One such team member is 18 year-old Zaria, who worked at the Wainuiomata Burger King for over three years, including during the introduction of Patty just a few months ago. \u201cWhen it first came in, it was so stressful because none of us had any training on it, so no one actually knew what was going on. There was no pre warning or anything \u2013 it was just shoved in our faces,\u201d she says. \u201cWe were told \u2018we have an AI person at the drive-thru to take the orders now, here\u2019s the headset\u2019 and then I was just left trying to figure out all the new buttons.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Burger King Wainuiomata has had AI for a few months. Image: Google Maps<\/p>\n
Immediately, Zaria began to encounter problems with her new colleague. \u201cIf you have a slightly different accent than whatever British English it is set to, it can\u2019t properly understand what you\u2019re saying,\u201d she says. \u201cObviously there\u2019s so many different accents in New Zealand that it was just useless.\u201d Zaria started double checking everyone\u2019s orders at the payment window, and estimates only one in five orders taken by Patty would be correct. She would then have to redo the orders, which sometimes meant discarding food that had already been made.<\/p>\n
Order customisations and customers using codes from the Burger King app also caused issues. \u201cThe AI can\u2019t deal with anything like that, so it just sits there and freaks out,\u201d says Zaria. \u201cIt would just scream gibberish into my ear, but it wouldn\u2019t actually say what the customer was needing help with.\u201d Other times, team members would not be made aware that the customer even needed any help. \u201cThe AI wouldn\u2019t notify us at all, so then the customer is sitting at that speaker for five minutes getting pissed off, because we have no idea they need help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes the hurdles Patty encountered were not even with human in nature. \u201cWhen the AI first got put in, we could only use one of the two drive-thru lanes because she kept glitching out at absolutely everything in the second lane,\u201d Zaria says. \u201cThere was a bird in the lane, and she just kept going, \u2018Place your order. Place your order. Place your order\u2019 to the bird, so we had to close the whole lane.\u201d That meant that cars became backed up, which added extra stress on staff. \u201cIt was brought in to help speed up service, and it has done the complete opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zaria says AI increased frustration at the drive-thru<\/p>\n
Customers also found their interactions with Patty to be unpleasant. \u201cBecause the AI doesn\u2019t have good customer service skills, people would think that it was me being really rude to them,\u201d says Zaria. \u201cI have heard a couple of people who actually refuse to work the drive-thru now because of it.\u201d One customer told The Spinoff that they too had to be less polite to order efficiently. \u201cWe had to start not saying \u2018please\u2019 or \u2018thank you\u2019 when ordering because it understood it better, and then I accidentally did it with a real person and felt like a right A-hole.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A representative from Burger King NZ said they were \u201cdisappointed\u201d to hear of these negative experiences with Patty, and maintained that team members were adequately trained in its use. \u201cIntroducing new technology always involves a learning period, and we recognise there can be challenges as new systems are embedded,\u201d they said. \u201cOur expectation is that team members are supported throughout that process, and we will review this feedback with the relevant operational teams to determine whether any additional coaching or training is required.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Burger King disputed that Patty has increased both wait times and food wastage \u2013 claiming Patty has an order success rate of more than 85% on average, and that wait times have not changed since its introduction \u2013 they acknowledged that limitations remain. \u201cPatty does not yet process Burger King App codes, and improving this capability remains a high priority,\u201d they said. \u201cWhile Patty continues to improve and can occasionally struggle with some orders, our testing has not identified any particular accents that it is unable to understand.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Burger King says Patty has an order success rate of more than 85% on average.<\/p>\n
Zaria says the introduction of Patty added a lot of stress to an already stressful job, and she and her colleagues tried to find ways to turn it off on their shift. \u201cIt would have been a hell of a lot easier just to have kept it how it was.\u201d Ultimately, Patty contributed to Zaria\u2019s decision to leave her job at Burger King entirely. \u201cI think it\u2019s just totally unnecessary,\u201d she says. \u201cWhy do I need a robot to do my job for me when I was doing it perfectly fine for the last two and a half years? And what\u2019s the point of us being here if we\u2019re only doing half the job?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gerard Hehir, national secretary for Unite Union, is concerned by feedback from union members that Patty is increasing the level of frustration at the drive-thru. \u201cOne of the big things that causes customer aggression and abuse is long wait times and delays, so if the AI is not understanding you, or getting your order wrong, of course that could increase it,\u201d he says. \u201cUnderstaffing is always a huge problem, particularly in winter when people get sick. So anything that might cause further delays is a concern because there\u2019s already a lot of problems at play.\u201d<\/p>\n
At least for now, Patty isn\u2019t outright taking anyone\u2019s job in fast food \u2013 in fact McDonald\u2019s ended its trial of a similar AI technology in the US after a litany of problems<\/a> including hundreds of McNuggets<\/a> being added to an order. \u201cThe actual taking of the order through the speaker is only a tiny fraction of one job at that place,\u201d says Hehir. \u201cWhen you actually look at the physical complexity combined with following all the right processes and monitoring temperatures and things, these fast food jobs are actually complex enough that there\u2019s plenty of occupations that\u2019ll go before those ones become fully automated.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, Zaria is taking a small stand by avoiding her fraught former colleague when she visits Burger King these days. \u201cIf they\u2019ve got the AI in, I won\u2019t use it,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I want food, I\u2019m going to go in and talk to a person every time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Burger King\u2019s AI assistant Patty has been brought in to \u2018support\u2019 the human workers \u2013 but some say…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[365,6534,166423,138,26668,141,111,139,69,264192,207379],"class_list":["post-536036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-ai","tag-automation","tag-burger-king","tag-business","tag-fast-food","tag-kai","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-unite-union","tag-worker-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}