4 ms·
> It’s so much easier to order my Egg McMuffin and black coffee from a human behind the counter than to poke my index finger through a decision tree on the self
by zck 8y ago
> It’s so much easier to order my Egg McMuffin and black coffee from a human behind the counter than to poke my index finger through a decision tree on the self-order kiosk.
I disagree. When I've been to McDonald's (a few times a year), I find the kiosks easier.
1. There's rarely a line, even when there's a line to order at the counter.
2. Things are more discoverable. If you already know exactly what you want, it is probably faster to order with a human. But if you're not sure, the overhead menu boards are not so easy to work with; they are now screens that move and don't show all the menu at one time. It also isn't always obvious what prices are.
3. Things are easier to customize. The kiosk says exactly what you can add or remove. For example, recently I found out through a Shake Shack kiosk that you can add lettuce to a spicy chicken sandwich, or make it extra spicy and remove pickles. A human cashier might suggest one of those things, but not all of them.
4. There's no pressure to move along. You're not bothering anyone by looking through the options in the kiosk. However, if you stop for ten seconds while ordering at the counter to try to figure out if you're in a quarter pounder or a crispy chicken sandwich mood, it feels like you're bothering the cashier.
- Retra 8y agoIf you took ten seconds before you placed your order, you could instead realize that the vast majority of these decisions you're making our irrelevant to your life and you could spend your time doing more enjoyable and worthwhile things instead, without driving yourself to decision fatigue over a pickle.
- StrictDabbler 8y agoAbsolutely. I have two further points: 5. Once you've learned the idiosyncrasies of the kiosk it is the same on every visit. Human cashiers vary in their understanding of the menu, the McDonald's system, and the local language. The human cashiers are also just poking their index fingers through a decision tree, though it's broader and less deep than self-serve kiosks often offer us. If I'm ordering hamburgers for a road-trip I know my wife wants tartar sauce on hers, I want no ketchup on mine but I want extra mustard, and my cousin wants neither. Trying to convey such a simple order (6Hamburgers)=(2TarterAdded+2(KetchupRemoved+ExtraMustard)+2(no sauce)) is an infuriating exercise in implicit closures. "So you want extra mustard on the ones without ketchup?" "On two of the ones without ketchup, yes. Two of the burgers are without any sauce at all." Try ordering the sandwiches one-by-one and you'll discover that any two identical sandwiches in a row are treated as a mistaken repetition. Etc, etc. 6. The mobile apps allow parallelism. You don't have to wait to get to the counter or even the restaurant to make your order. While I'm driving my wife can order our food. It's not exactly ready when we arrive but it's a lot sooner than if we'd waited in line. At Disneyland, we often walked right by dozens of families to pick up our mobile orders because nobody had bothered to understand the app. We saved hours of waiting and given the price we were paying Disney to be in the park that was a huge savings. The fundamental practical advantages of mobile ordering are so great that the back-end side will never be abandoned. So why not have a giant tablet in the restaurant running the front-end?