My warehouse's new sorting bot jammed for 3 hours yesterday

We got this automated arm to handle small packages last month, and it worked fine until a weird shaped box came through. The thing just froze up, red lights flashing, and the whole line stopped. I had to call the tech support line, and they walked me through a full reset over the phone. It made me wonder how many jobs would just vanish if these systems fail at a bigger scale. Has anyone else had a robot just stop working at a really bad time?

4 comments

4 Comments

gibson.morgan3mo ago

That "constant upkeep" Mary mentioned is the whole point. These are just fancy tools that need a human to run them. Calling it a job crisis seems like a huge overreaction to a machine needing a reboot.

nguyen.blake1mo ago

Remember when my smart fridge locked itself and I had to google how to fix it for an hour.

mary_nelson713mo ago

Yeah that's not really a job vanishing though, it's just a system failure. Those bots need constant upkeep and someone on call to fix them when they glitch. If anything it creates different jobs, just not the same ones that got automated. We're gonna need a lot more techs who can troubleshoot that stuff on the fly.

kim_ramirez33mo ago

Exactly, it's just shifting the work around. But good luck finding enough people who actually know how to fix a robot arm at 2 AM. Those jobs need serious training, not everyone from the old line can just switch over.