Skip to Content
Uncategorized

Despite more tech, you will have to wait even longer for a Big Mac

March 13, 2018

McDonald's new tech initiatives are pushing employees to continuously perform more tasks without any change in pay. And workers have had enough.

Too many options: The fast-food giant has been pushing more tech-infused ordering avenues like mobile apps, delivery, and self-order kiosks. As former employee Dudley Dickerson told Bloomberg, “They added a lot of complicated things. It makes it harder for the workers.”

Record turnover: The turnover rate in the fast-food industry is 150 percent, the highest since data began being recorded in 1995.

What this means for you: You’ll have to wait a little longer for your Shamrock Shake. Less-experienced employees juggling orders from all these new platforms could be to blame for the average 30-second increase in customer wait times last year, as reported by QSR Magazine.

Making more from less: Despite worker struggles, these new tech initiatives seem to be helping McDonald’s financially. The company saw about a 50 percent increase in revenue earned per employee. Numbers like that could make McDonald’s more likely to adopt more technological solutions, even if they take a bit of adjustment for the workers.

What’s next? McDonald’s has no announced plans for any burger-flipping robots, but executives may be watching to see if that technology develops better habits than the current workers.

Want to stay up to date on the future of work? Sign up for our newest newsletter, Clocking In!

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.