College campuses across the country will no longer be swarming with tiny rolling robots.
Starship Technologies, a leading delivery bot company, announced earlier this month that it was ending its university operations and redeploying over a thousand of its meal machines. But the news is just starting to sink in, as various partnered universities all issue official communications mourning the program’s end like obituaries for a celebrity’s passing.
The time has come for the takeout drones to hit the big leagues, as the company intends to focus on doing deliveries for grocery chains and restaurants in cities instead. And shut-in, no-tipping undergrads from coast to coast weep.
Are you expected to tip the fucking robot?
No no, this is a delivery robot.
After you tip it on its back…
No, the article is saying that it is why these robots were popular. Because unlike a human delivery person, there was no tip expected for the robots.
Yes.
Once it is tipped on its side, its easier to remove the batteries and motors.
I’d have 100% done this in college.
Would be nice if you could tip the actual cook. Like the food preparation chain is visible on the receipt with boxes for sending a small tip. But only after the meal turned out to be amazing.
But overall it’s cool that delivery robots will probably mean an end to tipping culture.
The world really needs transparency like that - tip your cook, tip the farmer that grew the amazing tomatoes, or stiff 'em all but at least know who they really were. Before placing your order, get a readout of where the fish was caught, and when… identify how close the chocolate’s cocoa was grown to toxic lead contamination sites - before you take it off the shelf.
Yeah I’d love that, that would be the future.
That would be my future, if you make me king. Since the offers for absolute unflinching loyalty are a bit thin on the ground for the past couple of decades, I’ll assume it’s probably not the future we’re getting.
Yes, but like a cow
I think that’s more commonly like a sheep.
No, that’s the point
Right?! That’d be insane to tip it. Like do people tip autonomous vehicles when they use them? I guess if there is really a human operator, like what Waymo did with having human drivers take over from time to time, all while claiming to be autonomous. I guess in that case, tipping might make sense, so long at the tip went to the driver of the vehicle. I don’t know if driver control these small robots ever or not.
I mean waymo never claimed they would not use human operators from time to time, they in fact disclosed that fact. But people skim over things like that and make statements like yours. Just like I’m positive these delivery bots have the same disclosures.
I think that’s why they will miss this type of delivery, as you do not tip?
That would be the most American thing to do.