Thread

A coffee shop owner used AI to make a menu poster. Then came the angry DMs

82 points · 316 comments · TMWNN

nearlyepic · 1789586705 · focus · HN ↗
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1. nekooooo · 1789587381 · focus · HN ↗
  her response to the dm about finding some cheap artists says it all. i'm sure she didn't give her employees payment for making the posters in the past either.
  1. sgerenser · 1789588053 · focus · HN ↗
    Of course she paid them, it was just another task they did while on duty, like brewing coffee or taking out the trash. Surely you’re not expecting her to pay someone who is already on payroll and being paid for their time extra because they’re making posters?
    CocaKoala · 1789588361 · focus · HN ↗
    If making posters is outside of the scope of their normal job duties as it had previously been defined, then yes, absolutely I'd expect them to be paid extra.
    Just because they're on payroll and being paid for their time doesn't mean you can instruct them to do anything you ask.
    F3nd0 · 1789588701 · focus · HN ↗
    True. I can’t speak from experience, but this seems like it might often fall within the scope of normal job duties, though.
    sgerenser · 1789588718 · focus · HN ↗
    I assure you, a retail workers job description includes doing all sorts of things, many much less pleasant than making signs. I guarantee you the employee assigned to sign making was happy to be doing that over cleaning the bathroom.
    And besides, this is the U.S. Unless you’re in a union, responding to legitimate, legal and business-related tasks from your employer (that don’t exceed your ability to accomplish, e.g. not lifting 100lbs or whatever) with “not in my job description” will get you canned.
    ratelimitsteve · 1789588578 · focus · HN ↗
    if i'm expected to make coffee and art then it's perfectly reasonable to expect more money than if I'm merely expected to make coffee. whether that comes as part of base salary or as some contract-esque arrangement when art is required of me is the kind of detail we can figure out (or you can try to do it with AI and have a lot of people stop supporting you. your call.)
    free_bip · 1789591949 · focus · HN ↗
    Extra responsibilities = extra pay 100% of the time. Just because it doesn't happen in practice all the time doesn't make it right.
  2. all2 · 1789588167 · focus · HN ↗
    This is probably correct. But also par for the course. I bet there are coffee shops that give skill bonuses or something like that, but I'm betting most don't.
    Most folks who do stuff like this just assume it's part of the job and carry on.
2. [deleted] · 1789587689 · focus · HN ↗
  [deleted]
3. adriand · 1789587938 · focus · HN ↗
  Ouch. Have a little compassion. It is not easy running a small business, even less so when you've got a baby FFS!
  > "At 4 a.m., I was holding my pump on my lap and replying to this person, 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it that way,'" she told me. "I was so into typing this message that I produced so much milk, it was dripping down my legs because I overflowed the pump."
  Also, it's one thing to dislike AI to the point where it "kills the mood" (for you) when you see an AI-generated poster, so you stop visiting that particular coffee shop. It's something else entirely to threaten the business owner.
  1. chungusamongus · 1789588055 · focus · HN ↗
    The thing about the customer always being right is, that becomes a big problem when the customer is an unhinged terminally online weirdo.
    wackget · 1789588341 · focus · HN ↗
    The actual saying is "The customer is always right in matters of taste."
    It is misquoted on a criminally large scale.
    optionalsquid · 1789638900 · focus · HN ↗
    The evidence seems to point to "in matters of taste" being a much later addition: <a href="https://www.snopes.com/articles/468815/customer-is-always-right-origin/" rel="nofollow">https://www.snopes.com/articles/468815/customer-is-always-ri...
    ChrisMarshallNY · 1789588356 · focus · HN ↗
    The customer is not always right: <a href="https://notalwaysright.com/newest/" rel="nofollow">https://notalwaysright.com/newest/
  2. TheSkyHasEyes · 1789588357 · focus · HN ↗
    Agreed.
    A small business in my city made a poster using stick men and simple drawings(because of the topic at hand) and people loved it.
  3. nxc18 · 1789588396 · focus · HN ↗
    To be fair, the “threat” was to post a story to Instagram, so perhaps “warning” is a fairer characterization of what happened.
    I do have compassion for the business owner though - lots of mixed signals between people selling AI and the people having been sold AI now rejecting it.
    If not even software engineers can keep up (we still see slop posted here regularly), how is a non-tech person supposed to know better. I try to be gentle and/or keep my mouth shut when it’s people who can’t be expected to know better.
  4. ratelimitsteve · 1789588725 · focus · HN ↗
    >It's something else entirely to threaten the business owner.
    Please enumerate the threat, as I've been unable to find anything that passes for a threat in the article.
  5. nearlyepic · 1789589516 · focus · HN ↗
    The problem is, they could have literally done nothing instead. They could have apologized to their customers that they've been so busy with their baby that they haven't been able to get a new chalkboard out. They could have left the old chalkboard out and explained politely to people that the new items aren't on it because whoever used to make them left. They could have written (with their hands) the prices and items in halfway-decent hand-writing in a large enough font, and it would have gotten the information across in a way that was perfectly serviceable.
    Instead, they chose to exploit people and remove art from the world by using ChatGPT. So no, I don't have a ton of compassion.
4. chungusamongus · 1789587994 · focus · HN ↗
  Who cares? It's a coffee shop ffs. People really have their priorities straight.

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