Another day, another tipping prompt to awkwardly navigate!
This time, a restaurant in New York City is making headlines for asking customers to tip their waitresses who are clocking in from across the globe via Zoom, according to the New York Post.
The new restaurant chain called Sansan Ramen, which specializes in fried chicken and ramen, is catching heat for employing people from the other side of the world and using them to host guests through a screen instead of in-person.
A tech entrepreneur named Brett Goldstein called out the restaurant in a thread on X that was viewed over 18 million times as of publication.
“Only takes a short hop to imagine the near future where this is an AI avatar,” he said.
“My mind is wandering to this dystopian future where you live in this concrete jungle and none of the businesses you interact with have actual humans in them. Maybe a punishment for us not treating retail workers more human,” he continued.
NOT THE FIRST TIME
In 2022, Freshii received criticism for employing virtual cashiers amid the COVID-19 pandemic and paying them reportedly $3.75 an hour (USD) across locations in North America.
The restaurant’s owner developed a video-calling device that can completely replace cashiers, according to the report.
At the time, the company had over a dozen clients in North America and employed nearly 100 workers in Nicaragua, Pakistan and Bolivia.
Canadian law firm Samfiru Tumarkin LLP said that everything was by the book since the employers were not working in Canada and therefore did not have to be paid the country’s minimum wage.
“Freshii’s employment outsourcing is legal. In Ontario, when a company outsources its work to hired workers in other countries, the company is typically obligated to adhere to the employment laws of the country or territory in which the outsourced worker is performing their duties,” Employment lawyer Jeremy Herman said in a news release.
Although this isn’t something Torontonians appear to be facing right now, residents aren’t oblivious to the ever growing world of self-check out and self-serve.
For example, Toronto restaurant The Abbot On Eglinton, actually has a robot that tends to guests.
And there’s RC Coffee, a popular robot-powered coffee house with 10 locations in Toronto.
But the question on everyone’s mind is, should you tip if a robot serves you?
Although it’s unclear if they have a tipping option, it’s worth wondering if this new phenomenon is getting out of hand.
And in the last couple of years, other restaurants have taken the complete opposite approach by having a no-tipping policy and have seen great success.
This includes Bampot House and Sarang Kitchen, both located in Toronto.
