Out of the box
Positive and negative minds
I will use the serving robot to tell a story about negative and positive minds.
When I post a suggestion, I get three kinds of responses:
a) Polite response. They are made by supportive people. They do not fully understand what was posted, but they generally trust that I have made a sensible suggestion.
b) Negative comment. They are made by people who look for what is wrong. Often, they imagine what could go wrong and presume that it will be the case.
c) Positive comment. They are from people who studied the suggestion and understood it. They look at the positive side.
I wish now to draw the example of the serving robot that I saw at a restaurant in Aeon Bukit Indah mall.
The restaurant used the robot to serve more than half of the orders. The robot worked for them half the time. The human waiter has to helped the robot the other time.
The positive mind will say that the robot reduces labor by half.
The negative mind will focus on the occasions that the robot does not work. They may even quote examples of other places where the robot was tried and was removed from service.
A human waiter served my table. I asked the waiter why he did not use the robot for my order.
He said that the soup would spill over the robot, as the journey was not smooth.
I posted this incident and said that the kitchen could have served the soup in two large bowls, so that each bowl would be half full and would not spill.
One negative mind replied to my suggestion that it would require two bowls to be cleaned, instead of one bowl. In practice, the customer would ask for small bowls to serve the soup separately to each diner.
There would be some tables where the robot cannot access. This should not deter the restaurant from using robots. The key point is that the robot will save labor partially but not completely. The saving in human labor will probably pay for the cost of the robot.
Tan Kin Lian
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something i learnt is not to take things seriously.
farni 20 Jun 2023