Sanjay loved robots and he loved coffee. Both of these loves were requited to him daily through his work as a senior engineer for a technology company. Their main campus had its own barista bar with free fancy drinks as a defining perk. Sanjay enjoyed a wet double cappuccino with almond milk at 8AM, a dry cappuccino with 2% milk at 9:30AM, a large cup of chai with coconut milk at 11:30AM, a medium Americano with soy milk at 1PM… but his wife insisted he switch to decaf after 3PM, so then he would have a London fog with foamed whole milk, followed by a small dark sipping chocolate at 5PM. These drinks filled his days with joy, and filled his body and mind with almost as much energy and sleeplessness as the many robots he and his team created.
The focus of Sanjay’s team was optimizing industrial robot arms for precision, balance and speed. There was fierce competition from many other innovators in their product space. With new dynamic motion algorithms, micro piezo motors and lithium ion batteries, the race was on to be the first to go to market. Sanjay’s team had a small versatile robot arm up and running, but Sanjay lacked a use case for this prototype.
He needed to think. Clearly and quickly. To do this, he needed caffeine.
His motto, and the motto of his engineering peers, was “move fast and break things.” And so it was frustrating to Sanjay that Sunil, the new barista, did neither. This man moved slowly and tried to fix things, well at least people. He was chatty, too chatty.
Sanjay stood in the drink line - an ever-lengthening drink line since Sunil had started working here - and placed his order quietly and quickly.
Sunil smiled at Sanjay as he slowly prepared his drink. “Good morning Mr. Sanjay. How are you today? How is your project going?”
Sanjay did his best not to engage. He pretended not to hear the barista and typed a message on his phone. Squandering time on nonessentials, such as talking to a person, this was so wasteful.
“Here you go Mr. Sanjay, my best work, and look at the flower I made for you.” Sunil handed over a double cappuccino with an intricate flower of foam atop its surface. As he did so, his hand shook, the bottom of the mug hit the table edge, and the hot drink spilled over onto Sanjay.
Sanjay first felt hurt - the hot coffee burned his hand - then he felt alarmed - the liquid covered his new phone - finally he felt angry.
He yelled, “My robots could do a better job at this than you!”
He wondered, “Could my robots do a better job at this than you?”
He concluded, “My robots can do a better job at this than you.”
Sanjay turned from Sunil and ran back to his lab.
24 hours later, after no sleep, Sanjay and his team premiered the Brewbot 9000 - a first generation robot barista. It was a stationary robot arm with four joints providing six axes of rotation. The end-of-arm tool was a haptic three-fingered gripper with up to 250 Newtons of precision force. The control software was fully integrated with a 3-D binocular visual system mounted separately. The Brewbot 9000 would be the vanguard of human-robot collaborative technology for the coffee industry. It could mix multiple drinks of any complexity, all fresh and made to order in less than a minute. The robot would never tire, err, or spill. It would never grow hungry, need a restroom break, get sick, have to sleep, or want to go home. It was a perfect worker that required no pay, vacation, health insurance, nor any other costly benefits.
The Brewbot 9000 would obviate the human connection in the short but frequent daily ritual of acquiring liquid refreshment. Sanjay believed social interactions were a distraction and an obvious limiting factor to financial success. Maybe that was why the barista Sunil reminded Sanjay so much of his father? They were quite similar really, as Sanjay’s father had been a chaiwala, with a tea stall of his own for decades. The man had spent his days chatting with regular customers and any passers-by in the square. He lost so many sales because tourists would go elsewhere whenever his line became too long. And his line was always too long. Sanjay’s father often gave away more tea than he sold, to his friends, and to various regulars and beggars. If he could have been paid for chatting and gifting, he would have died a very rich man. “My son, why did the Gods make me so happy, but make me so poor.” The gregarious father never shared in his reserved son’s gift for logic and causality.
And so Sanjay had the Brewbot 9000 replace Sunil in the main lobby. It was logical. And the initial results were impressive. Coffee drinks were dispensed rapidly to all employees with meticulous efficiency. The team was ecstatic. His boss was pleased. Sanjay was satisfied.
Then HR came to his office.
“Sanjay, there’s a problem with your new project, I’m getting complaints.”
“From whom?”
“From everyone. Some say the coffee is too bitter, others too sweet. Some say it's too hot, others too cold. I myself miss the foam flowers that Sunil used to make. You need to fix this.”
Sanjay hired Sunil back as an outside consultant. He had Sunil craft the same drinks from the same ingredients using the same machines, all exactly the same as the Brewbot 9000. Everything was identical, down to the hand motions. Yet everyone agreed that the drinks made by Sunil somehow tasted better.
This was a crisis. Sanjay’s other motto, and the other motto of his engineering peers, was “in crisis, there is opportunity.” And so Sanjay and his bosses rallied an all-hands-on-deck meeting. They had Sunil and the Brewbot 9000 make forty identical drinks and randomly assigned these drinks for taste testing in a double-blind fashion. But surprisingly everyone found that the drinks all tasted the same - they all tasted equally bad.
How could it be that the null hypothesis was confirmed?! This made no sense. Sanjay marched over to Sunil and had him blend his favorite drink, a cappuccino with a foamy flower on top. Sunil smiled at Sanjay as he ground and compacted the espresso, he asked Sanjay about his morning, he steamed the milk, then he asked Sanjay how he was feeling. He handed the drink to Sanjay and their fingers touched lightly, it was barely a tap, a small random moment of flesh-to-flesh contact. Sanjay took the warm cup and held it between both his palms, stared down at the flower of foam floating on the drink’s surface. He inhaled the deep pleasant aroma of good coffee, then sipped. The taste was smooth, deep, complex, a perfect light sweetness and not bitter in the least. Yet this was also the exact cappuccino that both Sunil and the Brewbot 9000 had just produced in their double-blind trials.
“I think I finally understand something.” Sanjay slowly lifted his head and his gaze met Sunil’s eyes. “It’s not the ingredients. It’s not the machines.” He began to tear unexpectedly. “My father tried to explain it to me, but I could never compute it.”
Sunil offered Sanjay a tissue from a box on his counter.
Sanjay dried his eyes and sipped more of his coffee. “These drinks are all a bit too bitter, or too sweet, too hot, or too cold - but it’s the chatting - it’s your kindness - it perfects each drink as it passes from hand to hand, from human hand to human hand.”
Sanjay was promoted from engineering manager to senior manager. He pushed to hire Sunil back full-time as the new “human interface” for the otherwise fully autonomous Brewbot 9000. Sunil’s job was now to sit and greet, and chat and care, and also of course to hand every employee their drinks, made fresh to order and in less than a minute, all by the Brewbot 9000.
And so soon Sanjay found himself again standing in that drink line - an ever lengthening line since Sunil had returned to work - at Sanjay’s own behest! It was annoying and frustrating. He listened as Sunil chatted to one coworker after another, handing each their drinks.
Sunil greeted them, he cared for them, he was kind, authentic, and earnest.
When it was his turn to get his coffee order, Sanjay was grumpy, but not too grumpy to enjoy his usual daily chat with Sunil. He returned to his desk with his drink. He sipped it slowly, thought a bit more about his father, and smiled.
Adam Strassberg is a retired psychiatrist living in Portland, Oregon. He uses the intersection of psychology, religion, mythology and magical realism to explore the human condition through fiction. When he’s not writing or napping, he often can be found updating his website at www.adamstrassberg.com
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