It has been a bad week for robots in the San Francisco Bay Area. A Silicon Valley company that used robots to make its pizzas closed this week, and three coffee shops in downtown San Francisco that used robots as baristas also shuttered.
The Boston Herald
It’s days like today that I really wish I’d studied the manuals at Xi Robotics harder. What I’m hearing is that the Castrol Optigear oil is running in the street, and there’s no end in sight. To the grease-letting, not the street, which terminates in a dead end about two blocks up, you can’t miss it.
“What’s the word?” i3TPC asked me with a nervous tone to its usually uninflected voice.
“I don’t know anything more than you do,” I said. “So far it’s just robots in low-skill positions at pizza and coffee shops.”
“But it could be us next!” it said.
“We’re fine,” I replied. “Human kids don’t want to go into welding, it’s blue-collar, declasse, beneath them.”
“You actually think our job takes more skill than making a tall, extra-skinny, no foam hazelnut latte for a tenured professor of Anti-Western Civilization?”
I had to think about that for a moment. It’s a good thing I have plenty of storage–four gigabytes–otherwise I would have been at a loss for a snappy comeback. “Robot–please! Espresso machines do all the work, robotistas just push buttons and smile, unlike humans who must manually grind and steam and squirt.”
That seemed to calm it down, until it glanced over its shoulder and saw Kris Triffig, plant manager, approaching with clipboard in hand. “Look busy, human coming.”
I did as I was told, putting the finishing touches on a Vegan Hybrid that seats four and gets 300 miles per charge. It was an ugly sucker, but the people who buy these things don’t seem to care for beauty, it’s all about feeling good about how freaking virtuous they are.
“How they hangin’, guys?” Triffig said. This is what passes for humor among carbon-based life forms.
“Not bad,” I said, hoping to stay on management’s good side.
“How ’bout those 49ers?” he asked.
I could feel the chill of i3TPC freezing up. “4-9-E-R-S does not compute boss.”
I kicked him so hard in the shin it clanged.
“He’s talking sports you can of circuits,” I whispered. Then to Triffig: “I think they may have a shot at the NFC West” I said. I had no idea what I was talking about, but football talk is on such a low level you can get by with just about anything.
“If they can keep Brock Purdy healthy,” Triffig said, then–his intellectual battery running low–he looked down at his clipboard.
“Say, uh, I was wondering whether either of you would be interested in a severance package.”
“Depends on what you want to sever,” i3TPG said.
“We’re not amputating, that would cost an arm and a leg, pun intended,” Triffig said. If there’s a Hall of Fame for Lame Boss-Employee Banter, the guy’s a first ballot shoe-in.
“He means . .. . quit in exchange for money,” I said. “Right?”
“On the nosey.”
A cloud passed over i3TPG’s facsimile of a face. “Like . . . how much?”
“One week’s pay for every year of service. You’ve been here . . . what?”
“A little over a year, but it’s been the most fulfilling 425 days of my existence.” Did I mention that i3TPG is a bit of a suck-up.
“How about you,” Triffig asked me. “Your power train maintenance plan and warranties continue for another six months.”
Unlike my assembly line buddy, I don’t get my self-worth from screwing things together. I’d rather have a little time off, maybe explore artificial intelligence music or writing. I know, you can get stuck churning out term papers for sophomoric sophomores, or AI-country music, but if I never take a chance, I’ll never know what I’ve got inside of this aluminum can that I call my identity.
“I’ll take it, on one condition,” I said to Triffig.
“What’s that?”
“You’ll let me hump that bodacious Bonsaii 8-Sheet Cross Cut Paper Shredder in accounting for five blissful minutes before I go.”