"She rejected several applicants with PhDs and engineering backgrounds, reasoning that their level of education could not compensate for a lack of hands-on specialty coffee experience."

This is depressing.

Btw, you'd be surprised how incapable of doing some menial tasks are some people the higher you go into the academic ladder.

And it makes total sense: most people with PhDs were not the ones who loved tinkering with stuff, fixing motorbikes, etc. They stayed inside and either liked books, computers or something akin. (not everyone ofc)

This seems pretty reasonable to me?

If I was hiring a single new staff member in an already staffed cafe (and I trust the existing staff to be good mentors), sure, hire anyone, train them up.

But if I'm hiring the first handful of employees, especially if I'm trying to make good coffee and run a smooth operation, I'd want someone with some experience already - their PhD doesn't really tell me anything about their ability to work in a cafe. This goes doubly so when I'm some ethereal AI that isn't going to be working alongside them.

There's no such thing as "unskilled labor".

Experience isn't a hierarchy. Having a PhD doesn't make someone good at tasks they've never done before.

This ignores the real reason that over-qualified people are often skipped for jobs: They are never interested in staying at that job. It's always something temporary until they find the job they really want, which could happen in days, weeks, or months. They probably won't give 2 weeks' notice because they don't care about their references in the retail industry, meaning you're emergency short-staffed and have to repeat the hiring process all over again.

Don't worry, it's fiction.

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