261–270 of 401 posts
I work in midtown NYC near a Chick-fil-a location. Used to be a line down the block, went with a friend yesterday thinking we caught the line at a short time but turns out they were using smiley employees with ipads coordinating orders and that they were serving arguably more people than before. Very impressed with how seamlessly they've integrated tech in their brick and mortars in contrast with the countless "cashl…
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On the other hand when reading the article I kept thinking of the poor sod who has to cook a new batch of waffle fries because “The Edge” told him to.
Why do you consider the cook "a poor sod"? Because he/she is working a job and making a living? I imagine you didn't mean much by it but understand that just because everyone isn't employed in what many consider desirable professions doesn't mean their work is not important or that they don't take pride in what they do. Not meant to be a rant, just wanted to make the point.
In some sense, the automation of demand prediction takes some of the fun out of gaining that intuition yourself. On the other hand, it is nice not to be the queue blocker with orders piling up behind you because you weren't prepared for a sudden burst of traffic...
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For sure. Meant it more as a response to contents of the article that they've managed to break down their business processes into a subset of (dare I say) microservices that have allowed them to pinpoint weaknesses in efficiency and improve upon them - ie. the waffle fries example mentioned.
On the other hand when reading the article I kept thinking of the poor sod who has to cook a new batch of waffle fries because “The Edge” told him to.
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I've never been to a retail establishment with anything close to the credit card speed of CFA. The cashier can swipe and grab receipt in one smooth and quick motion. It's so fast you feel like it's broken or slight of hand. I wonder how they do it or why other companies can't or don't do it. CFA stores are so much busier than even an average McDonald's, maybe the efficiency gains are just worth more. No idea how they…
Petsmart was like the before the chip change over. It would typically take a few hundred MS to get approval and print the receipt. I have noticed that some chipotle cashiers print the receipt before the card goes through, the CFA cashiers could be doing something similar.
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Yes, instead of relying on dictionaries, words should mean whatever you want them to mean.
Bigotry does not just mean 'intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself.' It's a silly definition, not what I want it to mean.
This was posted in a devops-related slack not too long ago and caused quite a stir over CFA's lack of, uh, diversity. I know it's technically off-topic and frowned upon here, but I believe the fact that they make their beliefs such a big part of the company that it deserves to be pointed out.
If it's the latter, would you class the big tech companies as equally non-diverse, since Christians are frequently treated with derision there?
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Spoiler: It's a stack of Intel NUCs. Funny how the world has changed. I got my first taste of real computing from a guy in the next town who would buy dead PDP's from local McDonald's restaurants, fix them up, and sell them on. He always said the hardest part wasn't replacing broken parts, it was that invariably the machines would always have soda spilled in them, no matter where they were stored. Cleaning the inside…
I'd like to hear the story of why a McDonalds would need a PDP. Weren't they...expensive? They would be at the heart of university's IT department, or running a steel mill. Stuff like that. But until PCs came out, at a restaurant I can only picture registers and a dumb terminal hooked up to a distant mainframe.
Having worked with some of CFA's competition and comparing their IoT architectures, I'd say these guys have their heads on straight. Kudos to them.
Thanks! We appreciate the compliment! :)
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the domain is interesting, but I worry about the long-term effects of maximizing efficiencies (read: automation) forpeople who rely on jobs in that industry.
A myth about manufacturing jobs is that they all went overseas. Reality is that most of them were replaced by robots and automation. Low skill, low knowledge, repetitive work is key target for automation. Fast food workers wouldn't have large downstream effects. Automated truck driving would though. There are likely entire towns right off of highways that depend on humans passing through daily - restaurants, repair s…
Partially true, many of them went to Mexico. Import of partially completed goods, as well as automation of assembly, continue to drive overall manufacturing output in the USA. But many jobs have been exported. A recent high-profile example: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/carrier-plant-movin... and a study discussing overall impact to jobs: https://www.epi.org/publication/heading_south_u-s-mexico_tra...
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the domain is interesting, but I worry about the long-term effects of maximizing efficiencies (read: automation) forpeople who rely on jobs in that industry.
Why? I think that they move on to another service industry job such as customer service or something. I don't think working in a fast food restaurant is building the sort of skills that making a horizontal jump to another industry is outlandish.
Right, they can compete with all the other displaced workers for the #1 position most likely to be outsourced.
Hell, many Targets don't even have a customer service desk anymore. They demolish them and assign the workload of both sales and returns to a random cashier.
A lot of people are not qualified for skilled work and will never transcend entry-level fast-food jobs. If you take away those tasks that keep them productively occupied, it might be a good time to start buying stock in industries related to prison management.