Learn Her Name
The pitch was a machine that cuts ten times faster. Nobody asked the name of the woman it replaces.
I’m in the audience at a pitch night. A 22-year-old promises a machine — a box that cuts at speed. Slide one: “the $900 billion problem.” The nine-hundred-billion-dollar problem is cutting vegetables at a restaurant. The actual problem is people. We’re just not saying that yet. Slide three, villain reveal: “human error.” Babe, the human IS the error. Say it with your chest.
Then the empathy slide: “We don’t replace workers. We empower restaurants.” Sir — “empower” is doing so much work in that sentence it should unionize. The jury leans in: how does it clean, how does it charge, what’s the payback period. Nobody asks the machine’s one weird question: what is the name of the woman it replaces? Is her severance in the unit economics? She’s not even in the appendix. The risks section includes rust and battery degradation.
The machine’s health made the risks section. Hers didn’t.
I’m not against the machines — Claude is my whole writing room; you know this about me. I’m against the silence where the person used to be. Nobody funds the warning. Nobody walks into a kitchen a year early and says: it’s coming, here’s what you’re owed, here’s what you could become. The machining is eventual. The preparation is optional. I fight for the optional part.
So build the machine — and prep the worker. Both. Same budget. And to the next 22-year-old with a very fast blade: learn her name. Then the counselor’s. The grape picker’s. The line cook’s. We’re all on your roadmap. We just never made the slide.