Marshall Brain: Manna

“Shit.” That’s all I could think to say.

Brian asked, “Does Manna count you down during your breaks at Burger-G?”

“Yes, every minute you get a reminder.”

Even your breaks were supervised. I had never thought about it, but all the breaks at Burger-G were staggered as well.

When Mom and I went to shop in Brian’s store, you could feel the difference that Manna made. Every two or three minutes an employee would walk past you no matter where you were in the store. The merchandise on the shelves was always neat, and everything was stocked. The floors were spotless. Shopping carts never stacked up in the parking lot. If you needed help, you knew that all you had to do was stand there and an employee would walk by in a minute or so.

As the Manna software evolved, it gained more and more responsibility. From the start Manna was able to schedule employee hours. Manna printed a piece of paper for each employee to put on the refrigerator — it told you your hours for the week. In version 2.0 they went further. They connected Manna to the telephone network and the public email network. So Manna was able to begin calling and emailing employees and reminding them to show up on time. If an employee didn’t show up, Manna could call in a replacement. If the store became unexpectedly crowded, Manna could call in reinforcements.

In version 3.0, the software gained the ability to fire employees as well. I had a friend who got fired that way. He came into the store late for his shift, and it was his third time being late. He punched in and put on his headset. He walked over to the eye scan station to log in. He said Manna sounded normal, and had him working normally for about half an hour. Then Manna asked him to walk to Zone 7 at the back of the store. A Burger-G security guy was standing there with three sheets of paper. The security guy was wearing the solid black security uniform, the opaque sunglasses and a headset integrated into the helmet. He looked back and there was another security guy standing near the door. Manna said to him, “Steven J. Canis, employee number 4378561, your employment at Burger-G store number 152 is hereby terminated in accordance with employee manual paragraph 12.1, failure to appear at work on time.” Manna read him the three pages of termination information paragraph by paragraph and asked him to confirm each paragraph. He could not return to that Burger-G store for a year. He could not reapply to Burger-G for five years. Stuff like that. Manna made him sign the papers and the security guys escorted him out of the store to his car. The security guys never said a word, but Manna was talking to him during the entire walk, telling him to look down, to make no gestures, to speak to no one. The last thing Manna said to him was, “Remove your headset and hand it to the security officer on your left. Goodbye.”

It didn’t take long for word to get around. Pretty much, if you knew you were going to be late and you had been late before, you called Manna on your cell phone and quit. Manna emailed the forms to you, had you phone in when you got them so it could read them to you, and you signed them. It really cut down on people being late.

By version 4.0, Manna gained the ability to outsource. Let’s say that Manna decided it was time to repaint the lines in the parking lot. Manna would make this decision using customer surveys and by periodically asking employees questions about the parking lot, the paint inside the store, the exterior of the store, the roof, etc. An inspector from Burger-G corporate would also come once a month and feed information about the store and grounds into the Manna system.

When Manna made the decision to repaint the stripes in the parking lot, it would call several companies and get bids. Manna did not do this on the phone, obviously. It did it electronically through the Internet. By this time, most companies were hooked into the Manna network, even if the company did not use Manna to manage employees. The two pieces of software — the Manna software running the Burger-G restaurant and the Manna software running the parking lot maintenance company — would bid and negotiate through the Internet.

Because everything was done by machine, the restaurant’s Manna system could send out a request for bids to all the parking lot maintenance companies in the area. Those companies would send bids back through the network. The restaurant’s Manna system would then connect with hundreds of other Manna systems to check references and get feedback on past experiences with each vendor. Based on the bid prices and the feedback, Manna would select a vendor, negotiate terms, make a deposit and schedule the repainting job. The entire process from start to finish took less than 10 seconds.

As these communication networks between all the different Manna systems built up, things started to get uncomfortable for every worker. For example, the Manna software in each store knew about employee performance in microscopic detail — how often the employee was on time or early, how quickly the employee did tasks, how quickly the employee answered the phone and responded to email, how the customers rated the employee and so on. When an employee left a store and tried to get a new job somewhere else, any other Manna system could request the employee’s performance record. If an employee had “issues” — late, slow, disorganized, unkempt — it became nearly impossible for that employee to get another job. Nearly every company with minimum wage employees used Manna software or something similar, and performance records on employees were a major commodity freely exchanged between corporations. A marginal employee got blacklisted in the system very quickly.

That ability to blacklist employees is where things got ugly, because it gave Manna far too much power. Manna was everywhere, and it was managing about a half of the workers in the United States through headsets, cell phones and email. Manna moved in and took over a big chunk of the government as well. There came a point where tens of millions of humans did nothing at work unless told to do so by a Manna system.

You can imagine what would happen. Manna fires you because you don’t show up for work a couple times. Now you try to go get a job somewhere else. No other Manna system is going to hire you. There had always been an implicit threat in the American economy — “if you do not have a job, you cannot make any money and you will therefore become homeless.” Manna simply took that threat and turned the screws. If you did not do what Manna told you to, it would fire you. Then you would not be able to get a job anywhere else. It gave Manna huge leverage.

For example, Manna could call in reinforcements as it needed them. You would get a call from Manna and it would say, “Your Burger-G restaurant is experiencing unexpected customer volume. Can you help?” The word “help” meant, “Can you be here in less than 10 minutes?” You could say yes or no. The problem was that if you said “no” too many times, you got fired. And when you got fired, it meant you were blacklisted in the system.

Once you figured that out, you were pretty much forced to say “yes”. That meant that the printed schedules started to become pretty much irrelevant. Manna would call you when it wanted to call you. Then it started calling you to other restaurants. If things got slow in the restaurant, Manna would send you home, then call you back in later if things got busy again. You really could not say “no” very often, meaning that Manna could interrupt your life at any time.

Version 4.0 of Manna was also the first version to enforce average task times, and that was even worse. Manna would ask you to clean the restrooms. But now Manna had industry-average times for restroom cleaning stored in the software, as well as “target times”. If it took you too long to mop the floor or clean the sinks, Manna would say to you, “lagging”. When you said, “OK” to mark task completion for Manna, Manna would say, “Your time was 4 minutes 10 seconds. Industry average time is 3 minutes 30 seconds. Please focus on each task.” Anyone who lagged consistently was fired.