The word outsourcing has become a dirty word in the Canadian and American vernacular. In fact my own software employer has begun dipping its toes into that swollen river ever so slightly. Just to see how it feels, they say. Just to test the waters, as it were. Luckily I’m such a star that I couldn’t possibly be outsourced, but I feel for everyone else – I really do.
And now I hear that outsourcing has come to McDonald’s drive-throughs!
It all makes sense, of course. You talk to a little speaker phone – who cares where the person on the end side actually exists? Florida? Washington? Bangalore?
It’s interesting seeing how they describe the call center that is contracted out to deal with the incoming food requests. I thought my Support days were bad, but monitoring to that extent makes me angry just reading about it. And then to hear that they have to try to up-sell you? Blood. Boiling!
And why are these things important? Why, to save money of course. This is a capitalist society and all that bunk.
When the customer pulls away from the menu to pay for the food and pick it up, it takes around 10 seconds for another car to pull forward. During that time, Mr. King said, his order-takers can be answering a call from a different McDonald’s where someone has already pulled up.
The remote order-takers at Bronco earn the minimum wage ($6.75 an hour in California), do not get health benefits and do not wear uniforms. Ms. Vargas, who recently finished high school, wore jeans and a baggy white sweatshirt as she took orders last week.
The call-center system allows employees to be monitored and tracked much more closely than would be possible if they were in restaurants. Mr. King’s computer screen gives him constant updates as to which workers are not meeting standards. “You’ve got to measure everything,” he said. “When fractions of seconds count, the environment needs to be controlled.”
The whole article requires registration (or simply visit BugMeNot and find a free login) but it ends with this simple statement:
Ms. Aleman said that, over all, the system had improved accuracy and helped her cut costs. She said that now she did not need an employee dedicated to taking orders or, during the lunch rush, an assistant for the order-taker to handle cash when things backed up. “We’ve cut labor,” she said.
Ah yes, once again we see technology really helping those that need it most – the minimum wage workers slaving away under the grease gods. All praise the silicon tutelary!
