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Simian, Check Please!
Somehow, I thought that it would be the robot waiters that would be depriving future humans of their jobs and tips, but after watching the recent monkey waiter video on Reuters, I see how very wrong I was. It’s our simian friends who will be taking over the service industry after the economy collapses—or maybe even before. Kayabukiya, the Japanese izakaya in the video, employs a pair of macaques to deliver drinks and hot hand towels. The monkeys wear little outfits, are limited by animal welfare to two-hour shifts, and literally work for beans—edamame beans, that is.
“The monkeys are actually better waiters than some really bad human ones,” customer Takayoshi Soeno told the Daily Mail Reporter (the article includes stills if you can’t watch the video at work, or if you just want to ogle the little outfits).
The Reporter tells us that tavern owner Kaoru Otsuka originally kept the macaques as pets, but once they started imitating him, he realized they were capable of working in the restaurant.
First they pick our coffee, now they want to serve it to us? Monkeys: 1; robots: 0.
Posted by | Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 9:00am | 0 comments
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