The McDonalds near me recently clobbered their tiny playplace and turned it into a … conference room/center?
About the only time I went there was when I need a place for my kiddos to spend some energy on a rainy day at like 8am, before other things opened. I was happy to buy a coffee and biscuit for myself and maybe a treat for them to pay for my occupancy.
Now, though, and I know I wasn’t a giant source of income, they have lost my custom and I just can’t see how any real business would ever run a meeting in a McDonalds conference room, so it just seems like a dumb move.
Maybe they want to discourage parents bringing their children? That also seems pretty stupid.
I DESPISE AI in fast food restaurants… as well as just about everywhere else… but in fast food it really pisses me off.
I crave salty trash food every once in a while, but when my local Taco Bell greeted me with an obviously AI drive-thru, I just drove away and never came back.
Fast food and retail were the places you went to get your first job with no experience or school necessary. Using AI to ‘take their jobs’ in the pursuit of ‘efficiency’ is just adding velocity to our plunge into dystopia. I mean no disrespect to those working those currently jobs, though, as the ‘were’ in that sentence is carrying a lot and the article is right that the jobs are stressful and relentless, and it angers me that your livelihood is yet again being threatened by corporate greed.
If there were compensating factors, like UBI, free higher education and better worker protections, then sure, let’s let “ai” take over the things that we don’t want to do… but I don’t think we’re going in that direction.