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Wait, restaurants are making you order from an app too?? So now you don't really need your 'exhausted wait staff' so much. Hire less wait staff as a portion are

Wait, restaurants are making you order from an app too?? So now you don't really need your 'exhausted wait staff' so much. Hire less wait staff as a portion are now are underutilized. Now some wait staff have no jobs, and the remainder work the same exhausting shifts. The reason these wait staff get tips is because they work so hard, with less service comes less tips. Now you have a whole industry of overworked AND underpaid staff. Any efficiencies you are seeing will be refactored and stretched out as any business cannot afford to carry fat if they want maximum profit and competitive edge (price). This whole inconvenience of a friend going to the bathroom is an incredibly weak argument for foregoing the tradition and ceremony of interacting with a person who will provide you with a meal. If you want to live in a McWorld where every step of your dining experience is as sterile, efficient, and touch free as possible then I am sad for you. That's not what a meal with friends and family means to me, it's not just about eating for sustenance. Why do you draw the line at taking payment?

astura 5y ago
>The reason these wait staff get tips is because they work so hard The reason they get tips is because they are waitstaff, it has zero to do with how hard they work, it's simply custom to tip waitstaff, even lazy waitstaff. Most employees work just as hard without getting tips (like the people who are actually cooking the food).
- monkeynotes 5y ago
  Maybe for you, I tip extra for working hard to keep my meal hot on delivery, water topped up, checking in at appropriate times. I honestly don't understand how you can say tips are not proportional to level of service and how level of service is entirely detached from working hard. > Most people work just as hard without getting tips (like the people who are actually cooking thr food) Most people get paid a real wage which isn't backfilled with charity from their customers. At many good restaurants tips are distributed to the kitchen staff too. Obviously I have no control over that, and the world isn't fair either. None of this changes my argument.
  - astura 5y ago
    > I tip extra for working hard to keep my meal hot on delivery, water topped up, checking in at appropriate times. Those are things happen with good management, they have little to do with how hard an individual employee is working at a given time. Besides the claim wasn't waitstaff gets "extra" tips for working hard, the claim was that waitstaff is tipped because they work hard. Don't move the goalposts. >I honestly don't understand how you can say tips are not proportional to level of service and how level of service is entirely detached from working hard. I tip the same if my service is shitty, I am not going to put an individual employee in a position of taking a pay cut when I can't know the exact reason something went wrong. I don't know enough about their operations to be punishing individual employees. Even if I could tell if it were an individual employee's fault, most places pool tips, so I'd be punishing the other employees working at the same time. So everyone gets the same tip from me. I also simply just don't enjoy LARPing as a lord of my personal fiefdom. Again, you get good service with good management, simple as that.
    - monkeynotes 5y ago
      > waitstaff gets "extra" tips for working hard All tips are 'extra' that's the whole concept. It's money on top of what I am obliged to pay. > you get good service with good management Good management would pay a good wage and negate the need for tipping. > I also simply just don't enjoy LARPing as a lord of my personal fiefdom. Low blow. You are implying that I am less than you because I have some kind of financial control over waitstaff that I enjoy. A rather bad faith position to be in given how pious and understanding you are striving to come across as. > most places pool tips So now you agree kitchen staff get tipped too > I tip the same if my service is shitty Good for you. I don't think many people operate like this, so I'd say you are an edge case. > it has zero to do with how hard they work, it's simply custom to tip waitstaff, even lazy waitstaff Again, this is how you operate. Wikipedia lays out the common perception of tipping "The customary amount of a tip can be a specific range of monetary amounts or a certain percentage of the bill based on the perceived quality of the service given." I've experienced living in the UK without tipping, and in N.America with tipping. All I can say is it's night and day. Very few make a career out of working as waitstaff in the UK, plenty of people have a career in the service industry in N.America. Working hard for large tips can give you a living wage. In the UK because everyone is treated the same, waitstaff do the minimum for the minimum wage (there are exceptions, of course) and then find a better job. Since I left the UK this has begun to change, it's now reasonably common to tip in nicer restaurants, and guess what? The service is better and the waitstaff I assume are happier with more money in their pockets for their effort.
- grumple 5y ago
  Perhaps you are unaware, but in the US, tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr in most places (tipped minimum wage). These people need tips in order to make any money. Nobody is working hard for 2.83/hr. This is changing since now people are refusing to work those jobs. And yes, the entire industry is dumb and corrupt for having this practice in the first place, but it is what it is.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Perhaps you are unaware, but in the US, tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr in most places (tipped minimum wage). Perhaps you are unaware, but: (1) US federal tipped minimum cash wage is $2.13, not $2.83, but also (2) Most US states and territories have a tipped minimum wage above the federal tipped minimum (and also, though by a smaller margin, most have a tipped minimum above $2.83, which is PA’s tipped minimum.) https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
    - grumple 5y ago
      Sorry, you're right, a quick google search revealed my state's wage, not the fed (forgot to check the difference, which is so negligible that it's insulting). This does not change my point in the slightest, which is that wait staff need tips to survive because the tipped minimum wage is unlivable basically everywhere.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > This does not change my point in the slightest, which is that wait staff need tips to survive because the tipped minimum wage is unlivable basically everywhere. Its the same as the general minimum in several places, and at or above the federal general (not just tipped) minimum even more, so if its unlivable “basically everywhere” that's more than just a tipped minimum problem.
        grumple 5y ago
shmel 5y ago
Yeah, I find it very very sad. I am so isolated after 15 months of lockdowns that I literally go to a restaurant for a tiny bit of social interaction, just smalltalk with a waiter. Just about 4 out of 5 times they insist on ordering online. It gets me quite angry, I can just as well stay home if I have to look at the screens even more after looking at the screen the whole day.
UncleMeat 5y ago
Outside of high end restaurants, I'm not sure that I've ever once been provided with useful information by a server. "See if you can get our server's attention when they come by, we are ready to order/pay" is a fairly common occurrence, even at solid places. Does this reduce the need for waitstaff at most places? Yes. Is that bad for waitstaff. Yes. Is that a reason to want a person to physically write down my order and type it into a machine in the back? Eh.
Cederfjard 5y ago
When I go out to eat with friends and family, the important part is spending time with friends and family (and sometimes strangers, but that’s usually other patrons). I don’t mind interacting with waitstaff, but it’s not adding any value to my experience, either - as long as I get my order I don’t really care about the tradition and ceremony, as you put it. We went out recently to a place where we ordered with our phones and had a great time. It was simple and painless, orders were served quickly and it didn’t matter that the only thing I ever said to staff was ”thanks” - I focused on my people instead.
fleddr 5y ago
To each their own, but to me this ceremony provides zero value. Waiters take the order and may comment on the weather, it's not like we're developing a deep friendship here. The "tradition" is to sit, wait for a waiter to appear. Ask for purpose (lunch? big meal? just a drink?). Then you wait again for the correct menu to appear. Then you get asked for a drink. And wait for the drink. And then comes the longer wait where the waiter tries to detect when you are ready to order, if they see it at all. Combined, that's some 20-30 mins in and the prepping of your meal hasn't even started yet. Now if you're the kind of person that's going to be in there 3-4 hours anyway, the ritual doesn't harm, but it doesn't add much value either. It's needlessly slow and inefficient. Your future dystopian nightmare is already here, and it's fine. In the Netherlands, some sushi restaurants work as follow. You are seated. There's an iPad for everyone, and people just tap what they want. Some minutes later, your food arrives. This supposed cold-hearted efficiency means I get to spend more time engaging with my friends, the very point of the visit. By the way, you're not doing restaurants any favors with a slow and long visit. It means they can't use your table twice. So finish your meal in 1.5-2 hours and if still not bored with your friends, go to a damn bar.
- drdeadringer 5y ago
  3-4 hours is a long time. That sounds like a leisurely dinner set on "Italian Mode" [no offence] with a reservation, not a work lunch on Tuesday in the US. This ritual or ceremony of waiter, menu, waiting, ordering, signalling for the cheque that you apparently find vile... I enjoy it. Any inefficiency you have declared is part of the experience of going out to eat. You want fast food? Go get fast food. You want a butler and cook? Hire them. You want to go out to dinner? Here's a waitress, menu, and some time for walking back and forth between their station and your table and their other tables in their zone. All of this is, or at least should be, factored in to the restaurant's business. It's been 100 years, at least in the US. If they don't get it by now, at least you should.
  - navhc2 5y ago
    Then you should continue patronizing restaurants that have the traditional method, and whoever doesn't want that can seek out restaurants with more efficient methods. Forcing your definition of what a restaurant "should be" is detrimental to everyone, more choice is better for everyone.
Tor3 5y ago
"Wait, restaurants are making you order from an app too?? So now you don't really need your 'exhausted wait staff' so much. Hire less wait staff as a portion are now are underutilized. Now some wait staff have no jobs, and the remainder work the same exhausting shifts. " Not around here, no. Was out eating yesterday. That place we went to has the exact same number of wait staff as before QR codes, the difference is only that they're not exhausted, they are not stressed when interacting with us (showing us the table, bringing food, checking in on us if we need something else, etc). We don't have to wait for them to get the bill or to pay. The overall atmosphere is much more relaxed now. And yes the other places I visit also keep the same number of staff as before, as far as I can tell.
ar_lan 5y ago
> Now some wait staff have no jobs, and the remainder work the same exhausting shifts. This is a lot to unpack. I'm always surprised by people in the tech industry, where we seek to automate so much to make things better... be against innovation? If a QR menu can tangibly provide a similar or better experience, for less cost, then it is objectively a better value for everyone involved. We shouldn't keep manual jobs around "just because." If that was a valid mindset, then we should get rid of all cars and have large caravans of people to trade across the country to ensure more people have jobs. In this case, the question becomes "does the QR code provide a similar, or better, experience?" Only time will tell - but if it does, overall, then it will replace the wait staff, and this is a good thing. This is why discussions of UBI take place, because we shouldn't intentionally do things less efficiently just to save jobs. > The reason these wait staff get tips is because they work so hard, with less service comes less tips. Now you have a whole industry of overworked AND underpaid staff. I don't disagree here, but tip culture is an absurd concept and I wish it would die in America. Just bake it into the price of the menu, and pay workers better.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  For me it's an automatic yes as long as the restaurant has wifi that is easy to access. Mostly because I get to avoid germs from all the previous hands who held the menu. Most people's hands are far more germy than a toilet seat if they haven't been recently washed.
nyghtly 5y ago
I have one interesting observation about one part of what you said: I wouldn't say that tips will go down. If anything, COVID has shown us that tips actually go up the less service that we get. https://www.wsj.com/articles/tipping-for-online-orders-became-more-popular-during-covid-19-11621598404 https://www.wsj.com/articles/tipping-for-online-orders-becam...
schwartzworld 5y ago
> Now you have a whole industry of overworked AND underpaid staff. There is a ton of abuse in the food service industry in America, not the least of which is paying servers less than 3 bucks per hour, and thats one of the cushier jobs. I was a server a long time, and sometimes you make the money in tips, sometimes you don't. I knew a lot of servers who put up with workplace abuse because of the illusion of easy cash the job creates. BOH staff work harder and usually take home even less. Ordering from an app is great. No mistakes, no forgotten orders, and nobody abusing the machine.
bleachedsleet 5y ago
Trust me, the wait staff doesn’t appreciate your “ceremony.”

astura 5y ago

>The reason these wait staff get tips is because they work so hard The reason they get tips is because they are waitstaff, it has zero to do with how hard they work, it's simply custom to tip waitstaff, even lazy waitstaff. Most employees work just as hard without getting tips (like the people who are actually cooking the food).

monkeynotes 5y ago
Maybe for you, I tip extra for working hard to keep my meal hot on delivery, water topped up, checking in at appropriate times. I honestly don't understand how you can say tips are not proportional to level of service and how level of service is entirely detached from working hard. > Most people work just as hard without getting tips (like the people who are actually cooking thr food) Most people get paid a real wage which isn't backfilled with charity from their customers. At many good restaurants tips are distributed to the kitchen staff too. Obviously I have no control over that, and the world isn't fair either. None of this changes my argument.
- astura 5y ago
  > I tip extra for working hard to keep my meal hot on delivery, water topped up, checking in at appropriate times. Those are things happen with good management, they have little to do with how hard an individual employee is working at a given time. Besides the claim wasn't waitstaff gets "extra" tips for working hard, the claim was that waitstaff is tipped because they work hard. Don't move the goalposts. >I honestly don't understand how you can say tips are not proportional to level of service and how level of service is entirely detached from working hard. I tip the same if my service is shitty, I am not going to put an individual employee in a position of taking a pay cut when I can't know the exact reason something went wrong. I don't know enough about their operations to be punishing individual employees. Even if I could tell if it were an individual employee's fault, most places pool tips, so I'd be punishing the other employees working at the same time. So everyone gets the same tip from me. I also simply just don't enjoy LARPing as a lord of my personal fiefdom. Again, you get good service with good management, simple as that.
  - monkeynotes 5y ago
    > waitstaff gets "extra" tips for working hard All tips are 'extra' that's the whole concept. It's money on top of what I am obliged to pay. > you get good service with good management Good management would pay a good wage and negate the need for tipping. > I also simply just don't enjoy LARPing as a lord of my personal fiefdom. Low blow. You are implying that I am less than you because I have some kind of financial control over waitstaff that I enjoy. A rather bad faith position to be in given how pious and understanding you are striving to come across as. > most places pool tips So now you agree kitchen staff get tipped too > I tip the same if my service is shitty Good for you. I don't think many people operate like this, so I'd say you are an edge case. > it has zero to do with how hard they work, it's simply custom to tip waitstaff, even lazy waitstaff Again, this is how you operate. Wikipedia lays out the common perception of tipping "The customary amount of a tip can be a specific range of monetary amounts or a certain percentage of the bill based on the perceived quality of the service given." I've experienced living in the UK without tipping, and in N.America with tipping. All I can say is it's night and day. Very few make a career out of working as waitstaff in the UK, plenty of people have a career in the service industry in N.America. Working hard for large tips can give you a living wage. In the UK because everyone is treated the same, waitstaff do the minimum for the minimum wage (there are exceptions, of course) and then find a better job. Since I left the UK this has begun to change, it's now reasonably common to tip in nicer restaurants, and guess what? The service is better and the waitstaff I assume are happier with more money in their pockets for their effort.
grumple 5y ago
Perhaps you are unaware, but in the US, tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr in most places (tipped minimum wage). These people need tips in order to make any money. Nobody is working hard for 2.83/hr. This is changing since now people are refusing to work those jobs. And yes, the entire industry is dumb and corrupt for having this practice in the first place, but it is what it is.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Perhaps you are unaware, but in the US, tipped waitstaff only make $2.83/hr in most places (tipped minimum wage). Perhaps you are unaware, but: (1) US federal tipped minimum cash wage is $2.13, not $2.83, but also (2) Most US states and territories have a tipped minimum wage above the federal tipped minimum (and also, though by a smaller margin, most have a tipped minimum above $2.83, which is PA’s tipped minimum.) https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
  - grumple 5y ago
    Sorry, you're right, a quick google search revealed my state's wage, not the fed (forgot to check the difference, which is so negligible that it's insulting). This does not change my point in the slightest, which is that wait staff need tips to survive because the tipped minimum wage is unlivable basically everywhere.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > This does not change my point in the slightest, which is that wait staff need tips to survive because the tipped minimum wage is unlivable basically everywhere. Its the same as the general minimum in several places, and at or above the federal general (not just tipped) minimum even more, so if its unlivable “basically everywhere” that's more than just a tipped minimum problem.
      - grumple 5y ago

shmel 5y ago

Yeah, I find it very very sad. I am so isolated after 15 months of lockdowns that I literally go to a restaurant for a tiny bit of social interaction, just smalltalk with a waiter. Just about 4 out of 5 times they insist on ordering online. It gets me quite angry, I can just as well stay home if I have to look at the screens even more after looking at the screen the whole day.

UncleMeat 5y ago

Outside of high end restaurants, I'm not sure that I've ever once been provided with useful information by a server. "See if you can get our server's attention when they come by, we are ready to order/pay" is a fairly common occurrence, even at solid places. Does this reduce the need for waitstaff at most places? Yes. Is that bad for waitstaff. Yes. Is that a reason to want a person to physically write down my order and type it into a machine in the back? Eh.

Cederfjard 5y ago

When I go out to eat with friends and family, the important part is spending time with friends and family (and sometimes strangers, but that’s usually other patrons). I don’t mind interacting with waitstaff, but it’s not adding any value to my experience, either - as long as I get my order I don’t really care about the tradition and ceremony, as you put it. We went out recently to a place where we ordered with our phones and had a great time. It was simple and painless, orders were served quickly and it didn’t matter that the only thing I ever said to staff was ”thanks” - I focused on my people instead.

fleddr 5y ago

To each their own, but to me this ceremony provides zero value. Waiters take the order and may comment on the weather, it's not like we're developing a deep friendship here. The "tradition" is to sit, wait for a waiter to appear. Ask for purpose (lunch? big meal? just a drink?). Then you wait again for the correct menu to appear. Then you get asked for a drink. And wait for the drink. And then comes the longer wait where the waiter tries to detect when you are ready to order, if they see it at all. Combined, that's some 20-30 mins in and the prepping of your meal hasn't even started yet. Now if you're the kind of person that's going to be in there 3-4 hours anyway, the ritual doesn't harm, but it doesn't add much value either. It's needlessly slow and inefficient. Your future dystopian nightmare is already here, and it's fine. In the Netherlands, some sushi restaurants work as follow. You are seated. There's an iPad for everyone, and people just tap what they want. Some minutes later, your food arrives. This supposed cold-hearted efficiency means I get to spend more time engaging with my friends, the very point of the visit. By the way, you're not doing restaurants any favors with a slow and long visit. It means they can't use your table twice. So finish your meal in 1.5-2 hours and if still not bored with your friends, go to a damn bar.

drdeadringer 5y ago
3-4 hours is a long time. That sounds like a leisurely dinner set on "Italian Mode" [no offence] with a reservation, not a work lunch on Tuesday in the US. This ritual or ceremony of waiter, menu, waiting, ordering, signalling for the cheque that you apparently find vile... I enjoy it. Any inefficiency you have declared is part of the experience of going out to eat. You want fast food? Go get fast food. You want a butler and cook? Hire them. You want to go out to dinner? Here's a waitress, menu, and some time for walking back and forth between their station and your table and their other tables in their zone. All of this is, or at least should be, factored in to the restaurant's business. It's been 100 years, at least in the US. If they don't get it by now, at least you should.
- navhc2 5y ago
  Then you should continue patronizing restaurants that have the traditional method, and whoever doesn't want that can seek out restaurants with more efficient methods. Forcing your definition of what a restaurant "should be" is detrimental to everyone, more choice is better for everyone.

Tor3 5y ago

"Wait, restaurants are making you order from an app too?? So now you don't really need your 'exhausted wait staff' so much. Hire less wait staff as a portion are now are underutilized. Now some wait staff have no jobs, and the remainder work the same exhausting shifts. " Not around here, no. Was out eating yesterday. That place we went to has the exact same number of wait staff as before QR codes, the difference is only that they're not exhausted, they are not stressed when interacting with us (showing us the table, bringing food, checking in on us if we need something else, etc). We don't have to wait for them to get the bill or to pay. The overall atmosphere is much more relaxed now. And yes the other places I visit also keep the same number of staff as before, as far as I can tell.

ar_lan 5y ago

> Now some wait staff have no jobs, and the remainder work the same exhausting shifts. This is a lot to unpack. I'm always surprised by people in the tech industry, where we seek to automate so much to make things better... be against innovation? If a QR menu can tangibly provide a similar or better experience, for less cost, then it is objectively a better value for everyone involved. We shouldn't keep manual jobs around "just because." If that was a valid mindset, then we should get rid of all cars and have large caravans of people to trade across the country to ensure more people have jobs. In this case, the question becomes "does the QR code provide a similar, or better, experience?" Only time will tell - but if it does, overall, then it will replace the wait staff, and this is a good thing. This is why discussions of UBI take place, because we shouldn't intentionally do things less efficiently just to save jobs. > The reason these wait staff get tips is because they work so hard, with less service comes less tips. Now you have a whole industry of overworked AND underpaid staff. I don't disagree here, but tip culture is an absurd concept and I wish it would die in America. Just bake it into the price of the menu, and pay workers better.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
For me it's an automatic yes as long as the restaurant has wifi that is easy to access. Mostly because I get to avoid germs from all the previous hands who held the menu. Most people's hands are far more germy than a toilet seat if they haven't been recently washed.

nyghtly 5y ago

I have one interesting observation about one part of what you said: I wouldn't say that tips will go down. If anything, COVID has shown us that tips actually go up the less service that we get. https://www.wsj.com/articles/tipping-for-online-orders-became-more-popular-during-covid-19-11621598404 https://www.wsj.com/articles/tipping-for-online-orders-becam...

schwartzworld 5y ago

> Now you have a whole industry of overworked AND underpaid staff. There is a ton of abuse in the food service industry in America, not the least of which is paying servers less than 3 bucks per hour, and thats one of the cushier jobs. I was a server a long time, and sometimes you make the money in tips, sometimes you don't. I knew a lot of servers who put up with workplace abuse because of the illusion of easy cash the job creates. BOH staff work harder and usually take home even less. Ordering from an app is great. No mistakes, no forgotten orders, and nobody abusing the machine.

bleachedsleet 5y ago

Trust me, the wait staff doesn’t appreciate your “ceremony.”