I've tried this repeatedly. I've answered "No" to their upsale. I've sat there in silence, waiting for it to time out. I've asked for a human. Every time the AI takes my order, it adds nacho fries that I didn't order and specifically rejected.

The problem isn't that I need a human to fix it. The problem is that the AI is specifically programmed to ignore a rejected upsale. Their AI is smart enough to recognize the rest of my complicated order, but it can't understand "No"? Horseshit. They are using this fraudulent programming to increase their upsale metrics, expecting us to docilely accept the sale rather than raise a fuss.

Drive-offs are another of the metrics they look at. Since I've communicated with nobody but the AI, they have nobody but the AI to blame for the drive-off. They don't get to blame a human for failing to remediate the problem.

I'm surprised they're not hiring people in third world countries to take the orders since it's through a microphone.

Or just making people order through their phones and use the drive through as a pick up point.

Thanks for posting this take. The topic of AI taking jobs seems to garner a lot of emotional response but not much of a technology discussion.

There were people who were negative about using websites to place orders in the 90s in part because e-commerce killed order processing jobs and the need for phone reps at mail order catalogs.

In this case AI is being used as just another e-commerce UX, so it's really just a continuation of what's happening already.

People used to do things like put 18,000, or -1 and all kinds of other garbage in the fields on website order forms as well. That's just a programmers job to fix with reasonable input validation.

It wouldn't surprise me if drive-thru like Taco Bell started doing license plate recognition and reputation checking. So if you order and dash more than a couple times they might not take your order from outside in that car anymore.

On the upside they might be able to greet you by name and recall your last order:

Hello Mr Smith... Nice to see you today, would you like 10 cheesy gordita crunch tacos and 1 large diet Pepsi again?

I'm gonna guess you have never worked in fast food.

Window times are the metric they die by. Generally speaking, they start making your order the SECOND you order it, before you ever leave the ordering screen. Yes, even if the order changes mid order. Yes, they make, and throw away lots of food that is not paid for, forgotten, etc ... TONS of food (literally) is thrown away daily.

As for the water order? I would 1000% start making that order. If the higher ups think the AI is working correct, well then who am I to question it? Nobody who works fast food is paid enough to give a shit.

I don't think "fully auto drink machines" like what miso makes are really anywhere today.

Even the fully automatic solutions that do exist have limits to output which require human intervention. There's no drink machine spitting outputs directly to people waiting in cars at drive through windows.

I mean there's no point to it, it doesn't speed anything up.

For example this morning I had a client meeting (saturdays, ugh) so I went to the train station cause it has a mcdonalds and it opens at 630am. They have 5 kiosks there and one person manning the til. People who were ordering from the til were getting their orders faster than people who used the kiosks. I had to wait 10 minutes just to get a coffee and muffin simply because I used the kiosk.

And it doesn't even make sense. I would have assumed all the orders go through the same system regardless of where it was placed but apparently not. apparently people who don't use the kiosk get priority?

I'm actually not angry at McDonald's implementation of their online/kiosk/self serve ordering systems. Not a fan of an AI taking my order tho.

If I'm going through the drive through, just let me talk to a fucking person. They're standing at the window waiting to collect my payment, doing literally nothing else, just let them take the order too. It's eliminating work and adding to the global fuckary that is "AI" for absolutely no benefit to anyone.

Unless they're going to eliminate everyone except the person handing me the food, then fuck off with the AI slop.

10/10 times I would rather order from the app and just pick it up, except their app is shit and won't allow you to use it until you've given them all of your data, signed up for an account, filled out their account recovery questionnaire so they know your mother's maiden name, your dog's name from grade school, your blood type, and probably what kinks you like... Just to order a fucking big Mac?

My dudes. You have over estimated your worth to me as a part of society. If the app was just, "hey, where are you?" Then "cool, this store is nearby" selects store "tell me WTF you want" orders "pay me please" Google pay/Apple pay... "Thanks, your order number is asdf1234! Go fucking get it.... Also, did you want to create an account to collect rewards or some shit?" Selects no "okay, your shit is waiting for you, go pick it up"

Instead it's... "Give us access to all your phone data and precise location" Ugh "do you have an account, you need an account" argh furiously types "thanks for signing up, did you know that we have x, y, and z deals for you? We know you like y because you searched for it earlier this week" no "GPS position is not precise enough, cannot locate a store to shop at, please enable hyper precision GPS so we know within a cunthair where exactly you are" ... Some time later... "GPs location obtained, you have 8 stores 'near' you, most of them are pointless to show you because they're more than twice the distance from you as the closest store, but we're going to put those at the top to confuse you instead" picks location "what did you want to buy?" Finally orders "pay me" tries to use Google/Apple pay "something went wrong, we accept Visa, and MasterCard" puts in Visa branded debit information "something went wrong, we accept Visa and MasterCard only " finds actual visa/Mc enreta info "what's your home address? We 'need' it to authorize the credit card transaction" Ugh "is your billing address the same as you home address?" Yes "what's the expiry, and CVV on the card?" Enters info "thanks! Transaction declined because you put 'st' in your address and you should have used 'Street'. Get fucked" closes app, jumps off bridge