__x wrote in /m10:
"Automated fast food has been dear to my heart for some time."

All I can say is "Horn and Hardart".

Stefan Jones: Thanks for the suggestion. Had never thought of writing about that. I always thought it was kind of boring compared to other stories, but then again people seem to think my other stories are bullshit.

Am working on something now, which I think might have a good chance. Suffice it to say, I hope to have a career which will rival that of Caryl Chessman.

biot grrillllls

that's all

Related to payment by ATM: a company called Indivos, together with Visa, tested payment by fingerprint in a fast food location. I don't know whether it was McDonald's or not, but the inducement to sign up was a free hamburger.

The only problem they encountered were two elderly people (called by them "goats"): "Lady’s husband was convinced this was the “Mark of the Beast”, and made her un-enroll:

Details:
http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/000114.html

Automated fast food has been dear to my heart for some time.

Lardo's my first concept was in response to the high speed lifestyle of the Seattle area. The idea was a narrow trailer with metal counters you swipe your card and a robot blorches a pre-measured portions of lard, caffiene tablets, and granulated sugar on to a disposable papar plate, as you walk through you shovel the goo down your face. Cheap, efficient, and the selling point is purity- no vegetable or wheat contamination will be found in Lardo's premium grade lard, sugar, and caffiene.

The second concept is "Tubes" I will tell you about that later but let me just say it involves "pressure".

That sounds like Story material, Dutch. As in, write something about the experience.

It also synchs in with this SF snippet I wrote about two itinerant characters. They hitch into a town and need cash. One guy, fortunately, has a McD employment card. It has a work history and behavior record, and lets you do spot work. Walk into any McDonalds just before a rush, present it to the Manager, and there's a fair chance you'll be handed a shrinkwrapped uniform and pressed into service for a few hours.

I hate McDonald's -- everything that it stands for. I would really like to burn all of them to the ground.

That said, McDonald's is one of the few places where just about anyone can get a job. With a small amount of charisma, just about anyone over 21 can get a management job there, which almost pays enough to live on. It is absolutely wage slavery of the worst kind, but there are worse things one could do to get $100 on short notice.

I once travelled 300 miles to a small town, with only $20 in my pocket, and stayed there for three months. I was able to do it because I got a job at McDonald's the day I showed up, which provided free food and a job reference for talking an old lady into renting me an apartment with no deposit.

McDonald's is one of the few places that never do background checks. Or even reference checks, for that matter.

Between outsourcing tech jobs to India and replacing entry level jobs with robots, we're headed for Unemployment City.

Old news. Automated garbage handling has been around a long time.

I hope they get robots to clean the bathrooms soon. ugh.

If you thought that 2 million people losing their jobs over the do not call list was bad, just wait until every mcD's employee is replaced by robots.

Oh no! What are Media Studies graduates going to do now?

According to this essay, McD is already testing ordering kiosks. I, for one, welcome our new robot order-taking masters--the role of the cashiers at many fast-food places has already been reduced to a voice-recognition service anyway. And they don't even do that well--you can generally lower the chances of your order getting screwed up by learning to speak in terms of the cash register buttons. Mass-market franchise eateries are no place for humans--their main value propositions are global consistency, speed, cheapness, and thoughtlessness, not the humanity of their staff.

Because without6 the human interaction element at all, they can't really promte the happy family restaurant atmosphere. it becomes a cold clinical exercise to get really not actually terribly nice food.

Without smiley immigrant worker on $5 an hour to be nice to your kid when they hand over the happy mean you're left with unhealthy grease laden food dispensed by a robot who says "good day".

Now - a complete 3D experience with a gorgeous .cgi figure in a cutesy McD hat - I'd be very interested in knowing what the reaction by shoppers might be to an ATM with that kind of pretend personality attachment.