I saw a news piece that caught my eye: A fully robotic drive thru being tested by McDonalds. By tested, I’m sure it means it’s coming at scale to stores near us. And it makes sense – not only is a drive thru attendant way less accurate and sterile than a robot arm, it costs much less to operate.
You might be noticing how the pandemic has started to usher in more and more automation. Part of this is due to the fact that staffing traditional roles has become harder and harder.
When we started in 2013 our power point decks exclaimed “The Robots are Coming”. In fact – back then they were already here and they certainly are now. This McDonald’s ‘test’ is just one in-your-face example of an organization working to close the digitization gap.
So, are robots taking our jobs? Yes. Will it be fair? Probably not. Suddenly, with an automation a business can replace a person and team or people. Applications like Zapier, combined with some smart messaging, robotics or system integrations, can instantly take the place of humans doing mudane tasks.