Flip the burgers: Burger King designed one quite a while ago, there are others http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/534610484/Automatic_burger_making_machine.html , keep in mind that "taste" is a creative field, so anything produced this way is likely to be fast-food, not restaurants.
I think that coming up with the recipes is creative, but once you have the recipe, that can easily be automated.
- Plumbing/Gas, machines don't work well with water, we can invent tools and robots to help, but it's a lot easier for a human to solve a plumbing problem by seeing where things are leaking/clogged and engineer a solution on the spot with available materials. Again, this is a creative angle.
It's a "creative" angle now but easily solvable. If we were to add sensors to plumbing/gas lines, then leaks and other problems could be identified fairly quickly. Just add sensors for moisture detection, pressure, etc... Place them along the plumbing, and you would not only know when there was a problem but what section was faulty.
- Customer Service. We don't as yet have a way for robots to do anything other than say NO. Can you imagine not being able to return anything, even unopened?
That's the easiest one to solve, and could probably be solved fairly quickly. Just scan the product and scan your receipt. Somehow come up with a way to determine if a package has been opened, if it hasn't then issue a store credit.
What kind of non-rural area do you live in where there's no traffic?
North Atlanta, and, yes, there are side streets where there's only traffic in rush hour but pretty dead on the off-times. And, of course, because of the spike in traffic, there needs to be traffic lights. Unfortunately, they were built decades ago and not improved upon since then, so most are just on timers, which means that you just sit there until the light cycles.
Plus, don't most lights go to flashing yellow (= 4 way stop) at off-peak times?
Not the light right where I live. It never goes to flashing yellow. I typically spend 2-3 minutes at that light to turn left anytime I decide to go out, no matter the time or the traffic.
An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.