Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future

Manna:
Two Views of Humanity's Future

by
Marshall Brain

Manna: Two Views of Humanity's Future

Copyright
©
Marshall Brain,
2012

All rights
reserved

ISBN:
978-0-9852321-1-5

Kindle
First Edition

Publisher:
BYG Publishing, Inc.

No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
written permission of the Author. Your support of author’s
rights is appreciated.

Depending
on how you want to think about it, it was funny or inevitable or
symbolic that the robotic takeover did not start at MIT, NASA,
Microsoft or Ford. It started at a Burger-G restaurant in Cary, NC on
May 17. It seemed like such a simple thing at the time, but May 17
marked a pivotal moment in human history.

Burger-G
was a fast food chain that had come out of nowhere starting with its
first restaurant in Cary. The Burger-G chain had an attitude and a
style that said "hip" and "fun" to a wide swath
of the American middle class. The chain was able to grow with
surprising speed based on its popularity and the public persona of
the young founder, Joe Garcia. Over time, Burger-G grew to 1,000
outlets in the U.S. and showed no signs of slowing down. If the trend
continued, Burger-G would soon be one of the "Top 5" fast
food restaurants in the U.S.

The
"robot" installed at this first Burger-G restaurant looked
nothing like the robots of popular culture. It was not hominid like
C-3PO or futuristic like R2-D2 or industrial like an assembly line
robot. Instead it was simply a PC sitting in the back corner of the
restaurant running a piece of software. The software was called
"Manna", version 1.0.

Manna's
job was to manage the store, and it did this in a most interesting
way. Think about a normal fast food restaurant. A group of employees
worked at the store, typically 50 people in a normal restaurant, and
they rotated in and out on a weekly schedule. The people did
everything from making the burgers to taking the orders to cleaning
the tables and taking out the trash. All of these employees reported
to the store manager and a couple of assistant managers. The managers
hired the employees, scheduled them and told them what to do each
day. This was a completely normal arrangement. In the early
twenty-first century, there were millions of businesses that operated
in this way.

But
the fast food industry had a problem, and Burger-G was no different.
The problem was the quality of the fast food experience. Some
restaurants were run perfectly. They had courteous and thoughtful
crew members, clean restrooms, great customer service and high
accuracy on the orders. Other restaurants were chaotic and
uncomfortable to customers. Since one bad experience could turn a
customer off to an entire chain of restaurants, these poorly-managed
stores were the Achilles heel of any chain.

To
solve the problem, Burger-G contracted with a software consultant and
commissioned a piece of software. The goal of the software was to
replace the managers and tell the employees what to do in a more
controllable way. Manna version 1.0 was born.

Manna
was connected to the cash registers, so it knew how many people were
flowing through the restaurant. The software could therefore predict
with uncanny accuracy when the trash cans would fill up, the toilets
would get dirty and the tables needed wiping down. The software was
attached to the time clock, so it knew who was working in the
restaurant. Manna also had "help buttons" throughout the
restaurant. Small signs on the buttons told customers to push them if
they needed help or saw a problem. There was a button in the restroom
that a customer could press if the restroom had a problem. There was
a button on each trashcan. There was a button near each cash
register, one in the kiddie area and so on. These buttons let
customers give Manna a heads up when something went wrong.

At
any given moment Manna had a list of things that it needed to do.
There were orders coming in from the cash registers, so Manna
directed employees to prepare those meals. There were also toilets to
be scrubbed on a regular basis, floors to mop, tables to wipe,
sidewalks to sweep, things to defrost, inventory to rotate, windows
to wash and so on. Manna kept track of the hundreds of tasks that
needed to get done, and assigned each task to an employee one at a
time.

Manna
told employees what to do simply by talking to them. Employees each
put on a headset when they punched in. Manna had a voice synthesizer,
and with its synthesized voice Manna told everyone exactly what to do
through their headsets. Constantly. Manna micro-managed minimum wage
employees to create perfect performance.

The
software would speak to the employees individually and tell each one
exactly what to do. For example, "Bob, we need to load more
patties. Please walk toward the freezer."

Or,
"Jane, when you are through with this customer, please close
your register. Then we will clean the women's restroom."

And
so on. The employees were told exactly what to do, and they did it
quite happily. It was a major relief actually, because the software
told them precisely what to do step by step.

For
example, when Jane entered the restroom, Manna used a simple position
tracking system built into her headset to know that she had arrived.
Manna then told her the first step.

Manna:
"Place the 'wet floor' warning cone outside the door please."

When
Jane completed the task, she would speak the word "OK" into
her headset and Manna moved to the next step in the restroom cleaning
procedure.

Manna:
"Please block the door open with the door stop."

Jane:
"OK."

Manna:
"Please retrieve the bucket and mop from the supply closet."

Jane:
"OK."

And
so on.

Once
the restroom was clean, Manna would direct Jane to put everything
away. Manna would make sure that she carefully washed her hands. Then
Manna would immediately start Jane working on a new task. Meanwhile,
Manna might send Lisa to the restroom to inspect it and make sure
that Jane had done a thorough job. Manna would ask Lisa to check the
toilets, the floor, the sink and the mirrors. If Jane missed
anything, Lisa would report it.

I
grew up in Cary, NC. That was a long time ago, but when I was a kid I
lived right in the middle of Cary with my parents. My father was a
pilot for a big airline. My mother was a stay-at-home mom and I had a
younger sister. We lived in a typical four bedroom suburban home in a
nice neighborhood with a swimming pool in the backyard. I was a 15
year-old teenager working at the Burger-G on May 17 when the first
Manna system came online.

I
can remember putting on the headset for the first time and the
computer talking to me and telling me what to do. It was creepy at
first, but that feeling really only lasted a day or so. Then you were
used to it, and the job really did get easier. Manna never pushed you
around, never yelled at you. The girls liked it because Manna didn't
hit on them either. Manna simply asked you to do something, you did
it, you said, "OK", and Manna asked you to do the next
step. Each step was easy. You could go through the whole day on
autopilot, and Manna made sure that you were constantly doing
something. At the end of the shift Manna always said the same thing.
"You are done for today. Thank you for your help." Then you
took off your headset and put it back on the rack to recharge. The
first few minutes off the headset were always disorienting -- there
had been this voice in your head telling you exactly what to do in
minute detail for six or eight hours. You had to turn your brain back
on to get out of the restaurant.

To
me, Manna was OK. The job at Burger-G was mindless, and Manna made it
easy by telling you exactly what to do. You could even get Manna to
play music through your headphones, in the background. Manna had a
set of "stations" that you could choose from. That was a
bonus. And Manna kept you busy the entire day. Every single minute,
you had something that Manna was telling you to do. If you simply
turned off your brain and went with the flow of Manna, the day went
by very fast.

My
father, on the other hand, did not like Manna at all from the very
first day he saw me wearing the headset in the restaurant. He and Mom
had come in for lunch and to say hi. I knew they were coming, so I
had timed my break so I could sit down with them for a few minutes.
When I sat down, my father noticed the headset.

"So",
he said, "they have you working the drive-thru I see. Is that a
step up or a step down?"

"It's
not the drive-thru," I replied, "it's a new system they've
installed called Manna. It manages the store."

"How
so?"

"It
tells me what to do through the headset."

"Who,
the manager?"

"No,
it's a computer."

He
looked at me for a long time, "A computer is telling you what to
do on the job? What does the manager do?"

"The
computer is the manager. Manna, manager, get it?"

"You
mean that a computer is telling you what to do all day?", he
asked.

"Yeah."

"Like
what?"

I
gave him an example, "Before you got here, I was taking out the
trash. Manna told me how to do it."

"What
did it say?"

"It
tells you exactly what to do. Like, It told me to get four new bags
from the rack. When I did that it told me to go to trash can #1. Once
I got there it told me to open the cabinet and pull out the trash
can. Once I did that it told me to check the floor for any debris.
Then it told me to tie up the bag and put it to the side, on the
left. Then it told me to put a new bag in the can. Then it told me to
attach the bag to the rim. Then it told me to put the can back in and
close the cabinet. Then it told me to wipe down the cabinet and make
sure it's spotless. Then it told me to push the help button on the
can to make sure it is working. Then it told me to move to trash can
#2. Like that."

He
looked at me for a long time again before he said, "Good Lord,
you are nothing but a piece of a robot. What is it saying to you
now?"

"It
just told me I have three minutes left on my break. And it told me to
smile and say hello to the guests. How's this? Hi!" And I gave
him a big toothy grin.

"Yesterday
the people controlled the computers. Now the computers control the
people. You are the eyes and hands for this robot. And all so that
Joe Garcia can make $20 million per year. Do you know what will
happen if this spreads?"

"No,
I don't. And I think Mr. G makes more than $20 million a year. But
right now I've got two minutes left, and Manna is telling me that I
need to move back to station 3 to get ready for the next run. See
ya." I waved at Mom. Dad just stared at me.

The
tests in our Burger-G store were surprisingly successful. There were
Burger-G corporate guys in the restaurant watching us, fixing bugs in
the software, making sure Manna was covering all the bases, and they
were pleased. It took about 3 months to work all the kinks out, and
as they did the Manna software totally changed the restaurant. Worker
performance nearly doubled. So did customer satisfaction. So did the
consistency of the customer experience. Trash cans never overfilled.
Bathrooms were remarkably clean. Employees always washed their hands
when they needed to. Food was ready faster. The meals we handed out
were nearly 100 percent accurate because Manna made us check to make
sure every item in the bag was exactly what the customer ordered. The
store never ran out of supplies -- there were always plenty of
napkins in the dispenser and the ketchup container was always full.
There were enough employees in the store for the busy times, because
Manna could accurately track trends and staff appropriately.

In
addition, Burger-G saved a ton of money. Burger-G had hundreds of
stores in the United States. Manna worked so well that Burger-G
deployed it nationwide. Soon Burger-G had cut more than 3,000 of its
higher-paid store employees -- mostly assistant managers and
managers. That one change saved the company nearly $100 million per
year, and all that money came straight to the bottom line for the
restaurant chain. Shareholders were ecstatic. Mr. G gave himself
another big raise to celebrate. In addition, Manna had optimized
store staffing and had gotten a significant productivity boost out of
the employees in the store. That saved another $150 million. $250
million made a huge difference in the fast food industry.