Restaurants Are Firing Their Robot Waitstaff for Poor Performance

Servers of the world can probably stop worrying about being replaced by robots — for now, anyway: Restaurants in Guangzhou, China are nixing their automaton serving staffs or shuttering altogether after realizing their performance just isn't up to par.

According to Shanghaiist, "two restaurants which made use of robotic waiters have closed down and a third which remains open has given all but one of the robots the sack." A number of robot restaurants have popped up in China over the past couple years, with duties ranging from cooking and baking to delivering meals to tables and even entertaining customers; but while robots may be wonderfully efficient for repetitive tasks like preparing bowls of ramen, but it turns out they're not that great at interacting with people. Their human co-workers say the bots' range of abilities are very limited, and they're unable to perform tasks like take customers' orders or deliver bowls of soup without spilling them.

Someone tell that to the CEO of fast food chain Carl's Jr., who recently said he'd like to open an automated restaurant because machines never take sick days or file lawsuits.

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