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by faeriechangling 1557 days ago
> Let them do other, more interesting jobs.

What jobs are there, especially for somebody who may quite bluntly not be the sharpest tool in the box? The labor market is not prepared to absorb these workers.

2 comments

Chick-fil-a has people walking around and smiling and asking people if they need anything. Picking up trash, giving refills, whatever.

Every fast food place is understaffed right now (eg, Burger King has a help wanted sign over their drive through menu) so I think the robots will pick up the slack from all the missing humans.

Would you agree that the baseline skill set to be employable at any wage has slowly creeped up over the past century?
No, I would say the opposite, but I would also say that's the problem. We have deliberately tried to make every entry level job idiot proof.

100+ years ago, industries weren't solved yet. Customer interaction was improvised, food service involved actual cooking skills, products were still hand crafted. Today jobs that involve customer interaction are scripted. Food and commodity production use preprocessed, packaged ingredients, and the process is pipelined. Entry level jobs today have no wiggle room for creativity, and very minimal amount of training that is portable across jobs, because that's what maximizes profits.