The Robotic Future - Manna, Chapter 1, by Marshall Brain

Manna
Chapter 1
by Marshall Brain
Depending on how you want to think about it, it was funny or inevitable or
symbolic that the robotic takeover did not start at MIT, NASA, Microsoft or
Ford. It started at a Burger-G restaurant in Cary, NC on May 17, 2010. It
seemed like such a simple thing at the time, but May 17 marked a pivotal
moment in human history.

Burger-G was a fast food chain that had come out of nowhere starting with
its first restaurant in 2001. The Burger-G chain had an attitude and a style
that said "hip" and "fun" to a wide swath of the American middle class. The
chain was able to grow with surprising speed based on its popularity and the
public persona of the young founder, Joe Garcia. By 2010 the chain had 1,000
outlets in the U.S. and showed no signs of slowing down. If the trend
continued, Burger-G would soon be one of the "Top 5" fast food restaurants
in the U.S.

The "robot" installed at this first Burger-G restaurant looked nothing like
the robots of popular culture. It was not hominid like C-3PO or futuristic
like R2-D2 or industrial like an assembly line robot. Instead it was simply
a PC sitting in the back corner of the restaurant running a piece of
software. The software was called "Manna", version 1.0*.

Manna's job was to manage the store, and it did this in a most interesting
way. Think about a normal fast food restaurant circa 2000. There was a group
of employees who worked at the store, typically 50 people in a normal
restaurant who rotated in and out on a weekly schedule. The people did
everything from making the burgers to taking the orders to cleaning the
tables and taking out the trash. All of these employees reported to the
store manager and a couple of assistant managers. The managers hired the
employees, scheduled them and told them what to do each day. This was a
completely normal arrangement. In 2000, there were millions of businesses
that operated in this way.

Circa 2000, the fast food industry had a problem, and Burger-G was no
different. The problem was the quality of the fast food experience. Some
restaurants were run perfectly. They had courteous and thoughtful crew
members, clean restrooms, great customer service and high accuracy on the
orders. Other restaurants were chaotic and uncomfortable to customers. Since
one bad experience could turn a customer off to an entire chain of
restaurants, these poorly-managed stores were the Achilles heel of any
chain.

The problem was not the crew. It was easy to hire minimum wage workers as
crew members and they did what they were told. If someone told a crew member
to clean the tables or mop the floors, the task would get done. The problem
was the managers -- it all came down to the manager in the store. If a
manager did not train the employees and did not constantly tell them what to
do on an ongoing basis, the quality of the restaurant suffered. At many
restaurants, especially at lunch or dinner, customers would find the trash
cans filled to the brim, the bathrooms dirty and the tables a mess. That
happened simply because the managers did not deploy the workers effectively.
Things would get busy, the manager would get sidetracked with a customer
complaint or an inventory problem, and the manager would forget to tell
someone to empty the trash. Things like full trashcans drive customers nuts,
and the public opinion of the restaurant chain as a whole suffered from
simple mistakes like that.

To solve the problem, Burger-G contracted with a software consultant and
commissioned a piece of software. The goal of the software was to replace
the managers and tell the employees what to do in a more controllable way.
Manna version 1.0 was born.

Manna was connected to the cash registers, so it knew how many people were
flowing through the restaurant. The software could therefore predict with
uncanny accuracy when the trash cans would fill up, the toilets would get
dirty and the tables needed wiping down. The software was also attached to
the time clock, so it knew who was working in the restaurant. Manna also had
"help buttons" throughout the restaurant. Small signs on the buttons told
customers to push them if they needed help or saw a problem. There was a
button in the restroom that a customer could press if the restroom had a
problem. There was a button on each trashcan. There was a button near each
cash register, one in the kiddie area and so on. These buttons let customers
give Manna a heads up when something went wrong.

At any given moment Manna had a list of things that it needed to do. There
were orders coming in from the cash registers, so Manna directed employees
to prepare those meals. There were also toilets to be scrubbed on a regular
basis, floors to mop, tables to wipe, sidewalks to sweep, buns to defrost,
inventory to rotate, windows to wash and so on. Manna kept track of the
hundreds of tasks that needed to get done, and assigned each task to an
employee one at a time.

Manna told employees what to do simply by talking to them. Employees each
put on a headset when they punched in. Manna had a voice synthesizer, and
with its synthesized voice Manna told everyone exactly what to do through
their headsets. Constantly. Manna micro-managed minimum wage employees to
create perfect performance.

The software would speak to the employees individually and tell each one
exactly what to do. For example, "Bob, we need to load more patties. Please
walk toward the freezer."

Or, "Jane, when you are through with this customer, please close your
register. Then we will clean the women's restroom."

And so on. The employees were told exactly what to do, and they did it quite
happily. It was a major relief actually, because the software told them
precisely what to do step by step.

For example, when Jane entered the restroom, Manna used a simple position
tracking system built into her headset to know that she had arrived. Manna
then told her the first step.

Manna: "Place the 'wet floor' warning cone outside the door please."

When Jane completed the task, she would speak the word "OK" into her headset
and Manna moved to the next step in the restroom cleaning procedure.

Manna: "Please block the door open with the door stop."

Jane: "OK."

Manna: "Please retrieve the bucket and mop from the supply closet."

Jane: "OK."

And so on.

Once the restroom was clean, Manna would direct Jane to put everything away.
Manna would make sure that she carefully washed her hands. Then Manna would
immediately start Jane working on a new task. Meanwhile, Manna might send
Lisa to the restroom to inspect it and make sure that Jane had done a
thorough job. Manna would ask Lisa to check the toilets, the floor, the sink
and the mirrors. If Jane missed anything, Lisa would report it.

Whenever Manna needed to get something done, it looked at the list of
employees in the store and chose one of them. Then it sent a command
string -- for example, "Please get an empty trash bag from the rack" -- to
the voice synthesizer module. The synthesizer sent the string to the
transmitter, which broadcast it throughout the store. If the message was
meant for Bob, Bob's headset received the command string and played it in
Bob's earphones. Bob's headset also had a microphone, and the computer could
easily understand words like "OK", "Yes", "No", "Repeat", "Help" and so on.
Each employee learned these simple phrases in a 10-minute training session
and used them to respond to the computer.

The headset also contained a small beacon that let Manna track each
employee's location in the store with an accuracy of about two inches. Manna
could tell if the employee was in the right area for an assigned task, and
how fast the employee was moving. If you weren't where you were supposed to
be or if you stopped somewhere along the way, Manna would ask you about it.
You could say "Customer" or "Spill" and Manna would leave you alone for one
minute.

I grew up in Cary, NC. That was a long time ago, but when I was a kid I
lived right in the middle of Cary with my parents. My father was a pilot for
a big airline. My mother was a stay-at-home mom and I had a younger sister.
We lived in a typical four bedroom suburban home in a nice neighborhood with
a swimming pool in the backyard. I was a 15 year-old teenager working at the
Burger-G on May 17 when the first Manna system came online.

I can remember putting on the headset for the first time and the computer
talking to me and telling me what to do. It was creepy at first, but that
feeling really only lasted a day or so. Then you were used to it, and the
job really did get easier. Manna never pushed you around, never yelled at
you. The girls liked it because Manna didn't hit on them either. Manna
simply asked you to do something, you did it, you said, "OK", and Manna
asked you to do the next step. Each step was easy. You could go through the
whole day on autopilot, and Manna made sure that you were constantly doing
something. At the end of the shift Manna always said the same thing. "You
are done for today. Thank you for your help." Then you took off your headset
and put it back on the rack to recharge. The first few minutes off the
headset were always disorienting -- there had been this voice in your head
telling you exactly what to do in minute detail for six or eight hours. You
had to turn your brain back on to get out of the restaurant.

To me, Manna was OK. The job at Burger-G was mindless, and Manna made it
easy by telling you exactly what to do. You could even get Manna to play
music through your headphones, in the background. Manna had a set of
"stations" that you could choose from. That was a bonus. And Manna kept you
busy the entire day. Every single minute, you had something that Manna was
telling you to do. If you simply turned off your brain and went with the
flow of Manna, the day went by very fast.

My father, on the other hand, did not like Manna at all from the very first
day he saw me wearing the headset in the restaurant. He and Mom had come in
for lunch and to say hi. I knew they were coming, so I had timed my break so
I could sit down with them for a few minutes. When I sat down, my father
noticed the headset.

"So", he said, "they have you working the drive-thru I see. Is that a step
up or a step down?"

"It's not the drive-thru," I replied, "it's a new system they've installed
called Manna. It manages the store."

"How so?"

"It tells me what to do through the headset."

"Who, the manager?"

"No, it's a computer."

He looked at me for a long time, "A computer is telling you what to do on
the job? What does the manager do?"

"The computer is the manager. Manna, manager, get it?"

"You mean that a computer is telling you what to do all day?", he asked.

"Yeah."

"Like what?"

I gave him an example, "Before you got here, I was taking out the trash.
Manna told me how to do it."

"What did it say?"

"It tells you exactly what to do. Like, It told me to get four new bags from
the rack. When I did that it told me to go to trash can #1. Once I got there
it told me to open the cabinet and pull out the trash can. Once I did that
it told me to check the floor for any debris. Then it told me to tie up the
bag and put it to the side, on the left. Then it told me to put a new bag in
the can. Then it told me to attach the bag to the rim. Then it told me to
put the can back in and close the cabinet. Then it told me to wipe down the
cabinet and make sure it's spotless. Then it told me to push the help button
on the can to make sure it is working. Then it told me to move to trash can
#2. Like that."

He looked at me for a long time again before he said, "Good Lord, you are
nothing but a piece of a robot. What is it saying to you now?"

"It just told me I have three minutes left on my break. And it told me to
smile and say hello to the guests. How's this? Hi!" And I gave him a big
toothy grin.

"Yesterday the people controlled the computers. Now the computers control
the people. You are the eyes and hands for this robot. And all so that Joe
Garcia can make $20 million per year. Do you know what will happen if this
spreads?"

"No, I don't. And I think Mr. G makes more than $20 million a year. But
right now I've got two minutes left, and Manna is telling me that I need to
move back to station 3 to get ready for the next run. See ya." I waved at
Mom. Dad just stared at me.

We talked about it later that night a little. To him, Manna was the brain
for the robot. The employees in the store were the "senses" and the
"manipulators" for the robot. I could see where he was coming from, but I
didn't see Manna as any different from the human store manager that it
replaced. Manna certainly was using us as its "hands" -- except for the real
simple stuff like the fry-cooking machine and the burger-cooking machine,
people still did most of the work in the restaurant. I spent a lot of my
time, for example, putting together burgers, taking out the trash, washing
the windows and mopping the floors. Without the people working in the store,
Manna would not be able to get anything done. And Manna would ask us
questions all the time like, "How many people are standing in line?" or, "Do
the kids look OK in the kiddie area?" But it seemed completely harmless to
me at the time. "The computers are now controlling the people rather than
the other way around," is something he would say many times. But he was
overreacting. It wasn't like a Burger-G restaurant was going to take over
the world. And he was one to talk. In his job, he pretty much just sat there
in the cockpit the whole flight doing nothing. His job was pointless because
the autopilot did everything. At least I got something done. Of course he
was making $100,000 a year doing nothing and I was making $5.15 an hour
pushing a broom for Manna.

The tests in our Burger-G store were surprisingly successful. There were
Burger-G corporate guys in the restaurant watching us, fixing bugs in the
software, making sure Manna was covering all the bases, and they were
pleased. It took about 3 months to work all the kinks out, and as they did
the Manna software totally changed the restaurant. Worker performance nearly
doubled. So did customer satisfaction. So did the consistency of the
customer's experience. Trash cans never overfilled. Bathrooms were
remarkably clean. Employees always washed their hands when they needed to.
Food was ready faster. The meals we handed out were nearly 100 percent
accurate because Manna made us check to make sure every item in the bag was
exactly what the customer ordered. The store never ran out of supplies --
there were always plenty of napkins in the dispenser and the ketchup
container was always full. There were enough employees in the store for the
busy times, because Manna could accurately track trends and staff
appropriately.

In addition, Burger-G saved a ton of money. In 2010, Burger-G had just over
1,000 stores in the United States. Manna worked so well that Burger-G
deployed it nationwide in 2011. By 2012 Burger-G had cut more than 3,000 of
its higher-paid store employees -- mostly assistant managers and managers.
That one change saved the company nearly $100 million per year, and all that
money came straight to the bottom line for the restaurant chain.
Shareholders were ecstatic. Mr. G gave himself another big raise to
celebrate. In addition, Manna had optimized store staffing and had gotten a
significant productivity boost out of the employees in the store. That saved
another $150 million. $250 million made a huge difference in the fast food
industry.

So, the first real wave of robots did not replace all the factory workers as
everyone imagined. The robots replaced middle management and significantly
improved the performance of minimum wage employees. All of the fast food
chains watched the Burger-G experiment with Manna closely, and by 2012 they
started installing Manna systems as well. By 2014 or so, nearly every
business in America that had a significant pool of minimum-wage employees
was installing Manna software or something similar. They had to do it in
order to compete.

In other words, Manna spread through the American corporate landscape like
wildfire. And my dad was right. It was when all of these new Manna systems
began talking to each other that things started to get uncomfortable.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

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