Customers constantly talked down to me.

I built an app to replace the restaurant computer, occasionally people would ask why I was taking orders on an iPod and when I'd explain, it made things _worse_: there was more than a handful of times they'd argue about rounding and the local tax rate.

I think the author meant its _much_ harder to take the abusive management, extremely physical work, and occassional abusive customer when you think of yourself as an intellectual working a sidejob, as opposed to it being your job where the programming is a side passion.

throw384629• 3 years ago

From my experience, the hardest part of being a waiter was dealing with customers.

I worked hard physically as a dishwasher or warehouse worker, but had little mental stress.

I only lasted a few weeks as a waiter. Despite the much higher tips, dealing with bad customers was so stressful I couldn't handle it and it significantly affected my studying.

Whereas I never felt that tired when doing physical labor.

Freedom2• 3 years ago

Brandon Sanderson has a decent quote from Secret Project #1, that makes me think a bit.

That is one of the great mistakes people make: assuming that someone who does menial work does not like thinking. Physical labor is great for the mind, as it leaves all kinds of time to consider the world. Other work, like accounting or scribing, demands little of the body—but siphons energy from the mind. If you wish to become a storyteller, here is a hint: sell your labor, but not your mind. Give me ten hours a day scrubbing a deck, and oh the stories I could imagine. Give me ten hours adding sums, and all you’ll have me imagining at the end is a warm bed and a thought-free evening.

JackFr• 3 years ago

Caitriona Lally won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature while working as a janitor at Trinity College. I believe she maintains that job today.

Ntrails• 3 years ago

That you think waiting is a job that doesn't require mental presence tells me you have never done it.

Sure, set up and clear down have plenty of routine zone out time - but service is maintaining multiple concurrent to do lists in your head whilst keeping an eye out on the environment for additional tasks.

I was terrible at the job because I have poor short term memory (my lists dropped items all the damned time). But I sure as hell was too busy to contemplate some higher order problem

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 3 years ago

I believe the point is not that it's easy to teach people to write well but that it's easier than teaching people to work hard.

omginternets3• 3 years ago

Every Ph.D I've met has been a very hard worker, on par with the people I worked with in the military.

ipaddr2• 3 years ago

Everyone learns to write in school. A waiting job most can pick up but not all. I couldn't get past serving training. Carrying four plates and keeping them straight takes without spilling is for others.

cafard3• 3 years ago

Everyone writes in school, I assume. Not everyone learns to write well, in fact I suspect that most do not.

RHSeeger• 3 years ago

Everyone learns to carry plates while growing up. There's a lot more to being a good waiter than just writing down orders and carrying plates. And there's a lot more to being a good writer than just knowing how to write sentences.

caconym_• 3 years ago

Everyone learns to write in school.

This is like saying everyone learns math in school. It's technically correct, but only if you ignore the vast difference in skill between the average person and (e.g.) an accomplished novelist.

bamfly• 3 years ago

Everyone learns to write in school.

Check out studies of adult functional literacy. It's, uh, not great.

projektfu2• 3 years ago

I'm not sure that schools teach the PhD track to be writers. They must write, but they are not really expected to write well. An MFA in creative writing, sure, but that's a different sort.

I think of the modern or contemporary "intellectuals" I have read and many are mediocre writers. For every William James there's a Pearse or a Lewis who is hard to read.

But I think that the author has a different idea in mind, that of the novelist, story writer or journalist. A lack of life experience and appreciation for dialog can lead to poor writing in these domains, and perhaps a waiter would have a leg up.

tomcam4• 3 years ago

I'm not sure that schools teach the PhD track to be writers.

In my experience many PhD candidates are required to write in turgid and stilted prose b/c it sounds more professional.

ryantgtg• 3 years ago

Not PhD, but the masters program I did (urban planning) had a very strong focus on writing. I’m thankful for that, because it turns out I primarily write and edit all day. And it keeps me in business because I work with engineers and architects whose focus at school was, understandably, not writing, and I prove my worth by editing their work.

waiseristy• 3 years ago

Lemme modify the writers words for you to more accurately describe the phenomena : “I suspect it’s easier to teach a good waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a good waiter.”

Being excellent at balancing a stressful, fast paced, work environment applies to many jobs. But being excellent at being an “intellectual” whatever the hell that even means (writers? Programmers?), does not really apply to very many jobs.

RadixDLT• 3 years ago

Person who engages in critical thinking and reasoning

watwut2• 3 years ago

And meanwhile back in real world many intellectuals worked as waiters here and there to get extra money.

B1FF_PSUVM• 3 years ago

schools have failed to teach PhDs to be good writers

I suspect you cannot teach that. I mean, you can whip the cur into following basic rules and avoiding egregious mistakes, but you cannot teach taste.

ungamedplayer• 3 years ago

I imagine that many people have taste that appeals to some people. The problem is that many teachers mark down any taste that doesn't appeal to them, effectively ensuring that writers choose only the blandest safest optiona when writing.

devjab• 3 years ago

Could you be taking the word "writer" to mean something different than the author? In the context of the article what I got from that line was that it would be easier to teach a waiter to be a food critic/journalist than to teach a food critic/journalist to be a waiter, more than it meant "writer" in the broader sense. I sort of agree with that interpretation. I'm not good with names, but the only names that I can tell you off the top of my head when it comes to food "writers" are: Nikolaj Kirk and Anthony Bourdain and they are both chefs.

Ekaros2• 3 years ago

I think we should also ask what sort of writers do schools train PhDs and students to be? The writing for thesis or scientific articles is different from most other writing. Just as is legal writing for example. They really are not there to teach them poetry... Just to efficiently and in way that passes review to communicated inside the community.

sangnoir• 3 years ago

I don't see why the randomly selected waitress should be better

More than a few of them may already posses an English degree (:

spondylosaurus• 3 years ago

This was a great read, thanks for sharing the link!

ChrisMarshallNY5• 3 years ago

That was excellent!

The life of the American worker is inherently undignified

This is true, and even goes for highly-paid, high-status gigs. In fact, I think that sometimes, companies consider high pay, a license to humiliate.

M3L0NM4N3• 3 years ago

Many people are willing to sell their dignity for the right price, however. Me included.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 3 years ago

I used to.

However, since being forced into retirement (a highly undignified and humiliating process), I have found that I never want to go back to that again. I work at my own pace (about triple what I did, when getting paid), and don't take one ounce of crap, from anyone.

When I was a manager, I always strove to treat my team with extreme dignity. My managers were not as willing to do that, for me, however.

thih9• 3 years ago

How long though? I.e. when you have more money, don’t you start valuing your time and dignity more?

hotpotamus• 3 years ago

I once got a below average performance review paired with an above average raise, to which I told my boss that he could call me ugly if it came with money like that. I will say that it helped a lot that I really liked him and he wasn't all that thrilled with the company review process either and was apologetic about it.

emodendroket4• 3 years ago

In fact, I think that sometimes, companies consider high pay, a license to humiliate.

This is easier to think if you haven't had or don't remember low-wage work.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 3 years ago

I used to work for Roy Rogers, when we had to call the customers “Pardner.”

Jun8• 3 years ago

Those of you who have low paying service jobs in Europe, is it more dignified than the US?

ChrisMarshallNY5• 3 years ago

From my understanding (I suspect that not too many of them are on this forum, so you may not get an answer), the service position jobs aren't so low-paying, and many are actually good career positions.

Anecdotally, I have a couple of friends that basically have to be "professional shoppers," once or twice a year. It seems like a dream job, going to Europe, and buying the top-of-the-line clothes, from shops in every country, but it seems to actually be quite difficult for them.

In any case, they have been doing this for decades, and I have been told that they regularly see the same sales associates, cashiers, and managers, at these stores, year after year. They have actually made some long-term friendships, and look forward to meeting these people, who have families, kids in college, etc.

I assume that this means that many folks can actually make lifetime careers from work that, in the US, is often considered "transitional."

matheusmoreira2• 3 years ago

It's not the work itself that's undignified, it's having to work. The only way to maintain your dignity is to have enough fuck you money to tell anyone who would strip you of it to fuck off.

Buttons8402• 3 years ago

Hard disagree. Being able to go pee when you need to, or a checker having a stool to sit on instead of standing still on concrete all day, or having a boss that offers an encouraging word after an insane customer yells at you because the computer isn't working instead of also treating you like the source of the problem. Things like these bring dignity, and would enable people to work while still having dignity.

Scubabear68• 3 years ago

I gave up on this article about 1/3 of the way through. I could fill dozens of pages with my aimless years after I quit college, but I wouldn’t think to bore people with it.

blisterpeanuts• 3 years ago

I read the whole thing in one sitting. I found it interesting in a slice-of-life way. Basically a journey to maturity and self-discovery.

You might jot down your aimless years after college, for your own future reminiscences if nothing else.

But everyone, I believe, has a story to tell, something of value. We tend not to tell our stories anymore, because we’re too busy and overstimulated and no longer need to fill up the hours around the cooking fire.

projektfu2• 3 years ago

It reminded me a bit of the oral history in Studs Terkel's "Working". The interview with the stewardess (as she called herself) was interesting like this.

Tade0• 3 years ago

We tend not to tell our stories anymore

I have to disagree. Social media is, essentially, people telling their stories 24/7.

Basically a journey to maturity and self-discovery.

This is my gripe with this piece. There's no buildup at any point, nothing to keep the reader interested, to make the reader care about this person sharing her memories.

For comparison, I used to date a person who worked as a waitress and she had scores of interesting stories to tell.

Once she showed me her former workplace, which had a lot of souvenirs and odd furniture - this was no accident because the manager(owner?) attributed meaning to every piece, like the kayak hanging from the ceiling represented teamwork, because you can't swim in it alone, and you certainly wouldn' be able to put it up there single-handedly. 20+ pieces in total and everyone from the wait staff was quizzed regularly on them.

Or her first, very much illegal, summer work experience at age 13, where her first task as a waitress was to trim the lawn using pruning shears. She got an allergic reaction to whatever was in that grass and management had to backpedal on this child labour thing really quick.

All the crazy stuff that goes on in such places is only mentioned in passing and I think it doesn't do this line of work justice.

rcoveson• 3 years ago

I'm just glad you saw fit to let us read your insightful critique. Let me know if you ever do decide to get those pages out; you've got a fan in me!

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

I got 10% through. Says more about me, or at least my mood. Clicking a HN link I al not sold on reading so much. But if this article was a book I purchased I would read it over a few days.

The writing is good though at a micro level. I think it needs more structure and hooks. Chapters with interesting titles “The positive consequences of lying in my first interview” for example (I am not a writer so sure HN could do better)

carabiner• 3 years ago

I think it's like a less spicy version of Stephanie Land's article on cleaning houses (led to the excellent Netflix series Maid), which had a lot of tantalizing hooks because of the nature of the work I guess. But overall this trend of written accounts of unprivileged work by increasingly college educated people, is a good one. If it was in n+1 it would have been tied to the rise of unionization, income inequality, probably Tolstoy's concept of working class virtues. But giving more voice to pink collar, blue collar workers is a good thing.

quacked2• 3 years ago

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain is this article, but about a thousand times more interesting. It's on my list of books I recommend to people about to enter the corporate world, even though it's about the life of a drug addict chef.

douglee650• 3 years ago

It's writing; the point is to entertain with artfully written anecdotes and insights.

It's ok to like or dislike a piece, but common courtesy if you don't care for something but it does not offend, is to simply offer no comment.

Conscat• 3 years ago

I was thoroughly entertained.

kubb• 3 years ago

Me too, because I wasn't captured by the story of that young woman, but the writing is so much better than on most of the blog posts that get to the top here every so often.

beebeepka• 3 years ago

It was a boring and predictable story of a young American woman. So unique and fascinating.

4ad• 3 years ago

The author knows how to write, but unfortunately she doesn't have anything to say.

kkarakk• 3 years ago

yeah it's a rambling incoherent piece, i don't know what people are connecting to in this - i admit there are decent ideas scattered all over it but none of them are pursued meaningfully.

it outright contradicts itself at points.

steve_gh• 3 years ago

Great writing. Love it

Hammershaft• 3 years ago

Beautiful & original blog design!

phailhaus• 3 years ago

What a nice change of pace for the HN front page. :)

zigman1• 3 years ago

Exactly! I love when every so often a random "life-style" article comes up :)

alexjplant• 3 years ago

My foodservice experience was highly unorthodox as it was always either an underage/under-the-table or supplementary part-time arrangement in one of my family's establishments. The last time I was yelled at for something that wasn't my fault I decided to quit and got a better-paying day job a week later.

On an unrelated note, that final restaurant job was as a bartender at a cocktail bar frequented by white-collar workers. On a slow day I was asked to wait on a table which I'd never done before. They ordered a red Bordeaux blend; I messed up the bottle service by failing to pour a sample to which the eldest gentlemen in the party retorted "Well I hope I like it!" (despite the initial pour being to check for quality, not preference, but I digress). I made it up to him by providing a few minutes of free IT consulting to the chagrin of the rest of the table and ended up with a beefy tip :o). All's well that ends well, I suppose...

_Bruno42• 3 years ago

Great writing style, loved the story!

sebmellen• 3 years ago

This is probably the most surreal article I’ve read on HN, only because I grew up in Mira Mesa and have eaten at that very IHOP, probably even while she was a waitress there. It’s astounding how small the world can seem sometimes.

rootsudo• 3 years ago

"I leaned into the idea of serving as an identity. I joined all the Facebook groups, followed #serverlife and server memes on Instagram."

I think this is one of the most toxic things in todays society, work becomes your identity and therefore you relate to it and it becomes you, or you settle to what that identity is. You are also surrounded by people in the same role, and depending on that you change to fit in with your new peers. The social media groups also re-enforce the same idea of that's all that it is.

As the author wrote in the beginning:

" I always said, soon, soon, things like this cannot last forever. I thought I’d get too tired to keep waiting tables, I thought if I waited much longer I’d lose the chance to get a ‘real’ job, in publishing or media or who knows what industry."

Many people don't get "out."

The same can be described of other groups too, can be hobby groups like cars, or other activities and such - we choose to involve ourselves with other people.

Personally, I've known many people at a distance join such groups/roles/jobs/interests and change to something worse/negative and then cut off - because it became their prime identity.

Just an interesting observation, but many times I feel people go with the easiest/path of lease resistance. Change is hard. Persistance is harder.

quesera2• 3 years ago

I agree. It's often toxic, but it fills a common need to belong.

The need can be healthy (or at least it is common in healthy people). The satisfaction of it can be toxic, and it takes a strong(?)/determined, or at least self-aware, person to escape the local maxima and reach for something approaching real fulfillment.

But I may be projecting. I would be dissatisfied if I still lived in the town/state/region I grew up in, for example. Some people are perfectly happy there and never even question their (lack of) path. And I'm not talking about people born in destination locations!

quesera2• 3 years ago

After edit window, a postscript:

I acknowledge my own display of ignorance and privilege in the preceding!

The freedom to consider those kinds of options -- or even the ability to conceive of them -- is absolutely not available equally to all people or at all times.

pcthrowaway2• 3 years ago

And yet, here we are, on hacker news.

Tech isn't the only thing I follow, and I have a few other hobbies, but it definitely is a big part of my identity now, to the point that even when I next take a break from working in software I'm still going to be following open source, tinkering with software, and probably still obsessively keeping up with HN

keeptrying• 3 years ago

A problem I've always thought about

"What app could help waitstaff move onto better paying positions?"

- They are very tired after the day so can't really learn after work.

- They usually don't have the resources to do a dev-bootcamp and dev-bootcamps don't seem to be well done.

- Copywriting is dead.

Solving for time is hard.

NoZebra120vClip2• 3 years ago

She seems to have been utterly financially comfortable, living alone in an apartment. Was it the crop top tips?

KennyBlanken• 3 years ago

The job at that bar was the best job I’ve ever had, in concert with the life I’d always wanted—publishing my writing, running a literary magazine, having several close circles of friends, living in the city I’d always dreamed of. I loved my apartment and I had the money to do things like get facials and use ClassPass. I took vacations and went to literary awards or friends’ book launches and plays and fancy dinners, and one night when I was sad I bought a pink suit, and then I felt better. Waiting tables gave me a life I didn’t think I’d be able to attain for myself.

Remember when a job such as being a waiter still meant you could in fact survive and have money left over for the occasional niceties in life like a bit of relaxation, or a frivolous purchase like (gasp) some clothing that isn't needed for a particular purpose?

All gone...because billionaires drowning in yachts, jets, vacation homes, and ultra-luxury, hyper-sports cars...aren't satisfied, and also want tax writeoffs they get because politicians tell us that if they don't give them a tax break, someone else will get the trickle-down economic benefits.

The greed is so extensive, they've gotten the USSC to rule that workers are now liable for damages to their employers, from striking...in what is almost certainly a response to the railroad strikes that scared the shit out of the 0.01%.

dmurray• 3 years ago

Remember when a job such as being a waiter still meant you could in fact survive and have money left over for the occasional niceties in life like a bit of relaxation, or a frivolous purchase like (gasp) some clothing that isn't needed for a particular purpose?

The author's experience was three years ago. Yes, I think we all remember, no, not that much has changed in three years. Many people still make a comfortable living in a big city waiting on tables; many struggled to make ends meet even way back then.

tomcam4• 3 years ago

Author refers 3 times to 20-pound plates of potatoes. Is that really a thing? I’ve eaten at thousands of restaurants and don’t recall anything like that but I’m not the most observant person.

adamwk• 3 years ago

I’ve been to the restaurant in San Diego and the plates are indeed massive

tomcam4• 3 years ago

Ok thanks. Couldn’t tell if she was exaggerating, but since she used the exact figure several times I had to assume not.

freetime22• 3 years ago

Here’s a photo from their FB page. I could picture a tray with several orders like this approaching 20 lbs.

https://www.facebook.com/HashHouseAGoGoSanDiego/photos/a.120...

tomcam4• 3 years ago

Jeez that looks amazing! Thank you for the link!

Pigalowda• 3 years ago

That cast iron plate is most of the weight

riffraff• 3 years ago

Waitressing didn’t seem permanent. Nothing ever does.

As the adage goes, "life is what happens while you're busy making other plans".

If there's one thing this piece made me think of, is that you should either be happy doing what you're doing or be on the path to do that.

I have friends in their 40s who have worked in the service industry for decades while planning to do "something else later", and they're not the happiest of my acquaintances.

anonzzzies• 3 years ago

Everyone I know still in my birth country is working to retire, and, when they retire they will move to a place in the sun. Most who retired died unhappy before doing that because of health reasons because of working. It’s all just sad. Move today and you can retire today. ‘Something else later’ doesn’t work with our lifespan.

nonameiguess• 3 years ago

This woman's like 32 and hasn't been a waitress in years, so it wasn't permanent.

euroderf• 3 years ago

The next time you eat in a restaurant, and you're feeling snarly cos you had a bad day, and you can't be bothered to be nice to people just doing their jobs, keep this article in mind.

freetime22• 3 years ago

For so many years I thought that I was missing an element of secret knowledge about how actual jobs worked, and that therefore I would be stuck forever. But now that I do other work, I see it all for what it is: everything is a system. The restaurant is a system, the content management is a system, the computer is a system. Everything is so much simpler than I imagined it was. I thought I was doing an easy job, but everything is an easy job when you know the system. Other professions weren’t magic. They were systems too.

Reading this article made me wonder if I could hack it as a waiter. I’ve never really done any manual labor in my life - just a few part time jobs as a student that made me realize I am bad at it compared to some of my friends for whom it came so naturally. Driving a truck, building things, interacting with customers, etc. Programming, on the other hand, has always just come so naturally to me that it’s hard to imagine myself doing anything else.

I agree with the author that with most careers there is a system, and once you learn the ropes it makes things dramatically easier. And sometimes the only thing holding someone back is that first opportunity to get in the door and start learning the system. I think writers especially must struggle with this as the career path is not as well-defined as other trades.

Why don’t websites hire service people to write about food? How do ‘restaurant journalists’ exist, when servers who are also artists are standing right here? A book critic once told me, “a website could never be staffed by service people, the quality of the writing would be too low,” and I wanted to laugh. I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter.

But I don’t really agree with this premise that anyone can be a writer. I struggle to write - every paragraph is agonizing for me. I think I could definitely get better with practice, but if it were my career it would fill me with so much anxiety and self doubt that I wouldn’t be able to function. Same as if I were to be a waiter (assuming I didn’t just get fired in my first week).

I think that the author is underestimating the value of her journalism degree, and her natural inclination that made her want to study journalism in the first place, to her eventual success in that career once given an opportunity.

lastangryman• 3 years ago

How nice to read a long-from piece online, simply and clearly formatted, with no adverts, popups, affiliate links, or such nonsense. Just genuine writing.

The work was the only thing that kept me out of my anxiety.

I know it's a trope for knowledge workers to romanticize physical work, but I find the opposite when programming. The work increases the mental anxiety.

cosmodisk• 3 years ago

Programming is part of my job, but I only have to do it every now and then. However, I'm considering pulling a plug on programming side gigs I do sometimes. It's so intense, the brain feels like it's going to explode+ there's that anxiety and that the whole thing will fail before I can even submit it. I'm not sure the money justifies every time.

stavros3• 3 years ago

It's interesting how different our experiences are. I love programming so much, I'll often forget about food or sleep if I'm building something that really interests me. It's easily the best high I've gotten.

dan00• 3 years ago

Like in life itself, if you‘re trying to control your programming job too much, you will be just miserable and fuel your anxiety. The complexity and unpredictability of the future can‘t be completely controlled. IMHO the only solution is to believe in yourself, that whatever is thrown at you, you will find a way to cope with it. Otherwise you‘re only worrying the whole time what the future might bring.

Hard_Space• 3 years ago

What a great piece. Glad to see it on front page of HN.

I worked for years in retail, in camera shops, and I understand the episodic hilarity and mundane heartbreak of a career in service. But it was washing dishes in a restaurant, my first ever job, that made me aware of the time-pressure intensity of food service, and that it's a lower-risk version of the old space/air travel aphorism: 'Flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror'.

You work a whole shift, but only a slim segment of it matters, when work and concentration become hyper-compressed. Dishes break, people break, and there are no breaks - it continues relentlessly like a forced march, without reflection, until the blessed first minutes where you sense that it's beginning to abate.

If you're of a reflective mood, you think to yourself not only that the frantic and merciless nature of the job will never change (even if the restaurant closes, the same experience is happening in an endless continuum all over the city), but that it has probably been like this for as long as there has been civilization - a millennial succession of workers (slaves, the earlier back you go), chopping vegetables and scraping plates (copper plates, if you go back far enough), back to dining establishments and the kitchens of the influential in Roman times, Egyptian times.

It's a strange thing, but participating in these activities that are most visceral and least threatened by automation, they feel like a kind of time travel, or like being in one of the less objectionable circles in hell.

We've always been at lunch with Oceania!

kaliqt• 3 years ago

Why do you say that the food service business is the least threatened by automation?

Jochim2• 3 years ago

Cost: Wages for food service workers are extremely low. Automation is extremely expensive.

Capability: Industrial machinery struggles to meet many of the requirements of a professional kitchen. Plating alone requires the ability to handle and place aesthetically, both solids of different consistencies and liquids. Avoiding cross-contamination is another concern. Setting aside a set of pans and chopping boards is very different to installing another assembly line.

Flexibility: Typically, automation pays off when you're making lots of the same thing. Most restaurants will change dishes out relatively frequently and don't have anywhere near the volume of an assembly line. Most kitchens will also try to accommodate requests for the modification of dishes and in some cases for things that aren't on the menu at all.

Resiliency: An automated assembly line is much more complicated than an oven or fryer and much more prone to failure. If a frozen burger can jam up the machine you end up paying someone to watch for that happening, plus a much more expensive maintenance worker when you could've just paid the first guy to chuck the burgers on a grill.

Fast food places are likely to get further than most with automation. Although, I'm sceptical of how the economics work out.

vijucat• 3 years ago

"I do think being a waitress has done one great thing with respect to writing: it has made me understand deeply and fundamentally how many writers are full of shit"

Ha ha. Somehow reminded me of Charles Bukowski. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ilmOZvpOa8

dsq• 3 years ago

I read this like hearing the voice of Max from 2 broke girls.

Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

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