Yes, I know that bottle caps are now done by machine and that "Laverne and Shirley" were probably laid off around 1967 after which they married Lenny and Squiggly and got divorced and then went on welfare because they were too stupid to get another job doing something else. But I digress. Anyway, in a few short years, fast food places like McDonalds and Burger King will have machines "assembling" our hamburgers as well.
Only if the minimum wage rises to the point where machines are cheaper...
Not so far fetched. Some McDonalds already do this now at the drive inwindow with soft drinks. The order is put into the cash register, the machine is notified by the computer in the register, and the cups run down a conveyor system that fills them with ice, then the appropriate soft drink and puts them at the window for the attendant to hand out. No humans involved except putting the cups and syrup in the machine on the input side and taking the finished product off of the output side to hand to the customer. It's a really neat system, BUT, here is the question: Should the production of the soft drinks by the 'manufacturing' process of the machine be considered manufacturing in the same way as making that machine? Not to my way of thinking.
Of course it is. I don’t know what/how McD’s does things, but I’ve done maintenance at another large (regional, at the time) fast food joint. Nobody “prepares” much of anything as it has been pre-prepared.
All the burgers were formed, partially cooked, the frozen and packaged for shipment to the retail locations. All the potatoes were washed, cut, partially fried, broken into fryer-sized portions, bagged and frozen for shipment… same for onion rings, tater tots and everything else. The chili for the hot dogs is already pre-made and canned..
All they do at the restaurant is move a couple of boxes of patties from the freezer to the refrigerator the night before – they’ll be (partially) thawed the next am. They’ll slap a patty on the grill for 100 – 120 seconds, flip it for another 90 seconds or so at which point it will be heated through and properly cooked for consumption – it’s designed to work that way.
They’ll put a fryer basket on the rack, dump a bag of fries in it, dunk the basket, hit a button, and when the buzzer goes off they’re hot and finished cooking. Specifically designed to be done that way to make things idiot-proof and give the customer some degree of consistency across the chain.
You don’t have some kid in back forming patties by hand and cooking them to order. You’ll literally have a production line that does nothing but take ground beef and produces case after case (and pallet after pallet) of frozen, partially cooked patties, etc, designed specifically to be quickly finished at the retail location for consumption. If that does not constitute manufacturing…
In fact, about the only preparation that takes place is using a stainless lunchmeat-type slicer to slice lettuce, onions, tomatoes – that they did do at the individual locations.
I thought Shirley's boyfriend was Carmine, "The Big Ragoo." Did they break up?