So I walk into my favorite McDonald's and see these monstrosities taking up half the space in the ordering area. One of the employees asks if I would like to try ordering at one of the "new kiosks" so I'm like "what the hell, sure." All I wanted was a breakfast meal and orange juice. How hard could that be?
Really fucking difficult, it turns out. It took 3 employees roughly 10 minutes trying to figure out where the orange juice was in the system and screwing up along the way. Even if it was working right, this thing would have taken twice as long as giving my order to a person, and pissed me off along the way.
Which is the problem with most of these self service kiosks. All they do is take a person out of the loop and force the customer to figure out some dumb ass ordering system that differs everywhere. Unless I have an irrational fear of talking to a person, there is no real value. I don't care about saving 50 cents on my burger if it takes another minute to order and pissed me off at the same time.
view the rest of the comments →
[–] JJNova 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
I had a different experience. I walked up to the counter and an employee asked if I would mind trying to the kiosk. I thought "what the hell, sure" and she walked me through it in about 10 seconds. Pick the sandwich, click to make it an order, and select orange juice. Slid my card and was done. The longest part of the whole process is that damn chip in the cards now. Seems like it takes way too long to verify.
[–] Owlchemy 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Those new chip cards are a serious pain in the ass. I got one a month or so back and absolutely hate the damn thing. Stuff that used to take a few seconds now has ya jumping through a bunch of crazy loops.
[–] JJNova 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
It's even worse that each machine is manufactured to a different quality standard. Some of them you have to force the card in, some you have to wiggle it to the right, and yet there are others that you can't even breath within the vicinity of it or the thing will error out!
[–] LordRygon [S] ago
Eh, I still don't think it's worth the work. I don't think the tech is making it easier, only transferring the work from the cashier to the customer. And forget getting anything custom. The cashier knows about the guy that comes in everyday at noon and wants exactly 3 pickles on his cheeseburger. He knows to yell back to the grill "Its pickle guy!" I worked fast food for years, this happens.
Current tech can't replace customer service, even from shitty minimum wage guy-who-is-hungover. Not until they have real AI with have decent voice recognition, which is at least a decade away.
[–] JJNova 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I remember a hamburger place that knew when I said "no rabbit food" it meant to leave the tomatoes and lettuce off.
I thought it was pretty obvious, but I got blank stares at a lot of other places.