I bet the person who performs routine maintenence on the robots is paid less than a butler, even though their position replaced a dozen or two butlers' jobs.

BUT TECHNOLOGY CREATES NEW JOBS THAT REPLACE THOSE IT ELIMINATES SO NO NEED FOR SOCIAL SAFETY NETS

They'll eventually have a fully robotic housekeeping staff which will operate at a fraction of the cost of a human staff, but they'll still charge the same rates because they know customers are willing to pay that much for a room.

Having your way with it.

I wonder if it secretly gets angry when you don't tip.. maybe this is how it all begins.

But this a good use of robots in the service industry. Most hotels just get whoever's not busy at the moment to run room service up, so it's not necessarily taking any human's job, just performing a pretty simple task that nobody else really wants to do.

But who the fuck orders room service? I could understand if the bars were closed and you had a date or something to dip into the liquor, but there's plenty of restaurants near most hotels that are open late, or early in the morning: for the most part you've got between 4AM and 7AM to wait around, or there's probably a convenience store nearby where you can pick up a snack. And before you say "not all hotels are located in downtown Portland" I know. I was stranded in a Super 8 in Florence Kentucky, which is the middle of nowhere, and I still didn't order any room service.

Because then those employees have more periods of time where they have nothing to do, and management/owners get the bright idea that they can reduce hours or staff.

Room service is for rich tourists or people traveling on business and can just expense everything.

I could see that, but realistically it's about 5 minutes of downtime. When I worked in a movie theatre we had a good two hours of nothing to do once the movie started, save for the random straggler who came in late so for the most part, so basically we were getting paid to do nothing but fuck around and read, do homework, etc. Then the movie gets out, another one starts, it's chaos again and then back to fucking around and doing nothing (it was especially fun with 3+ hour Oscar-bait movies)..

And I dunno. I've never worked in a hotel. I assume that most people check in between noon and 5, but there's always someone at the front desk. And situations come up like my experience in Kentucky. Our entire flight was grounded because of tornadoes so it was this one guy who had no idea what he was doing and completely overwhelmed. They probably put him there because I'd assume it's when nobody usually checks in, and here's 50 or so stranded folks from a plane. And he did a good job taking care of us, but that's a situation where a Mr. Handy would come in handy, and those situations pop up all the time, or sometimes not at all, you just never know.

But then again, why would you order room service from a Super 8?

I've only ordered room service when I was traveling on business and needed breakfast to be ready for me so I could make it to an early-morning meeting with important people.

Also the possibly-true stereotype is that honeymooners order room service so they don't have to interrupt their fucking more than necessary.