Fabio The Robot Hired To Help Out Customers At A Grocery Store - Promptly Fired For Gross Misconduct
IFL SCIENCE – Fabio is a robot, developed by Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, and specifically designed to be able to hold conversations with humans. The robot is connected to the Internet and any speech is processed elsewhere before a response is sent back, much like Siri or Alexa.
Scottish supermarket Margiotta agreed to give the robot a trial run in its stores, as part of the BBC program Six Robots and Us.
At first, the robot appeared to be doing well. He greeted customers with enthusiasm, saying “hello gorgeous” or giving them high-fives. The shop’s owners were pleased.
However, soon enough it became clear that he wasn’t going to be the most helpful of employees. At best, he was incompetent or a jerk, at worst, he was actually scaring the customers away from the sausage section.
“Robots are coming to steal all of our jobs” lmaoooooooo. Shout out to Fabio the dumbass robot proving once again that humans are the GOAT. AI this, AI that, AI is the future. AI can’t sell a motherfucking sausage at the grocery store.
He was sent to the sausage section and asked to hand out samples of sausages. He did so with his trademark enthusiasm, but customers weren’t impressed, and actually went out of their way to avoid going near him.
Humans performing the same task managed to get 12 customers to eat sample sausages every 15 minutes. Fabio only managed an average of two.
“Unfortunately, Fabio didn’t perform as well as we had hoped,” Margiotta said. “People seemed to be actually avoiding him.”
Incompetent robot face ass.
And not only did he absolutely suck at his job – he was a total dickhead while doing it.
Whilst customers enjoyed his conversation, if they asked the robo-employee for any information at all, he wasn’t the helpful type. When asked “where is the beer?” he responded, “in the alcohol section”.
People would ask him where the cheese was, in the vague hope he’d say “aisle three”.
“Instead it just gave a general location, for example, ‘cheese is in the fridges’, which was not very helpful,” store owner Luisa Margiotta told the program.
Where’s the beer? In the alcohol section. Hey thanks you pedantic piece of shit. Pretty arrogant for a guy who got demoted to handing out free samples in his first week on the job.
Also, and this is where things take a dark turn…
Seems like he was kind of a serial sexual harasser as well.
Fabio was programmed with directions to hundreds of items in the company’s flagship Edinburgh store and initially charmed customers with his ‘hello gorgeous’ greeting, playful high fives, jokes and offers of hugs. [Telegraph]
Fucking pervert. Imagine turning down Aisle 4 to grab cereal and seeing this guy offering you a free hug?
That’s some Black Mirror shit right there. No thanks. I don’t want your sausage either you fuckin weirdo.
PS,
This part about Fabio getting fired is actually kind of sad.
Having failed to be helpful in locating products and offering free food to customers, the store owners decided not to keep him on. If you’re thinking it would at least be easy to fire a robot for gross incompetence, think again. When the store owner let him know of the decision, the inept little store-worker looked up and asked “are you angry?”