Turns Out Robot Waiters Aren't As Good As Humans After All

Turns out, thank goodness, robot waiters aren't nearly
as good as humans for the job. n

A restaurant in China decided to obtain robots to serve meals to customers rather than deal with the expense, messiness and, well, human-ness of actual people as waiters.

It didn't go well, which means at least for now, the legions of waiters at all those restaurants out there can keep their jobs, unless of course they keep forgetting orders, dumping beer on customers or steal from the till.

Luckily, almost all human waiters are better than those described in the above paragraph, which is more than I can say for the robot waiters in China.

According to The Verge, the Chinese restaurant chain bought several waiter robots at $7,000 a pop, but the robots couldn't even pour drinks right. Or serve soup. Or take orders from customers and understand them correctly. Plus they kept breaking down.

Two of the restaurants had to close down due to the incompetent robots. A third restaurant in the chain was able to stay open, but only because it hired flesh and blood humans to serve customers.

Apparently, robots can handle repetitive tasks well, but have trouble when interacting with us quirky, weird humans.

Maybe you don't have to tip robot waiters, but its probably worth tipping humans if it means you actually get the food and drinks you want at the restaurant.