[oneweirdtrick]

>Maria Trisler is often dismissed early from her shifts at a McDonald’s in Peoria, Ill., when the computers say sales are slow. The same sometimes happens to Ms. Navarro at Starbucks.

Reminds me of the beginning of Marshall Brain's novella 'Manna':

>Manna was connected to the cash registers, so it knew how many people were flowing through the restaurant. The software could therefore predict with uncanny accuracy when the trash cans would fill up, the toilets would get dirty and the tables needed wiping down.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

[fixedd]

>Maria Trisler is often dismissed early from her shifts at a McDonald’s in Peoria, Ill., when the computers say sales are slow. The same sometimes happens to Ms. Navarro at Starbucks.

I haven't been effected by this sort of thing in years, but I've always felt that they should have to pay you for hours they schedule you, whether they use you or not.

[dragonwriter]

> I haven't been effected by this sort of thing in years, but I've always felt that they should have to pay you for hours they schedule you, whether they use you or not.

What I think would make sense in a regime where minimum wage exists, given that people often work multiple jobs and such scheduled-but-canceled-at-the-last-minute hours effectively exclude other work is to include hours scheduled or where the employee is required to be "on call" for work that are not cancelled sufficiently far in advance -- obviously, one needs to decide where to set the bar here -- are counted as hours worked for minimum wage purposes (including for calculation of overtime pay due at minimum wage -- and for hours worked for related purposes like "full time" status as it relates to any benefit mandates, etc.), but not as hours worked at the actual wage for the position, or overtime entitlement based on the actual wage. So, you can't use schedule-and-cancel to drop the pay for the "reserved" time of an employee below minimum wage.

[TwiztidK]

Or at least compensate employees somehow if their shifts are cut short. Something like a flat-rate $10-20 inconvenience fee for cancelling hours and any additional commute costs (if they have to take the bus instead of getting a ride).

[Maxious]

In Australia a casual fast food/takeaway employee gets paid a minimum of 3 hours per shift, even if the shift is cut short. http://www.fairwork.gov.au/Employee-entitlements/hours-of-wo...

[hatandsocks]

> >Manna was connected to the cash registers, so it knew how many people were flowing through the restaurant. The software could therefore predict with uncanny accuracy when the trash cans would fill up, the toilets would get dirty and the tables needed wiping down.

> http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

The first two chapters are really good, but it goes downhill very quickly. Fiction requires suspension of disbelief, and I nearly burst out laughing at the dialog in the fifth chapter. It also fails to explore some of the more interesting aspects of robots-as-blind-managers.

For example, the robot asks workers in a store to report the shelf stock and asks a second to verify. What happens when typically-mischievous teenage workers lie to the computer (either individually or as a conspiracy)? Do they convince the computer that duct tape is a highly-shoplifted item? Is the software smart enough to correlate the misreporting with specific workers or groups of workers (and does it ever misidentify the perpetrator)? Do engineers spend untold hours figuring out why "Manna" keeps overstocking (or understocking) duct tape?

The computer manager in Manna is shown as a all-knowing with human intelligence and common sense. We all know that real software isn't like that.

[rsync]

"Maria Trisler is often dismissed early from her shifts at a McDonald’s in Peoria, Ill., when the computers say sales are slow. The same sometimes happens to Ms. Navarro at Starbucks."

Wouldn't this be farily easy to game ?

That is, I don't serve anyone at a register for a 10 minute period, so I quickly buy a small coke using my own money ... thus simulating a customer ... which would (I presume) throw off, or reset the whole algorithm.

Two assumptions - first, that the software really isn't that smart, and second, that it "fails safe" ... which is to say, if traffic patterns don't match up to existing models, just give up and keep people working and try again later.

So I would think this would be quite simple (and cheap) to game ... maybe four workers get together and chip in to simulate 2-3 meal purchases, thus gaining an hour or more of paid work ?

[jacalata]

You're also assuming that this would not be easily noticed by the manager on shift (or that they would not try to prevent it, perhaps by firing a worker), and that you could shift the algorithm with an amount small enough that the workers (making ~$7/hr) can afford it without wiping out the income they would receive from the extra hour, and that the workers would band together instead of thinking 'well I won't be the one sent home so I'm not going to spend $2 on keeping Sarah here for another hour'.

[oh_sigh]

That seems like a miss. I don't understand why, if they have such good technology, they wouldn't just have sensors on the trashcans or toilets that inform them when they need emptying/cleaning.

[hatandsocks]

If you were building a system like this for real, you'd probably put sensors on toilets and trash cans in addition to the cash register connection. Real sensors fail, and, in a system where workers are explicitly discouraged from using common sense, that leads to overflowing trash cans.