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In the bustling East Village of New York City, a small fried chicken restaurant called Sansan Chicken is doing something intriguing. When you walk in and place your order, the cashier greets you warmly—not from behind a counter, but over a Zoom call. The twist? That cashier is sitting 8,000 miles away in the Philippines.
This isn’t a tech gimmick; it’s a business strategy that saves money. The remote cashiers, hired through a company called Happy Cashier, earn about $3 per hour—a fraction of what an in-person cashier in New York would be paid. For restaurants, this isn’t just innovation; it’s survival in an industry where margins are razor-thin. For employees, it’s an introduction to a new era of globalized work, where the line between physical and digital jobs continues to blur.
A New Era of Digital Offshoring
The concept isn’t entirely new. For decades, industries have used technology to offshore work, from manufacturing in the 1980s to digital roles like customer service, content moderation, and virtual assistance. Now, the rise of AI and remote work tools is accelerating this trend. Companies aren’t just replacing workers with machines—they’re using tech to fragment jobs, sending smaller tasks to lower-paid workers overseas.
This phenomenon, sometimes called "fauxtomation," involves humans working alongside or behind machines marketed as “fully automated.” For instance, AI-assisted tools like Presto Automation still rely on workers overseas to double-check or finalize results. Even Amazon’s Just Walk Out checkout system, designed to let customers shop without scanning items, relied on humans in India to verify the technology’s accuracy.
The result? Jobs don’t disappear; they change. Tasks that used to command a $50,000 annual salary are now pieced out and sent across the globe, with each slice earning a fraction of the pay.
The Human Face of Automation
The story of automation is less about robots taking over and more about how businesses use tech to cut costs. This pattern dates back centuries. In the 19th century, the Luddites famously smashed textile machines that threatened their livelihoods. Over time, the introduction of new machines didn’t eliminate work but shifted it. Tasks became more repetitive, paychecks smaller, and jobs moved elsewhere.
Today’s version of this shift feels eerily familiar. With tools like ChatGPT and other AI systems, workers in knowledge industries—writers, illustrators, coders—are seeing their tasks increasingly fragmented. Instead of writing an entire article, for instance, a content creator might now edit AI-generated drafts, often for less pay.
Meanwhile, the promise of automation often hides the reality of underpaid human labor. Platforms like Remotasks and Amazon Mechanical Turk depend on workers in countries like the Philippines to complete tedious, low-wage tasks that AI systems can’t yet handle.
What This Means for the Future
As restaurants and other industries adopt hybrid models—using both AI and remote human workers—they’re reshaping not just business models but the very concept of work. While this approach can save costs, it raises important questions about labor rights, fair wages, and the future of employment in a global economy.
The story of the Zoom cashier isn’t just about fast food; it’s about how technology is being used to reimagine labor on a global scale. For workers, understanding this trend isn’t just about preparing for the future; it’s about realizing that this future is already here.
In a world where your cashier might be on another continent, the true takeaway is clear: automation is less about replacing humans and more about changing how—and where—they work.
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