As my beloved readers will no doubt recall, their humble blogger offered them a cocktails of prophecy and pessimism that went down with a fight.  I had the great displeasure of reporting to you the growing interest and trend in automation of the food service industry, replacing a large group of workers with a growing price tag with reliable and sterile machines.

The trend continues.

Panera Bread is reportedly replacing several cashier positions with automated touch-screen ordering systems.  The reported goal is to have all cashiers replaced with touch-screen ordering kiosks by 2016.

Meanwhile, just yesterday, mass protests by fast-food workers demanded a minimum wage of $15.

Do you see where this is going?

Let’s take a look at France, for example.  In France, the minimum hourly wage is $12.22 per hour.  That’s great, right?  Well, this is nothing new, and in 2011, McDonalds installed 7000 automated kiosks to replace all of its cashier positions.

Robots don’t get injured.  They get damaged – but that only provides employment to mechanics and those fresh-faced Silicon Valley programmers.

If we continue to see large, loud, and labor-driven protests and demonstrations for a higher minimum wage, we can expect to see more investment in automated technology to replace workers with robots.

That, of course, will leave a lot of really good people out of work (namely workers’ compensation defense attorneys and adjusters).

So, when you’re chatting it up with your friends and one of them valiantly declares his intent to lobby or vote for a higher minimum wage, remind him that he may be pushing for higher unemployment and robotization of the work force.

Have an efficient and automated weekend, dear readers!