{"id":5771,"date":"2004-07-20T14:31:54","date_gmt":"2004-07-20T21:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/07\/20\/where-will-it-end.html"},"modified":"2004-07-20T14:31:54","modified_gmt":"2004-07-20T21:31:54","slug":"where_will_it_e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/20\/where_will_it_e.html","title":{"rendered":"Where will it end?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The standard retort (rightly or wrongly) to claims that the economy is improving, jobs are increasing, and outsourcing is actually good for US employment, is that the jobs that are being generated are, in fact, cheap, low-wage, “McJobs.”<\/p>\n

Well, even those McJobs may be in horrible danger<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pull off U.S. Interstate Higheway 55 near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and into the drive-through lane of a McDonald’s next to the highway and you’ll get fast, friendly service, even though the person taking your order is not in the restaurant – or even in Missouri.
\nThe order taker is in a call center in Colorado Springs, more than 900 miles, or 1,450 kilometers, away, connected to the customer and to the workers preparing the food by high-speed data lines.<\/p>\n

So next time it sounds like that order-taker at the drive-thru doesn’t speak English as their native language — it’s now even more possible.<\/p>\n

Well, probably not. International circuits and latency — plus accuracy issues — would make it unlikely for the local Wendy’s to outsource the order line to Bangalore. But for domestic consumption, so to speak … well, it’s still kind of an odd development. You have telecomm costs on the one hand. On the other hand, you have supposedly improved accuracy and throughput (and, though unmentioned, the eventual efficiency of balancing “rush” order periods across multiple time zones).<\/p>\n

It’s a bizarre idea, on first blush, but it makes enough sense that, someday, it may seem perfectly natural.<\/p>\n

I always enjoyed working drive-thru …<\/p>\n

(via GeekPress<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The standard retort (rightly or wrongly) to claims that the economy is improving, jobs are increasing, and outsourcing is actually good for US employment, is that the jobs that are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business","category-food-drink"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5014,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/11\/17\/mcjobs_the_deno.html","url_meta":{"origin":5771,"position":0},"title":"McJobs, the Denouement","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 17-Nov-03 8:11am","format":false,"excerpt":"After the Merriam-Websters McJobs flurry (not to be confused with a McFlurry) of a week ago seems to be dying down, I got a trackback from the Swedish site that...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5051,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/11\/11\/all_your_dicton.html","url_meta":{"origin":5771,"position":1},"title":"All your dictonary are belong to us!","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 11-Nov-03 6:55am","format":false,"excerpt":"McDonald's seems to have prevailed in turning dictionaries from descriptive to descriptive-of-only-what-we-want, by getting Merriam-Webster to drop the term \"McJobs\" -- at least from its list of new words in...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"McDictionary","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/mcdictionary.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5056,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/11\/10\/shooting_the_me.html","url_meta":{"origin":5771,"position":2},"title":"Shooting the messenger","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 10-Nov-03 6:44am","format":false,"excerpt":"Dictionaries describe language as it is used, balancing the tensions of \"rules\" and \"reality.\" McDonald's needs to consider that, as it has a conniption over the McJob entry in the...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1986,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/03\/30\/baa_baa_baa.html","url_meta":{"origin":5771,"position":3},"title":"Baa, baa, baa","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 30-Mar-02 11:28am","format":false,"excerpt":"Web Test Taker AnalysisDave is a kooky pain in the ass with too much free timeYou drive people crazy with your incessant web testing and result sharing. It's people like...","rel":"","context":"In "Personality Tests"","block_context":{"text":"Personality Tests","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/personal\/personality-tests"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31511,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/26\/dying-for-a-job.html","url_meta":{"origin":5771,"position":4},"title":"Dying for a job","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 26-Nov-12 9:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, I'm sure the people who were working at that sweat shop in Bangladesh were really thankful for the employment ... until the combination of locked fire escapes, uncharged extinguishers, and supervisors who told workers to get back to the lines as the fire alarms went off led to their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10108,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/09\/03\/look_ma_no_hand.html","url_meta":{"origin":5771,"position":5},"title":"Look, Ma! 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As a trivia item, the train operator at the Denver Zoo mentioned in his spiel that carousels spin...","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/\/images\/4a77203e27.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}