Robots pick up slack as wages go up

Washington

CROWDED. That's how Ed Rensi remembers what life was like working at McDonald's back in 1966. There were about double the number of people working in the store - 70 or 80, as opposed to the 30 or 40 today - because preparing the food just took a lot more doing.

"When I first started at McDonald's making 85 cents an hour, everything we made was by hand," Mr Rensi said - from cutting the shortcakes to stirring syrups into the milk for shakes. Over the years, though, ingredients started to arrive packaged and pre-mixed, ready to be heated up, bagged and handed out of the window.