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I'm Niu Honglin, joined by Steve and Yishan.
Let's welcome this week's Soapbox.
Hear ye, hear ye.
Please gather round.
It's time for the soapbox.
Welcome to the soapbox.
Today, we talk about a story about a fast food giant in America.
It has just decided to take customer service to the next level by putting artificial intelligence inside their employees' ears.
We're talking about Burger King.
It is now testing AI-powered headsets in hundreds of locations across the United States.
And these devices aren't just taking orders.
They are coaching workers on how to do their jobs, tracking when supplies run low and even monitoring the words employees use when talking to consumers.
It's a move that raises an uncomfortable question.
Is this just a high-tech quality control check, or is it employee monitoring dressed up in a friendly voice and a corporate mission statement?
This story is picked by our Steve Hallerly.
Burger expert.
Burger.
Or ask for it.
Oh, do you shop in Burger King a lot?
Is that why you picked the story?
I don't know if shop is the right word.
Eat?
Dine?
Dine.
From time to time.
But this caught my eye not because it's Burger King per se, but because of the control.
Control, strong word.
Yeah, that the company itself is pushing over or onto their employees.
So let's share some more details here.
So the AI-powered headsets, I think you said it, right?
500 restaurants for now across the United States.
The system itself is called BK Assistant.
But inside the system, there's a voice assistant, and the voice assistant's name is Patty.
Huh?
Yeah, exactly.
Like Meat Patty?
Yes, exactly.
And it talks to employees through their headsets.
It's powered by OpenAI.
That's the same company behind ChatGPT, right?
The test run started in February of 2026.
And if it's successful, they're going to roll out to all US restaurants later this year, all across America.
And I was wondering about Canada, too, and apparently in Canada as well.
The voice assistant.
So what does it do?
So it recites recipes when employees forget how to make some menu items.
That's nice.
That's useful, right?
It answers questions about the cooking processes, like how to clean an ice cream machine or soda fountain, something like that.
If you don't know how to do it, you can ask the voice assistant.
It'll tell you how to do it.
It tells managers when inventory is low, like the drink machine is low on cola or something.
It tells the manager before that actually happens.
Sounds pretty good, right?
It notifies managers when a customer uses a QR code to report an issue like a messy bathroom.
So that means like if you go into a bathroom as a customer and it's not clean, you can scan a QR code and report that.
And that message will go through the AI assistant to the manager in real time.
And then it'll automatically update some store inventory within 15 minutes when the equipment fails or products run out of stock.
So you know, if there's no more tomatoes or lettuce or something, then it's going to alert the manager.
So basically this assistant, Patty, is becoming the super brain of all the workers.
That's about half of what it can do.
I listed the good stuff.
Here's the other stuff.
It tracks when employees use specific keywords like welcome, please and thank you during customer interactions.
And it generates a friendliness score for teams based on these conversations.
And then it analyzes audio from drive-through interactions.
It can prompt employees to upsell.
So when it hears certain keywords, the headset might tell the staff.
You know, Ask them if they want an apple pie with their burger set.
Upselling.
Or would you like a large Coke instead of a medium?
Like something like that.
And the managers can check the store's friendliness score anytime they want. by asking the AI.
And Burger King.
They're working on improving the system to better capture the tone of voice and not just the words.
But the real issue here is about what I mentioned before.
It's monitoring the employee's speech and interactions with the customers.
It's listening for words like please and thank you and you're welcome.
And then the AI assistant, Patty, generates a friendliness score.
Report for the manager to look at later.
I kind of get it, especially from the perspective of, for example, intern or someone who has just passed the training session and started working in the restaurant.
They may forget it. about some upsell words or expressions that they're asked to use anyways.
And also maybe they're just a little bit nervous.
They're not that familiar with the situation in the restaurants.
They do not know the cooking process.
So the AI assistant can give them a little heads up.
But at the same time, it's also a little bit...
You know, futuristic creepy.
Okay, so there's a bit of online backlash for this.
Users on social media called the system gross.
They called it peak late stage corporate behavior.
That was from The Guardian.
This is from BBC.
Critics described it as dystopian.
But the company the restaurant says it's not designed to record conversations or evaluate individual employees.
But that's what it does.
This is the quote.
This is from NBC.
This is from the chief digital officer.
It's really a coaching tool to help you as an employee become more hospitable.
And we're going to help you also with certain operation flaws that may occur.
That can help be a little bit complex.
With our help.
Well, the reason that I find it relatively acceptable is that if it is someone talking to my ears, a real person helping, guiding and secretly or openly judging me in my ears, that's a bit creepy.
But I doubt the artificial intelligence assistant here or in this stage has that ability.
So I think they're not judging.
They're really just, quote unquote, helping.
Well, it is a digital crutch for new workers, for sure.
It can help in the way Steve mentioned at the very beginning.
But to me, it sounds like...
Because developing an AI system costs a lot of money.
And with all that big amount of money it can be put into more practical ways of really making a difference for you as a business and also for the employees.
For example, good training so that they don't forget.
Or increase their bonus in a way that they actually can be trusted as employees.
How about that?
So I don't really get this whole Patty idea.
Well, this has me feeling a lot of different things a certain kind of way.
So get around, y'all.
It's time for my soapbox.
Thank you for coming.
Thousands of people out there.
Look, let's be honest about what's really happening here.
Burger King, it's a business, full stop.
Their goal isn't to create a warm, fuzzy workplace where everyone holds hands and sings kumbaya.
Their goal is to make money, sales, revenue.
And if slapping a robot in every employee's ear helps them sell a few more Whoppers, that's going to be a done deal.
But let's sit and think about what they've actually built.
There is now a voice in workers' heads called Patty, named after a burger patty, because nothing says we value you as a human, like naming your surveillance software after a slab of processed meat.
And Patty is listening to every single interaction.
Every hello, every thanks, every come again, every moment of genuine human connection scored graded, reported to management.
Now, they say it's not about tracking individuals.
Sure, because when your manager comes over and says hey, great job on the friendliness score today guys, you know exactly what that means.
You know someone was counting.
You know someone was watching.
And you know that next time when you're having a bad day and you forget to say please to the customer who's yelling at you about their cold french fries,
Well, that score is going to drop, and someone important will notice.
And this is the part that really gets me.
We're now using artificial intelligence to teach humans how to be human?
Patty the Robot is reminding people to say thank you.
Patty the Algorithm is deciding what friendly sounds like.
We've built a machine to grade us on our warmth and we've put it in a headset named after ground beef.
Thanks.
And you know, somewhere in a boardroom, a group of executives is high-fiving because they've figured out how to squeeze efficiency out of every single second.
The inventory updates itself.
The manager knows about the messy bathroom before the customer finishes wiping their hands.
And the fry cook doesn't even have to remember the recipe anymore, because Patty will tell you exactly how to do it.
Good job, suits.
But here's what those suits in their executive suites are missing.
Hospitality is not a checklist.
It's not a score.
It's not a series of keywords that you can track and optimize like supply chain logistics.
When your server smiles at you because they genuinely want you to have a good meal, you feel that and you want to come back again.
And when they're saying please and thank you because a robot in their ear just reminded them that their friendliness score is being calculated in real time.
Well, as a customer, you feel that too.
Burger King, sure, they say hospitality is fundamentally human, and I agree with that.
If you trust your workers though, you train them, you support them, you give them breaks, you give them fair wages and you give them a reason to actually care about the person standing in front of them at the counter.
The multi-billion dollar conglomerates aren't in the business of trust.
This one's in the business of burgers.
And if they can sell a few more by turning every employee into a monitored, scored algorithm, coached machine, they 100 will.
So here we are, everyone, in 2026.
The robots aren't taking our jobs.
They're just standing over our shoulders, grading us on how to politely do them.
Welcome to the future, everyone.
Please remember to say thank you.
Patty's watching.
That's harsh.
Good job.
You think so?
I think it's all hitting the right pain point.
Employees being monitored for human interactions by a robot that scores them.
I have a problem with that.
I don't have a problem with the business side of things.
They're trying to maximize their efficiency and their sales.
I'm thinking about this from the human beings that actually work in those burger restaurants.
This, to me, is completely almost dehumanizing.
Here's a story that I overheard from Burger King here in China, actually not very far away from office building right here in Beijing.
She shops there.
Yeah, I shopped, dined, ate there quite often, especially after gym time.
But the other night it was like 8 p.m. in the evening.
And I was among two others, the only three, one of the only three customers left in a Burger King.
And there were one young guy, looking apparently very young, with another older, more senior lady who was coaching him how to clean up each table, with what spray and how to make it more efficient so that the turnover of the tables gets faster, especially in daytime.
And they were chit-chatting while getting the training done and the young guy said I actually just attended the Gaokao.
Meaning that he is an 18, 19-year-old who just finished Gaokao and now he's in Beijing.
He's actually not from Beijing, by the way.
He describes the Gaokao and his trip here.
Before attending university here in Beijing.
It's actually a pretty good, high-ranking university here in Beijing.
Before I go there and participate in the school, I want to earn a bit of a living fee.
And by the number they were sharing, it wasn't really that big of a per hour payment for a job.
And I think that kind of works for Burger Kings across the country, too.
I just interviewed my boyfriend.
On the minimum wage back in Canada back in the days when he used to cater in a fast food chain.
Now, this may not work nowadays, but the way he described it is that 15 Canadian dollars per hour was what he used to get, and that was barely enough to pay bills.
So for these people, for these young people especially, who's just trying to look for some payment now, we're telling them, we're putting a year, but inside their year, telling them what to do and that you are being watched as long as you work here.
I don't know how to feel for them, honestly.
I think training is good enough, but what is this?
Really, what is this?
What are we looking at right now?
Well, I don't know.
I think when it comes to technology, to start with again, I'm pretty sure no manager would have the time and no company would assign someone to listen to and maybe watch all of the videos of each and every individual working in their restaurants.
Each conversation it happened in the restaurant.
The reason that they have a friendlessness score is precisely because they cannot really monitor everything.
So if i'm working there, at least to give myself a peace of mind, i would not consider this as i am being watched all the time, because the surveillance camera is in the restaurant for a really long time and No one seemed to have a huge problem with it anymore.
Yeah, but this isn't about cameras though.
This is about voice recognition and it's counting the number of times that you say please and thank you and you're welcome.
And it's giving you a score based on that.
If I worked there, I'd be like, hi, welcome, welcome, welcome to Burger King.
Please, please, please tell me what you would like.
What would make a difference to my attitude towards this system is how serious they're taking the friendlessness score.
Because if they only use it as one reference and they're saying, you know, you're saying the fewest number of thank you.
Maybe do you want to be a bit nicer.
And you can say I'm not saying thank you or please that much, but I'm saying honey or dear to my customers and I'm smiling a lot.
And I take an interest like, ah, you look nice.
I noticed you, do you want your drink to be a little bit warmer?
Do you want a little less ice cube in your Coke?
Because it just recognized you.
That counts as being friendly as well.
So if they give you To start with, if you do not view the friendlessness score that serious to a point that they decide on the wage, on the kind of bonus you get, based on it,
And also they give you a space to argue about whether or not you are being friendly, if you're being friendly in a standardized kind of way or if you're being friendly individually in a genuine your personal kind of way.
That is not a huge problem for me per se.
Yeah, and another thing is i understand from again the business point of view.
Perhaps they're just trying to figure out new, quote-unquote innovative ways to make their service a little bit better.
And they cannot afford to hire people to listen to each and every conversation.
And this is just a tryout to see whether or not it helps.
And when it comes to application of different technologies, There's always a phase.
There's always something that later on, several years later, you deem as quote unquote, stupid or unnecessary, or just a phase that you're trying it out.
Yes.
Before the show we talked about maybe using it to help your shop assistant.
Understanding different languages so that you can better help the foreigners in the shop can be a better idea, can be a more effective, efficient or useful idea.
Perhaps, like Yuchen said, you can find some other ways to help your shoppers and help shop assistant and also your customers.
But I don't know.
For this one, I am not that strongly opposed as Steve.
Why is this necessary, though?
The other aspects of it.
I love you know the if inventory is running low or bathrooms not clean, or how to make the burger properly.
I love all that.
But why?
Why?
Why?
Because this just screams, I don't trust you.
Yep.
Right.
Right.
I mean, you hired me.
You hired me to do a job and customer service is part of that job.
But now, with this, you're basically telling me that you don't trust me to be polite to another person.
This does not sit well.
Maybe it does not say I don't trust you.
They say I want the friendliness to be also standardized to a point that people have different personalities.
Some people believe saying please and thank you. is enough.
Some people want to do more and some people believe a simple smile on your face is enough.
Is this the same or different?
Because lots of jobs are monitored, right?
I remember it was a hot issue in institutes, language institutes in Korea.
Some of them started putting cameras inside the classrooms And they would show the lesson outside in the lobby to the moms or dads that were there.
And the teachers really didn't like that because it was monitoring them.
I mean, there are safety issues, obviously, you know, interactions between child and teacher.
They just want to make sure they get the story right, stuff like that.
But the teachers at least a little bit felt like I'm being watched.
Right.
Is that the same or different here?
I don't think in Chinese schools that's actually being practiced.
The monitoring and watching over the class kind of records mainly play a role regarding security instead of public displaying to the parents.
But I guess each thing happened for a reason.
And that maybe in South Korea, that's what happened.
The parents actually voiced for more documents or records on how the teachers.
It wasn't like a countrywide thing.
It was just a few, I think.
Nice.
Last question, real quick.
How would you feel if there was an AI tool listening to you and then after the show it said if you could just increase your tone to 2 more friendly on the show, that would be great.
How would you feel about that?
I feel if it really helps, I might listen to it.
I don't know.
I think in this day and age, you cannot really resist the collecting of data.
It depends on how the data is used, who has access to the data a bit later.
Maybe that's my two cents.
And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin with Steve and Yishan.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening.
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