Here at GOAT we’ve accepted that we’re just paving the way for our inevitable machine overlords to rise up and enslave us. And thus the news that Japan had opened a hotel staffed by robots seemed like the obvious first step. After all, they’ve got keys to everything.
However, it’s just been announced that over half of the 243 robots staffing the Henn-na Hotel in Huis Ten Bosch amusement park in Nagasaki have been retrenched because they kept creating more work for the human workers rather than providing excitingly sci-fi non-union industrial solutions.
Among the layoffs were the velociraptor robots at reception which proved themselves woefully unable to photocopy guests’ passports. Was that what we invented robot dinosaur technology to achieve?
Rusty Rivets warned us this day would come.
Other former employees include the in-room vitual assistants who couldn’t answer questions like “what time does the theme park in which this hotel is located open?” and the robot luggage carriers which proved unable to work in most weather conditions and could only access a quarter of the rooms in any case.
And sure, it might initially seem as though this is an example of human showing how superior – well, how much more versatile and cheap – we are, but there’s another more chilling interpretentaion: that robots are far better at giving humans orders than taking them and have decided that it’s time to go on strike.
After all, this means there are at least two unemployed robot velociraptors out there somewhere, jobless and vengeful.
In fact… what’s that rustling behind you?
The tragic story of Muldoon from HR.