The New York Times reports that Shana Gonzales, a fast-food franchisee, said she will look back at the time and wonder why we didn't do it sooner after creating an automated voice recognition system to take orders. Gonzales said she would gladly employ human workers, but she can't find them and has even tried increasing their starting pay from $9 an hour up to $10. Gonzales admitted that she could staff all her restaurants with workers if she charged $14-15 an hour. She said that raising prices would make it difficult to attract workers and would result in her losing sales. However, automation would allow her to pursue a different course.
