I heard myself say just this upon entering one location of a very cheap and good quality Japanese Chinese eatery whose name I can never remember and realizing — shock !!! gasp !!!!!!! horror!!!! ——— you didn’t have to order via QR code menu or with the emenu device —- this place ain’t aspirational – but could order things with a real live human.
You know what. Things are tiring enough. And I understand (I don’t understand at all) that pressing some ugly grubby screen when the server is standing right there in front of you go boomer etc etc might make things easier for someone up in the chain but come on it was so much better like this : —- in fact this ‘franchise’ (a novella could easily be written about even the characters there tonight good lordy the fuss being made over some passing chili oil and gyoza juice being dropped onto some old bloke’s uniqlo fleece – you’d think he was the king of Bhutan —- but anyway ) yes: tonight was a whole panoply of humanity in bite size dumpling ——- the twitching servers making at least some eye to eye contact and I loved the whole human mess of it
Made me laugh, but also cry with remembrance of bygone times. Well, my local town does actually still have places with humans. Some of them very human, in an Italian or Polish or Thai way. It does have the power to shock and delight, though, these days. I imagine that in your local place, the fuss was being made *over* the king of Bhutan rather than *by* the king of Bhutan. Now if I could only imagine the food into existence!
Just the cheapest Chinese – but the other branch has those stupid computers beeping away even there are people standing there – I can’t stand it
I completely get what you are saying.
If everything becomes automated where will we be ?
Reminded me of a never-ending drive from Berlin to Cologne (traffic jams on kaputte autobahns…), anyway stopping at some MacDonald‘s, or was it Burger King, and standing in front of an ordering pillar the size of a advertising column. I begin typing an order, make mistakes, am asked variations of this or that, don‘t know how much I‘ve ordered already, no idea how much to pay or how to pay … while two bored-to-bloody-death guys behind the counter one and a half meters in front of me wait for my order to go ping.
I guess this is what we constantly hear/are told: efficiency enhancement through digitization plus exclusive purchasing experience?
My absolute Alptraum : total exasperation !
Ugh… I can totally relate. What happened to the days when people competed to be the most loudly welcoming and helpful to customers?
I mean too in yer face ‘servers’ grate as well.. d and I always argue about it : he sits there doggedly working the computerized screen system where I am more hey get your ass over here and take my order directly
but even if you can talk with persons they have changed in robotoid insectoid assistents and stare at me as if I am from a Netherworld, which, of course, I am. an old (67) poofter stacking the schlung behind me.