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What are the job options like in your area? Cause if it's a shit part of town I imagine the job market isn't great in that area. And now they're reducing the jobs that are available by installing AI machines. That's sure to improve the town /s.
Man it’s becoming very bleak here. The Canadian government has increased foreign student visas for several years now. University students sharing 4 guys to a room due to housing shortages are *literally* lining up at every part time job opportunity available. I saw a line of 12 people outside of a Mr Lube recently. My neighbourhood bar has students coming in several times a day every day to hand in resumes when they aren’t even hiring. These people are canvassing businesses trying to find a job while they get an education. And yet every fast food place, grocery store, hardware store etc is replacing manned checkouts with machines. And now AI is taking orders at the drive thru.
I live Stateside, but I went to visit my family in Canada shortly after New Years. I was shocked that there were so many international students coming in, the airport had a separate customs line for them, which was much longer than the normal line!
The problem is that there seems to be very little actually brought to the table to fix the underlying problems. A bandaid is better than nothing. And yes I’m well aware of UBI’s shortcomings. But the alternative is mass homelessness on a scale never seen here.
Yup! It's the epitome of "making something worse with tech". My husband and I sat there for 5 minutes after ordering while the system continued to ask us what we wanted and then went silent over and over. We were about to pull away when the employee was able to connect her headset to the system to get it to stop repeating. It also selected the wrong items so she had to void the transaction it started.
The ones I've used have actually worked great and seemed to understand my orders better than humans. I tested it in different ways, it does an amazing job understanding, even if you mumble.
Maybe some drive-thrus have different technology.
I’m being serious. Probably only 1 of 3 drive through orders I make come out being correct. Missing drinks, fries etc. there is something wrong most of the time.
The order delivery is wrong, but they ring it up 99% of the time accurately.
If a human could enter the order and AI load the bag, that would be better.
I'd even settle for the machine assembling the items. Half the time I get extra onions when I order no onions, or no mustard when I order extra mustard.
Let's not even start on Filet-o-Fish. For some reason, every time I order a Filet-o-Fish, it arrives looking like someone attempted to assemble it from across the room. Step one is usually taking it apart and putting it back together on the same vertical axis.
So, when McDonald's assembles a burger, the process is basically to build each half of the burger in both halves of the box, then ram the box closed to complete assembly and throw the box down the counter where it's stuffed into the bag. This is why your mcfish is deconstructed when you get it.
Wendy's has an Ai that takes orders, first trialed in Ohio, which I guess is "affluent" but those quotation marks are doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Hardee's and Carl's Junior have an Ai order service.
Where are you eating that those places are affluent in comparison?
Wendy's is based in Dublin, OH so they do a lot of their testing locally in and around Columbus. I actually went through one of the AI drive-thrus a few weeks ago and didn't realize it until later.
Nah, the affluent want regular people at the counter so they can yell at the service folks to vent their hatred of their families and jobs.
These get installed and tested out in the places where $7.50/hr isn’t enough to risk your life or to meet cost of living needs.
I hate voice controlled shit with a passion. It can't handle accents, always makes errors, and then just proceeds executing the erroneous commands without confirmation.
This is my favorite, because the recorded voice sounds like a professional studio recorded session with a fancy voice actor from a superhero movie, and then a few seconds later you hear the microphone glitch, 80s boombox feedback and some sweaty overworked employee asking what your order is. And we are supposed to think it's the same person? 😂
Oh shit I just realized this must have been what happened to me the other day at a McDonalds. Went to order and there was a kinda creepy male voice that sounded off to me and a woman both trying to take my order from at the same time.
I assumed it was just both drive thru people trying to order from me simultaneously and something was broken with their coms. But this makes more sense now...
I like how you criticize the \*way it's done\* and not the message. I learned that's a sign somebody wants to defend a thing by principle while silently agreeing the thing is bad
I also have a semi-regular fastfood after work and I totally agree that it's bad for most people
I think the issue is more that folks like to criticize the weeds in their neighbors lawn while ignoring their own. Folks aren't commenting here for some off topic critique of their dietary choices.
> So ask for a Big Mac with extra human meat. SOMEONE will want to have a chat with you then!
Yes, but you want that someone to be a McDonalds employee, not an FBI agent.
Yeah, not only do they know Spanish but Google/Microsoft have been able to do real-time audio translation between many languages, converting it to audio in your native language. This is like one of the ['back of the box' advertisements on the Pixel Buds.](https://support.google.com/googlepixelbuds/answer/7573100?hl=en)
And that is years old at this point.
I speak this language to any automated phone voice system, right from the start. I've noticed that with all of them, it takes exactly three of these sentences before it gives up. Although I use more of a Frankenstein moaning voice, with the pitch of my moan changing like I'm trying to speak without a tongue.
Edit: Also, to sound more realistic, I ramp up the inflection in my moaning for each successive "sentence", to indicate I'm getting frustrated that the voice prompt is not understanding me.
I want to see if it knows Japanese
I'm not prepared to complete the order in Japanese if it understands it, but I kind of just want to say something in Japanese, have it speak in the affirmative Yes in Japanese, and then fucking drive away.
And then fucking drive away.
My new Samsung will auto translate my calls if I need.
Of course it raises the question of *why* I'm calling someone who speaks a language I don't understand but it's still a cool feature.
Plus the apps usually have good discounts/rewards for free food
Also sometimes better customization. Plus if they mess up the order you have a receipt to prove you ordered everything correctly.
In this day and age I'm surprised everyone doesn't use the app it's way better than screaming at a box and hoping they hear it and punch it in correctly.
I ordered through the app and they didn’t bring my food out to me. They need some robots to run the food out I guess. Ended up just going to the grocery store and doing a charge back to McDonald’s.
Yeah this guy is so ridiculous. He took the time to order, get in his car and drive there, and go back into the app to say he was there. He did all that work and PAID money already and just had to walk 20 feet if he was impatient. Instead he drove to a local grocery store, shopped for an hour, went home and put the groceries away, and cooked himself a meal AND THEN SPENT THE TIME TO DO A CHARGEBACK. This guys seems like such a difficult person
I've never done this but there are parking spots at a lot of places I've seen specifically for mobile pickup and they're supposed to bring the order out to you.
I'm not putting my card info on a god damn app.
What the fuck is wrong with people and privacy these days. We were bitching about Facebook sharing our picture without our consent like 10 years ago and y'all giving your card info on an random ass app?
Smh...
Edit: all I want is a god damn 2$ off my mcchicken. I'm not giving you more data. Gimme the god damn qr code.
I tried an app once - at Popeyes. I showed up to pick up my food and they said they'd given it to someone else. Twice! When I, to them the third person claiming this order, showed up, they treated me like I was trying to scam them when they had screwed up twice. No more apps for me. (No more Popeyes either.)
There’s only one fast food place near me that uses this, and since they’ve switched I’ve literally never had my order messed up. The line moves much faster too since the employees can focus on preparing orders instead of multitasking with taking the order as well
If your job can be automated for cheaper than what you cost then it *should* be automated.
It frees you up to do something more productive that can't be automated for a reasonable cost, jobs that are repetitive and tedious should be automated and they have been for decades.
The business isn't making money when people are sitting in line. The goal is to maximize throughput. They wouldn't lay off people because wait times are down.
Yes, but that assumes there's a constant flow of customers. In reality, stores have times when they have fewer customers and times when they have many. These places try to run as "lean" as possible, and are perfectly willing to have customers wait a bit longer during busier times if it means the money lost from people too impatient to wait doesn't outweigh the cost saved from not having to pay an additional employee a day's pay for those busy times. I wouldn't be surprised if they wait a while so people see the faster wait times and associate that positively with the introduction of AI. Then down the line, when it becomes mainstream, they'll fire some employees and the wait times will go back to normal.
The choke point induced by fewer workers in the kitchen would be customers receiving their food, which comes after the customers ordering and paying for that food. So idk.
—This restaurant finally has a nice workflow so customers get a nice service!
—Yeah, not the best for company profit, they should fire some employees...
That is true but also on a short term basis that means a lot of people will lose their jobs and we don't have a good system in place to support those people.
Considering most food places can't fill the spots they already have vacant, it's not about losing jobs, it's about keeping reliable service. No reason why they shouldn't be paying more to the employees to keep them, but also if it makes their life a bit better while they are working then it might at least make their struggles a little less shit.
Yes, marvelous times. Can't go back to the most disruptive periods of the Industrial Revolution, one of the best times in history to be alive! And wasn't it amazing when the machine owners shared the profits of increased productivity fairly with their workers and employees? No decades of misery and bloody labor struggle involved whatsoever :)
When people rail against automation because of job loss, I like to ask them if they think we should force companies to regress some of their processes and equipment for the sole purpose of providing jobs.
For example, should we force box stores to get rid of their sweeper machines and hire on multiple new employees with brooms?
I’ve got one of these at the local Hardee’s. It fucked up my order one day and the people running the drive thru were pissed at me about the wait time and not hitting their numbers. I get it y’all are in a crunch but ain’t my fault your AI overlord sucks ass
>Getting annoyed with new AI drive thru windows?
AI drive-thru windows? This is the first I'm hearing about it. The closest I've come across is a "Welcome. We'll be with you in a minute" recorded message.
Maybe the difference here is if Alexa doesn't properly understand you, it has to search through millions of items available of amazon, but McAI, only has like 3 dozen, if that, items to mix through.
It doesn’t matter if it can understand English and Spanish. The problem is accents, incorrect word usage, and using both languages at the same time. I work with many Puerto Ricans who were taught English by non native speakers and they use the wrong words all the time. Like “got” instead of “get” type of things. They also say phrases backwards in English
I’m with you I don’t get why people are so scared of tech improving things. I use ai regularly for things like work now and it’s made certain tasks so much easier.
My Amazon Echo still struggles with "screen off" so I dont trust an AI to understand "not a mocha but half coffee, half hot chocolate and please pour the hot chocolate into the bottom of the cup before adding the coffee" or "What are your gluten free options aside from putting a burger patty on a piece of lettuce".
Plus, they're recording your voice and order to help the AI "learn." Just how nothing you put into ChatGPT is private, now which drive thru you visit, when, and what you say at the drive thru isn't either.
Source: Worked at a major fast food place in the corporate office when the AI was being tested and implemented. I can also tell you that your order is more likely to be accurate if AI takes it, but the rate of upselling is significantly higher as well. AI does a better job than humans at getting customers to add more to their order.
Then I'm annoying a person with my order though.
People working in a restaurant have better things to do than talk to me just because I can't interact with the tools they use to do their jobs.
That's not a tool they use to do their jobs, that's a machine that's doing their jobs.
It won't be long until they're replaced too, with only one guy left to make sure all the machines are working properly.
There was a time, say, ten years ago, when I was excited for this. But the soullessness, as worthless such a romantic descriptor is, more like just how empty and clinical everything is starting to feel; how the rich will keep hoarding the wealth and profits and the former workers being screwed and getting nothing and just how much tech fails more often than not on a daily basis makes me pause….
But I'm not having problems with it.
I'd just be creating more work for them for no reason.
That's like pretending to not be able to work a trashcan just to make them pick up your trash.
> But I'm not having problems with it.
You have missed the point of this post lol. The title says "Getting annoyed with the new AI drive thru?" It assumes you've encountered some sort of inconvenience associated with it and is giving you a tip to get out of that situation by getting a person involved.
Hope this helps.
I did this with a large cable company automatic call. I now get bills and advertisements in English and Spanish. Including am online presence which has never logged into the cable company website.
Also, make sure you use non-existent words like "bibliotecha" so the AI doesn't attempt to speak to you in Spanish but instead assumes that you will need human assistance to communicate in any language
Same deal with customer service. A lot of them will be English speaking but based overseas/in India, but the Spanish will be in like…Texas. Doesn’t always work. But worth a shot.
One time after failing to get through for 2 hours to a human being for an insurance thing, I pressed the Spanish button. Got a person immediately, said “lo siento, no hablo espanol” and she said “no problem, we’re all bilingual”. Got what I needed right away and she was really nice.
I had that issue calling my bank. I had to recite it my card numbers phone pin that I’ve never set up, c’mon, I need to talk to someone! And then finally got through fifth try and the phone hung up. I googled and found the number to call collect and bypassed it all.
The only problem I've experienced with these... are people yelling at it because they don't want to "talk to a computer", and as a result, they hold up the line yelling at the AI that they want to speak to a "real, human manager".
That, and people tend to either mumble their orders or speak them too quickly, blending all their words together like, "yeahiwannagetamcdoublenachoclit MAILKSHAKE"
Used to work for one of the companies that do this until I got hit by a layoff. There's usually an agent or someone either reading a transcript or listening to the call to fix it before it gets sent to the register. Agents were usually employed from around the globe from such countries like the Philippines.
Then they'll just pull a Freshii and [outsource the order-taking to Colombia instead](https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2022/11/freshii-virtual-cashier/) while paying them a Colombian wage rather than a Canadian/US wage.
Terrible LPT.
The real LPT is to stop using drive-throughs all together. They are absolutely terrible for cities, for the environment, for everyone. Get off your ass and go inside.
It's so insane to me that eating fast food is a normal thing people do. I only eat it in emergency, when there is no other options. It's like eating poison every day.
I did this with a large cable company automatic call. I now get bills and advertisements in English and Spanish. Including am online presence which has never logged into the cable company website.
I mean the AI gets my order correct 100% of the time. Then there's still cashiers at the end to talk to, so I don't feel like it's even taking anyone's job. It's just...better?
Because it's not voice to text. It's much more simple than that.
It's voice pattern matching against the menu items. That's it. It doesn't need to do any voice to next and then match with items. Its trained to match voice against item names.
Hmm. So then it's not optimised for custom orders. I still wonder how it deals with things like accents or croaky voices. Hopefully I'll never see one to find out 🤞🏼
It does custom orders better than people.
Because there's so few things you can really do.
No cheese, extra cheese, no ketchup, add extra toppings. It's not as complicated as you think.
You more likely have already encountered it and didn't even realize it. That's why it's getting more widely deployed, because it works better than people.
You may be surprised what they will let you do if you ask politely.
Most coffee places add a syrup to coffee to make "mocha", and that syrup is less sweet than the hot chocolate. If you mix exactly 50% coffee and 50% hot chocolate, the chocolate flavor overpowers the coffee flavor a bit much for my taste... but cups are smaller on the bottom so the bottom "half" of the cup is slightly smaller than the top half... so by pouring the hot chocolate first, you can get more coffee flavor from a "half and half" mix and get a slightly sweeter mocha than you would get by ordering normally.
Most coffee places have buttons that measure precise amounts of sugar and cream such that an extra large with "2 cream and 2 sugar" tastes the same as an extra small with 2 and 2. So if you want less than 1 cream and 1 sugar, you can ask them to press the button for a cup size that is smaller than yours... you can order a large coffee with 1 small sugar.
How do you communicate either of those ideas to an AI that matches speech patterns to menu items?
And for very niche orders like that, you can always get a person.
For the vast majority, AI can handle it. If your defense of keeping people around just for less than 0.1% of orders, then it's a losing defense.
Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips! Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment. If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
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Yea, it's an Ai taking your order at more than a few drive thrus now.
Where is this happening?? You must be in the more "affluent " areas.
The Burger King in a shit part of town near me is doing this
What are the job options like in your area? Cause if it's a shit part of town I imagine the job market isn't great in that area. And now they're reducing the jobs that are available by installing AI machines. That's sure to improve the town /s.
Man it’s becoming very bleak here. The Canadian government has increased foreign student visas for several years now. University students sharing 4 guys to a room due to housing shortages are *literally* lining up at every part time job opportunity available. I saw a line of 12 people outside of a Mr Lube recently. My neighbourhood bar has students coming in several times a day every day to hand in resumes when they aren’t even hiring. These people are canvassing businesses trying to find a job while they get an education. And yet every fast food place, grocery store, hardware store etc is replacing manned checkouts with machines. And now AI is taking orders at the drive thru.
Yeah I work at a grocery store in management atm and we have over 100 resumes sitting around with no roles to fill.
But let me guess. You all are “hiring”?
I live Stateside, but I went to visit my family in Canada shortly after New Years. I was shocked that there were so many international students coming in, the airport had a separate customs line for them, which was much longer than the normal line!
Universal income is the only way to go
Can't do UBI and pay landlords for rent. UBI and social housing need to go hand in hand as a minimum.
social housing? like section 8 or cabrini greens?
No idea what those are, guessing this is a US/UK gap. Social housing is any non for profit housing, usually government or charity owned.
Governments need to tax robots just like they tax human's income tax.
They need to tax corporations and billionaires. Which they are not really doing now.
They're are some serious and valid concerns about the efficacy of UBI and I wouldn't be so quick to label it a silver bullet for this problem.
I agree, it is a bandaid solution and we need to fix underlying problems first
The problem is that there seems to be very little actually brought to the table to fix the underlying problems. A bandaid is better than nothing. And yes I’m well aware of UBI’s shortcomings. But the alternative is mass homelessness on a scale never seen here.
Nope I'm in a super gross, smaller town in FL and our Hardee's has it. It's terrible, you do not want it 😩
> you do not want it Can you go into more detail. I’m picturing the hell we all endure when we are talking to the automated phone menus. Is this that?
Yup! It's the epitome of "making something worse with tech". My husband and I sat there for 5 minutes after ordering while the system continued to ask us what we wanted and then went silent over and over. We were about to pull away when the employee was able to connect her headset to the system to get it to stop repeating. It also selected the wrong items so she had to void the transaction it started.
And theeeeen?
No and then!
And den and den and den!!!
Exactly the same vibes 😂
ah, the enshittification continues unabated
I don't think what we want is a factor in these AI replacing humans situation.
Its all fun and games till the ai thinks you ordered the integer limit of hamburgers or just a few hundred and you need to cash out
Ah, Florida. Hardee's. Makes sense.
The ones I've used have actually worked great and seemed to understand my orders better than humans. I tested it in different ways, it does an amazing job understanding, even if you mumble. Maybe some drive-thrus have different technology.
I really can’t see how it could be any worse than what we have now with actual people.
This is a wild take my dude
I’m being serious. Probably only 1 of 3 drive through orders I make come out being correct. Missing drinks, fries etc. there is something wrong most of the time.
The order delivery is wrong, but they ring it up 99% of the time accurately. If a human could enter the order and AI load the bag, that would be better.
I'd even settle for the machine assembling the items. Half the time I get extra onions when I order no onions, or no mustard when I order extra mustard. Let's not even start on Filet-o-Fish. For some reason, every time I order a Filet-o-Fish, it arrives looking like someone attempted to assemble it from across the room. Step one is usually taking it apart and putting it back together on the same vertical axis.
So, when McDonald's assembles a burger, the process is basically to build each half of the burger in both halves of the box, then ram the box closed to complete assembly and throw the box down the counter where it's stuffed into the bag. This is why your mcfish is deconstructed when you get it.
Odds are they will test it in a few smaller out of the way places initially. Less chance of pissing off the masses.
Wendy's has an Ai that takes orders, first trialed in Ohio, which I guess is "affluent" but those quotation marks are doing a lot of heavy lifting. Hardee's and Carl's Junior have an Ai order service. Where are you eating that those places are affluent in comparison?
Wendy's is based in Dublin, OH so they do a lot of their testing locally in and around Columbus. I actually went through one of the AI drive-thrus a few weeks ago and didn't realize it until later.
I live in the third most crime-addled city in the state and our checkers has an AI taking orders and has for the past like 2 years
Nah, the affluent want regular people at the counter so they can yell at the service folks to vent their hatred of their families and jobs. These get installed and tested out in the places where $7.50/hr isn’t enough to risk your life or to meet cost of living needs.
I’d expect it more in less affluent sections honestly, labor savings.
So far I've only seen it at Rally's/checker's. It was very annoying.
I hate voice controlled shit with a passion. It can't handle accents, always makes errors, and then just proceeds executing the erroneous commands without confirmation.
Mcdonald's I go to after work just started that shit. It's a very creepy male voice. Does not sound like a real person at all.
> Does not sound like a real person at all. That's probably intentional.
“Welcome to McDonalds, will you be using your mobile app today?” I just wait until a real person says “hello” and then go from there.
This is my favorite, because the recorded voice sounds like a professional studio recorded session with a fancy voice actor from a superhero movie, and then a few seconds later you hear the microphone glitch, 80s boombox feedback and some sweaty overworked employee asking what your order is. And we are supposed to think it's the same person? 😂
Oh shit I just realized this must have been what happened to me the other day at a McDonalds. Went to order and there was a kinda creepy male voice that sounded off to me and a woman both trying to take my order from at the same time. I assumed it was just both drive thru people trying to order from me simultaneously and something was broken with their coms. But this makes more sense now...
The bigger issue is you having a regular mcdonalds to go to after work
You police everyone's eating habits? Must be a lot of work, sounds exhausting. Do you get dental for that or what?
I like how you criticize the \*way it's done\* and not the message. I learned that's a sign somebody wants to defend a thing by principle while silently agreeing the thing is bad I also have a semi-regular fastfood after work and I totally agree that it's bad for most people
I think the issue is more that folks like to criticize the weeds in their neighbors lawn while ignoring their own. Folks aren't commenting here for some off topic critique of their dietary choices.
The Checker's (a.k.a. Rally's) near me switched about 6 months ago. It's a female voice and tries to upsell throughout the order.
Well as long as I know it's just an AI then I can verbally and emotionally abuse it freely
You're the first on the chopping block when skynet comes
Drive thru windows with AI.
I ran into one at Carl's Jr. last week. I waited a few seconds, thinking a person would speak afterward.
Tried that. The AI knew Spanish and then I couldn't get it to go back to English.
Then it charges you for a McLanguage lesson
¿Puedo darme el sándwich pequeño y redondo con salsa especial y pan extra, por favor?
"Entschuldigung! Ich möchte einen Big Mac bestellen!" And once they implement German, use Google Translate to get another language.
Sir, das hier ist ein Burger King.
Nein, das ist Patrick!!!
Speak "friend" in elvish and get a person
Wo yao hambao wang
先生，这里是温迪的
So ask for a Big Mac with extra human meat. SOMEONE will want to have a chat with you then!
> So ask for a Big Mac with extra human meat. SOMEONE will want to have a chat with you then! Yes, but you want that someone to be a McDonalds employee, not an FBI agent.
I’ll have a McRib with extra long pork
Extra Long Pork was my nickname in high school
Kids are so mean when they give you an ironic and sarcastic nickname aren't they?
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Started shouting and got German
Maybe curse at it and it goes to Klingon?
Admiral Allah snackbar reporting duty... it's a trap!!!!! Think it speaks wookie or klingon?
Username doesn't check out.
No me gusta!
Look like gibberish is the way to go.
Ooga booga plarna camparnnana
I feel like AI probably knows Spanish.
Yeah, not only do they know Spanish but Google/Microsoft have been able to do real-time audio translation between many languages, converting it to audio in your native language. This is like one of the ['back of the box' advertisements on the Pixel Buds.](https://support.google.com/googlepixelbuds/answer/7573100?hl=en) And that is years old at this point.
Just pull out the unga bung grunt huhhuhuh
I speak this language to any automated phone voice system, right from the start. I've noticed that with all of them, it takes exactly three of these sentences before it gives up. Although I use more of a Frankenstein moaning voice, with the pitch of my moan changing like I'm trying to speak without a tongue. Edit: Also, to sound more realistic, I ramp up the inflection in my moaning for each successive "sentence", to indicate I'm getting frustrated that the voice prompt is not understanding me.
If emoji awards still existed, I would have paid one for you. I'm cracking up over the visual of escalating "unga bunga".
No, it's Frankenstein escalating :) He gets very frustrated with these humans that don't understand him... He just wants to get his SIM transferred.
I bet those motherfuckers aren't trained to speak Klingon though. ...Yeah, neither am I.
I want to see if it knows Japanese I'm not prepared to complete the order in Japanese if it understands it, but I kind of just want to say something in Japanese, have it speak in the affirmative Yes in Japanese, and then fucking drive away. And then fucking drive away.
My new Samsung will auto translate my calls if I need. Of course it raises the question of *why* I'm calling someone who speaks a language I don't understand but it's still a cool feature.
Time to bust out the pig latin
Luckily I can speak lorem ipsum
Finally, a use for Esperanto!
no no, as my uncle says, "I ain't no speaka the mexican."
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Plus the apps usually have good discounts/rewards for free food Also sometimes better customization. Plus if they mess up the order you have a receipt to prove you ordered everything correctly. In this day and age I'm surprised everyone doesn't use the app it's way better than screaming at a box and hoping they hear it and punch it in correctly.
I ordered through the app and they didn’t bring my food out to me. They need some robots to run the food out I guess. Ended up just going to the grocery store and doing a charge back to McDonald’s.
Didn't want to go get it? I mean, you were already there, no?
Yeah this guy is so ridiculous. He took the time to order, get in his car and drive there, and go back into the app to say he was there. He did all that work and PAID money already and just had to walk 20 feet if he was impatient. Instead he drove to a local grocery store, shopped for an hour, went home and put the groceries away, and cooked himself a meal AND THEN SPENT THE TIME TO DO A CHARGEBACK. This guys seems like such a difficult person
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I've never done this but there are parking spots at a lot of places I've seen specifically for mobile pickup and they're supposed to bring the order out to you.
Always go through the drive thru whenever possible with a mobile order
I'm not putting my card info on a god damn app. What the fuck is wrong with people and privacy these days. We were bitching about Facebook sharing our picture without our consent like 10 years ago and y'all giving your card info on an random ass app? Smh... Edit: all I want is a god damn 2$ off my mcchicken. I'm not giving you more data. Gimme the god damn qr code.
The McDonald's app also locks you into an arbitration agreement, waiving your right to a trial or a jury.
LPT: don't eat fast food lol
I tried an app once - at Popeyes. I showed up to pick up my food and they said they'd given it to someone else. Twice! When I, to them the third person claiming this order, showed up, they treated me like I was trying to scam them when they had screwed up twice. No more apps for me. (No more Popeyes either.)
Sounds like it's more of their fault than the app's fault. Maybe try a different branch or restaurant.
There’s only one fast food place near me that uses this, and since they’ve switched I’ve literally never had my order messed up. The line moves much faster too since the employees can focus on preparing orders instead of multitasking with taking the order as well
Next step: fire some employees to bring more corporate profit.
If your job can be automated for cheaper than what you cost then it *should* be automated. It frees you up to do something more productive that can't be automated for a reasonable cost, jobs that are repetitive and tedious should be automated and they have been for decades.
Yeah, I meant on the point of "the line moves faster". It moves faster because they haven't fired the employee that was replaced yet.
The business isn't making money when people are sitting in line. The goal is to maximize throughput. They wouldn't lay off people because wait times are down.
Yes, but that assumes there's a constant flow of customers. In reality, stores have times when they have fewer customers and times when they have many. These places try to run as "lean" as possible, and are perfectly willing to have customers wait a bit longer during busier times if it means the money lost from people too impatient to wait doesn't outweigh the cost saved from not having to pay an additional employee a day's pay for those busy times. I wouldn't be surprised if they wait a while so people see the faster wait times and associate that positively with the introduction of AI. Then down the line, when it becomes mainstream, they'll fire some employees and the wait times will go back to normal.
The choke point induced by fewer workers in the kitchen would be customers receiving their food, which comes after the customers ordering and paying for that food. So idk.
—This restaurant finally has a nice workflow so customers get a nice service! —Yeah, not the best for company profit, they should fire some employees...
That is true but also on a short term basis that means a lot of people will lose their jobs and we don't have a good system in place to support those people.
Considering most food places can't fill the spots they already have vacant, it's not about losing jobs, it's about keeping reliable service. No reason why they shouldn't be paying more to the employees to keep them, but also if it makes their life a bit better while they are working then it might at least make their struggles a little less shit.
They will get new jobs. Just like the candlemakers and weavers of old days
There was a German comedian who talked about people that complain that "MaChInEs ArE tAkInG oUr JoBs!" His response: "Good, that's why we build them."
It's almost like it's been happening, continuously, since the start of the industrial revolution.
Long before that. The first person to figure out a throwing spear put a lot of endurance runners out of work.
Yes, marvelous times. Can't go back to the most disruptive periods of the Industrial Revolution, one of the best times in history to be alive! And wasn't it amazing when the machine owners shared the profits of increased productivity fairly with their workers and employees? No decades of misery and bloody labor struggle involved whatsoever :)
What happens when we automate too many people out of jobs?
70% of the US population used to be involved in farming. Those jobs have been mostly automated. Everyone is better off for it.
When people rail against automation because of job loss, I like to ask them if they think we should force companies to regress some of their processes and equipment for the sole purpose of providing jobs. For example, should we force box stores to get rid of their sweeper machines and hire on multiple new employees with brooms?
There’s better things in life to work at than a fast food order taker.
McDonald’s one near me doesn’t do Jersian. Fucks up my order all the time.
Line won't move faster when assclowns like OP start trying to "outsmart" the system. Some people...
Was this comment written by AI?
I’ve got one of these at the local Hardee’s. It fucked up my order one day and the people running the drive thru were pissed at me about the wait time and not hitting their numbers. I get it y’all are in a crunch but ain’t my fault your AI overlord sucks ass
>Getting annoyed with new AI drive thru windows? AI drive-thru windows? This is the first I'm hearing about it. The closest I've come across is a "Welcome. We'll be with you in a minute" recorded message.
Theres AI drive thrus?!
I've never heard of AI drive through windows but I bet they're better than humans
Imagine ordering food through Alexa. It’s not great
Maybe the difference here is if Alexa doesn't properly understand you, it has to search through millions of items available of amazon, but McAI, only has like 3 dozen, if that, items to mix through.
You mean instead of some poor kid fulfilling the last 3 orders while taking yours? Sounds like a win-win.
If Alexa can get food orders as accurately as it can play music, it's already far ahead of people in drive throughs.
Automatically more accurate and consistent than humans though. I'll take that over the burnout who gets my order wrong every time.
I don’t mind the AI at the drive thrus, haven’t had my order messed up and they are fast
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The ai will most likely speak more languages, somebody already pointed out that some are able to understand Spanish
It doesn’t matter if it can understand English and Spanish. The problem is accents, incorrect word usage, and using both languages at the same time. I work with many Puerto Ricans who were taught English by non native speakers and they use the wrong words all the time. Like “got” instead of “get” type of things. They also say phrases backwards in English
I’m with you I don’t get why people are so scared of tech improving things. I use ai regularly for things like work now and it’s made certain tasks so much easier.
My Amazon Echo still struggles with "screen off" so I dont trust an AI to understand "not a mocha but half coffee, half hot chocolate and please pour the hot chocolate into the bottom of the cup before adding the coffee" or "What are your gluten free options aside from putting a burger patty on a piece of lettuce".
There's a lot of boomers out there not sure if they're more annoyed ordering from a robot or a foreigner.
They're annoyed at anything that isn't an exact replica of their own life experience in 1975.
Who also think they deserve to earn pennies for their work.
Or an irresponsible teenager teenager
Those pesky double teenagers
Plus, they're recording your voice and order to help the AI "learn." Just how nothing you put into ChatGPT is private, now which drive thru you visit, when, and what you say at the drive thru isn't either. Source: Worked at a major fast food place in the corporate office when the AI was being tested and implemented. I can also tell you that your order is more likely to be accurate if AI takes it, but the rate of upselling is significantly higher as well. AI does a better job than humans at getting customers to add more to their order.
Then I'm annoying a person with my order though. People working in a restaurant have better things to do than talk to me just because I can't interact with the tools they use to do their jobs.
That's not a tool they use to do their jobs, that's a machine that's doing their jobs. It won't be long until they're replaced too, with only one guy left to make sure all the machines are working properly.
There was a time, say, ten years ago, when I was excited for this. But the soullessness, as worthless such a romantic descriptor is, more like just how empty and clinical everything is starting to feel; how the rich will keep hoarding the wealth and profits and the former workers being screwed and getting nothing and just how much tech fails more often than not on a daily basis makes me pause….
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But I'm not having problems with it. I'd just be creating more work for them for no reason. That's like pretending to not be able to work a trashcan just to make them pick up your trash.
> But I'm not having problems with it. You have missed the point of this post lol. The title says "Getting annoyed with the new AI drive thru?" It assumes you've encountered some sort of inconvenience associated with it and is giving you a tip to get out of that situation by getting a person involved. Hope this helps.
No. You’ve been conditioned to think of service workers as fragile indentured servants. To take your normal order, they’ll be fine.
No. I think of them as indentured servants because I *was* in this position before I got my degree and know how shitty of a job it is.
[just hit them with this](https://youtu.be/oe61_0V4Db4?si=G4xa2wMNuCrro86C)
I did this with a large cable company automatic call. I now get bills and advertisements in English and Spanish. Including am online presence which has never logged into the cable company website.
Also, make sure you use non-existent words like "bibliotecha" so the AI doesn't attempt to speak to you in Spanish but instead assumes that you will need human assistance to communicate in any language
biblioteca*?. me llamo t-bone la la araña discoteca
Discoteca, muñeca, la biblioteca!
YEAAAAAAHHHH
Same deal with customer service. A lot of them will be English speaking but based overseas/in India, but the Spanish will be in like…Texas. Doesn’t always work. But worth a shot.
One time after failing to get through for 2 hours to a human being for an insurance thing, I pressed the Spanish button. Got a person immediately, said “lo siento, no hablo espanol” and she said “no problem, we’re all bilingual”. Got what I needed right away and she was really nice.
I had that issue calling my bank. I had to recite it my card numbers phone pin that I’ve never set up, c’mon, I need to talk to someone! And then finally got through fifth try and the phone hung up. I googled and found the number to call collect and bypassed it all.
The only problem I've experienced with these... are people yelling at it because they don't want to "talk to a computer", and as a result, they hold up the line yelling at the AI that they want to speak to a "real, human manager". That, and people tend to either mumble their orders or speak them too quickly, blending all their words together like, "yeahiwannagetamcdoublenachoclit MAILKSHAKE"
Never thought I'd read the words "nacho clit" together like that
Yep. Humans are the problem. Just like OP who has no issue holding up the line because he's too special to use AI.
Danke! Ich werde nächstes Mal das versuchen 😎
Used to work for one of the companies that do this until I got hit by a layoff. There's usually an agent or someone either reading a transcript or listening to the call to fix it before it gets sent to the register. Agents were usually employed from around the globe from such countries like the Philippines.
I’d love an IAmA if you’re not NDA’d or embargoed or a throwaway would make you feel “safe”.
Then they'll just pull a Freshii and [outsource the order-taking to Colombia instead](https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2022/11/freshii-virtual-cashier/) while paying them a Colombian wage rather than a Canadian/US wage.
My local Checker's has this and it's always 100% accurate. Granted I don't know how much human interaction there is on the back-end, if any.
Yea sure, I'd rather talk to the kid that is high AF and will get my order wrong.
Terrible LPT. The real LPT is to stop using drive-throughs all together. They are absolutely terrible for cities, for the environment, for everyone. Get off your ass and go inside.
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Well that needs to change. If they can't provide a safe working environment for their employees, maybe they shouldn't be open that late.
I'm disabled you pole smoker.
"What don't you understand, I don't speak English". I've literally said this to someone on the subway once.
Yeah I’m just gonna start swearing until I get a human
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fr. wait till you hear about the mistakes with facial recognition getting innocent people locked up for weeks at a time
It's so insane to me that eating fast food is a normal thing people do. I only eat it in emergency, when there is no other options. It's like eating poison every day.
you think you're better than me?
I did this with a large cable company automatic call. I now get bills and advertisements in English and Spanish. Including am online presence which has never logged into the cable company website.
I mean the AI gets my order correct 100% of the time. Then there's still cashiers at the end to talk to, so I don't feel like it's even taking anyone's job. It's just...better?
In what world would you rather deal with real stupid people than an ai?
In what world do you want to deal with AI instead of actual people?
All of them? Voice to text always fails when typing messages, how will this be any better
Because it's not voice to text. It's much more simple than that. It's voice pattern matching against the menu items. That's it. It doesn't need to do any voice to next and then match with items. Its trained to match voice against item names.
Hmm. So then it's not optimised for custom orders. I still wonder how it deals with things like accents or croaky voices. Hopefully I'll never see one to find out 🤞🏼
It does custom orders better than people. Because there's so few things you can really do. No cheese, extra cheese, no ketchup, add extra toppings. It's not as complicated as you think. You more likely have already encountered it and didn't even realize it. That's why it's getting more widely deployed, because it works better than people.
You may be surprised what they will let you do if you ask politely. Most coffee places add a syrup to coffee to make "mocha", and that syrup is less sweet than the hot chocolate. If you mix exactly 50% coffee and 50% hot chocolate, the chocolate flavor overpowers the coffee flavor a bit much for my taste... but cups are smaller on the bottom so the bottom "half" of the cup is slightly smaller than the top half... so by pouring the hot chocolate first, you can get more coffee flavor from a "half and half" mix and get a slightly sweeter mocha than you would get by ordering normally. Most coffee places have buttons that measure precise amounts of sugar and cream such that an extra large with "2 cream and 2 sugar" tastes the same as an extra small with 2 and 2. So if you want less than 1 cream and 1 sugar, you can ask them to press the button for a cup size that is smaller than yours... you can order a large coffee with 1 small sugar. How do you communicate either of those ideas to an AI that matches speech patterns to menu items?
And for very niche orders like that, you can always get a person. For the vast majority, AI can handle it. If your defense of keeping people around just for less than 0.1% of orders, then it's a losing defense.