[samsolomon]

You know, I'm not sure this goes into the automation category—this is more of an operational improvement.

Originally, you'd go to a restaurant. You'd sit at a counter. They would take your order and give you a drink along with your meal.

Then someone realized that it saved a huge amount of time just giving people cups and letting them fill their own drink. Not only that, but it made the job of staff easier, because they had one less thing to worry about.

That happened again when they started putting the credit card readers in front of cashiers. It was one less thing staff had to worry about. It also reduced the amount of time ordering took and made stealing credit card information more difficult.

I see this type of improvement inline with operational improvements. That's not to say automation isn't a threat—certainly self-driving cars are. I'm just not sure everything should be classified as automation.

[marchenko]

At my last McDo visit, in Switzerland, most of the ordering was through kiosks and the staff was repurposed toward table service. The restaurant was especially clean and friendly, and there seemed to be a lot of staff. So there is hope for complementarity.