What's wrong is the micromanaging, and also the "operationalization" of politeness into the metric of "these specific words and these specific times." Both are dehumanizing with or without AI - both on the employee side and my side - what is the point of politeness if it's basically at gunpoint?
I would equally have a problem with a manager who is threatening to write people up if they don't meet some count of saying the words "please" and "thank you."
I don't want AI to enable micromanagement of stuff that doesn't really need to be micromanaged. How it should be done is this: Print a QR code on the receipt. If I feel the drivethru conversation was bad, let me scan it and notify you. Then you can have AI review that conversation, and we'll also find out who the people are that just like to complain too much and ban them from the establishments.
Anyone who's been to a Chik Fila more than once has experienced how weird and off-putting this kind of micro-management to the point of ensuring certain phrases are always used in particular situations is- every conversation with them ends with them saying "my pleasure" in a rote way.
I definitely agree that is weird and off-putting, but I recently moved to an area with a grocery store that is the complete opposite: the cashiers stand there silently through the whole order. That's also off-putting despite my introversion. I think we need a middle ground with a simple mandatory polite greeting like "Welcome to Hank's" and then after that leave it up to being organic/authentic.
When a human makes sure employees are being polite, they're reinforcing the social contract that comes with employment. When you remove the human from the equation it's literally dehumanizing. That's it. Thats the why.
