New York Restaurant Has Started Outsourcing Jobs To The Philippines, We Might All Be Doomed

NY Post - A new restaurant chain in New York City is outsourcing staff to the Philippines, using screens with hostesses on Zoom calls instead of in-person employees to greet customers and help with check-out.

The shops — which specialize in fried chicken and ramen — are taking advantage of the massive wealth gap between New York City, where the minimum wage is $16 per hour and a Southeast Asian nation where hourly pay is closer to $3.75

But when customers check out at Sansan Chicken, Sansan Ramen, or Yaso Kitchen — with locations in Manhattan, Queens, and Jersey City — they’re still prompted to add a tip of up to 18% on top of their bill.

Here's a fun story out of the greatest city in the world. For New Yorkers who have ever been to a restaurant and thought, "The food here is great, but it's missing a dystopian element that makes me think society is doomed." Well boy do I have a place for you.

The NY Post article is heavily focused on how upset customers are that their virtual Filipino cashiers have the audacity to ask for a tip. That part doesn't bother me too much. In fact, I think it presents an fun opportunity. We all agree that tipping is annoying no matter what.  Nobody even feels good about themselves when they tip 20% anymore. They just feel like they fulfilled an obligation. Waiters barely appreciate it anymore either. They've already calculated your expected tip into their pay. Plus, what is your extra $10 really going to do for them anyways? You're not changing anybody's life with $10 bucks.

However, when you go to one of these dystopian/Idiocracy style chicken and ramen joints run by women on the other side of the earth, you have an opportunity to be a hero. These virtual employees are making $4 per hour. That gives you the chance to make a random Filipino lady's entire week, and score important brownie points with god all in one fell swoop. The lady is going to be so happy when she sees your big tip. You'll get to feel like the richest man in all of the Philippines. It's the same reason I give money to homeless people. I don't do it out of the kindness of my heart, or because I feel bad for them. I do it so I can see their positive reaction and receive a heartfelt thank you. Then I pat myself on the back and say, "Good for you John. That makes up for all the times in your life when you were a shitty person"

I'm not entirely sure what these virtual Filipino women are proving that a self-checkout machine can't. I suppose they can direct you to your seat (sort of). If you try to run out on your bill I guess they can yell STOP really loud. I know they'll be able to explain the menu to you in broken English. And for some reason I don't understand, if a woman in the Philippines is taking my order at a restaurant via Zoom, it makes my dumb brain think, "Oh wow this place must be authentic."

And do not ask them if there's dog on the menu. That's a disgusting stereotype that Filipinos are sick and tired of hearing.

Still, the proposition of losing your job to a person on the other side of the world willing to work for pennies on the dollar is kind of scary. I'm starting to think I should be worried myself. Honestly, if Barstool hired a writer who lived in India, and he just blogged all the wild ass stories that come out of his home country, that might be pretty entertaining. 

Some examples from known reputable source Ranker.com

Ranker - In 2013 it was proposed that Bhandar monkeys in the New Dehli region be put on birth control as a way to curb their population growth. Prior to this idea the city had hired monkey catchers to patrol the town, which sounds adorable until you find out that in 2007, Delhi's deputy mayor, SS Bajwa, died after falling from his first-floor terrace trying to fight off monkeys.

A parrot in India was detained by Rajuran police for allegedly cursing at an 85-year-old woman, sparking a domestic dispute. The grandmother said, "On seeing me, the parrot uses bad language and foul words. That is why I have complained thrice in the last two years." 

In one of the most bizarre restaurant stories you've probably ever heard, a man from New Delhi allegedly opened fire in a restaurant after his waiter refused to eat his leftovers. According to the story the man was intoxicated and after the shooting he was charged with attempted murder.

Crazy shit happens in India. We could use a blogger on the monkey birth control beat. And it's about time we covered cricket. For the price of 1% of Dave Portnoy's average bet, he could hire a whole fleet of Indian bloggers to work for us. 

It really is nuts how cheap US companies can hire remote labor. My fiancee works for a major insurance company where she's on a team with multiple IT professionals from India. When she told me how much her Indian counterparts were being paid to do a fiairly similar job to hers, I laughed out loud. I was certain she was joking. Even as I type this out I feel like there's no way this can be accurate, but I'm told one IT employee on her team, an "essential employee" as she put it, makes an annual salary of $8,000. 

Head on a swivel out there guys. Between AI and the entire country of Asia, there's almost certainly someone or some thing out there who could do your job for a fraction of price. Even if you think you safe because you work a manual labor job, some day a fresh new robot controlled by a man named Vikram will show up at the farm and start bailing hay at 3x the rate.