4 ms·

My family and I go to a cafe for breakfast most saturday mornings. The one place we usually go to has no phone signal at all anywhere in the ~150 seat restuara

by alt227 3y ago

My family and I go to a cafe for breakfast most saturday mornings. The one place we usually go to has no phone signal at all anywhere in the ~150 seat restuarant. Its part of the reason I like going there. We turned up last weekend to see they had put new QR code menus on all the tables. I had no intention of using them so I ordered from the counter as I usually do, knowing they wouldnt even work because of the lack of phone signal. I spent over an hour that day silently chuckling as I watched pretty much every single customer pick up the QR code menu and try to use it. I saw a few get really annoyed and end up leaving. Im not sure how much damage the place did to their clientel in a single day, but I went back yesterday and they had all been removed. You couldnt make it up!

rolph 3y ago
sounds like a good case for preserving opt-outs anytime you try something new.
workingdog 3y ago
Please tell them. They probably got a huckster in there who sold them the QR code madness by promising them increased sales.
- AussieWog93 3y ago
  Slight tangent: I've noticed that robot waiters seem to never actually be doing their jobs, and the presence of one in the store is the sign of the restaurant being poorly managed. The idea that there could be hucksters selling these door to door to bad managers explains so so much.
addandsubtract 3y ago
Wait until someone encodes an entire menu in the QR code.
- WelcomeShorty 3y ago
  With the (ATM) highest version of QR codes and the minimal error correction, you're limited to 4,296 bytes(0). And V40 is not something I've seen(1) in the wild :) 0: https://www.qrcode.com/en/about/version.html https://www.qrcode.com/en/about/version.html 1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qr-code-ver-40.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qr-code-ver-40.svg
donmcronald 3y ago
Small businesses often get sold tech things that don't make sense. VOIP is one I see frequently. There's nothing quite like a small business with a 2Mb/s upload, several Dropbox/OneDrive clients, and a VOIP contract.
- BenjiWiebe 3y ago
  Why does VoIP not make sense for a small business? From my experience working at small businesses it looks like VoIP and the features it enables is a huge gain. Call waiting queue, voicemail to email/website, automatic hours/go straight to voicemail, holding/transferring calls, multiple lines with only one phone number, etc. I'm talking <15 employee businesses.
  - donmcronald 3y ago
    It's the 2Mb/s upload in my example that's the catch. That'll often be asymmetric at a 10:1 download:upload ration (or worse), so it's almost impossible to do any kind of traffic management to make it work well. I'm talking about places that can't get an internet connection that can support the VOIP systems they're sold.
    - BenjiWiebe 3y ago
      I hear you with the 2Mb/s upload, but that isn't a problem for VoIP in and of itself. What makes 2Mb/s upload an issue with VoIP is not having a good router (i.e. one with CAKE queuing support or something similar) and then getting hammered with buffer bloat making your latencies go to 1000+ ms because someone's iPhone decided to back something up (don't know why it never seems to be an issue with Androids). ^ The above is precisely my experience and is a large part of why my workplace hasn't moved to VoIP yet, despite needing the features.
    - supertrope 3y ago
      2 Mbps is tight but can definitely support 0.1 Mb/s calls. The vendor needs to ensure the phones tag audio packets with EF priority and the router uses a strict priority queue. (Whenever a voice packet arrives it pauses handling non-voice traffic until the voice queue is clear. This ensures a voice packet is never delayed by more than 1500B / 2 Mbps = 6 ms). https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/5125-delay-details.html#serializationdelay https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quali...
phreack 3y ago
Yeah, QR codes should come at a minimum with a WiFi password written on them exactly because of this. Even better would be not to even bother with all of that but it's easy for owners to fall for grifters selling "the future" to them.
- chasil 3y ago
  All examples that I have seen require the download of a PDF. If the restaurant isn't smart enough to compose an HTML menu which is very friendly with mobile devices, then they should not be using QR codes.
  - Beldin 3y ago
    This. If you're forcing me to look at your menu on my tiny screen, optimise for that. Do !not! optimize for fricking print when you're not going to give me the printed version! Grrrrrmbl.
  - franga2000 3y ago
    My favourite are the ones that straight up give you the print-prepped PDF: CYMK color space, bleed, crop marks, test patterns and a whopping 12 MB for a single page.

by alt227 3y ago

rolph 3y ago

sounds like a good case for preserving opt-outs anytime you try something new.

workingdog 3y ago

Please tell them. They probably got a huckster in there who sold them the QR code madness by promising them increased sales.

AussieWog93 3y ago
Slight tangent: I've noticed that robot waiters seem to never actually be doing their jobs, and the presence of one in the store is the sign of the restaurant being poorly managed. The idea that there could be hucksters selling these door to door to bad managers explains so so much.

addandsubtract 3y ago

Wait until someone encodes an entire menu in the QR code.

WelcomeShorty 3y ago
With the (ATM) highest version of QR codes and the minimal error correction, you're limited to 4,296 bytes(0). And V40 is not something I've seen(1) in the wild :) 0: https://www.qrcode.com/en/about/version.html https://www.qrcode.com/en/about/version.html 1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qr-code-ver-40.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qr-code-ver-40.svg

donmcronald 3y ago

Small businesses often get sold tech things that don't make sense. VOIP is one I see frequently. There's nothing quite like a small business with a 2Mb/s upload, several Dropbox/OneDrive clients, and a VOIP contract.

BenjiWiebe 3y ago
Why does VoIP not make sense for a small business? From my experience working at small businesses it looks like VoIP and the features it enables is a huge gain. Call waiting queue, voicemail to email/website, automatic hours/go straight to voicemail, holding/transferring calls, multiple lines with only one phone number, etc. I'm talking <15 employee businesses.
- donmcronald 3y ago
  It's the 2Mb/s upload in my example that's the catch. That'll often be asymmetric at a 10:1 download:upload ration (or worse), so it's almost impossible to do any kind of traffic management to make it work well. I'm talking about places that can't get an internet connection that can support the VOIP systems they're sold.
  - BenjiWiebe 3y ago
    I hear you with the 2Mb/s upload, but that isn't a problem for VoIP in and of itself. What makes 2Mb/s upload an issue with VoIP is not having a good router (i.e. one with CAKE queuing support or something similar) and then getting hammered with buffer bloat making your latencies go to 1000+ ms because someone's iPhone decided to back something up (don't know why it never seems to be an issue with Androids). ^ The above is precisely my experience and is a large part of why my workplace hasn't moved to VoIP yet, despite needing the features.
  - supertrope 3y ago
    2 Mbps is tight but can definitely support 0.1 Mb/s calls. The vendor needs to ensure the phones tag audio packets with EF priority and the router uses a strict priority queue. (Whenever a voice packet arrives it pauses handling non-voice traffic until the voice queue is clear. This ensures a voice packet is never delayed by more than 1500B / 2 Mbps = 6 ms). https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/5125-delay-details.html#serializationdelay https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quali...

phreack 3y ago

Yeah, QR codes should come at a minimum with a WiFi password written on them exactly because of this. Even better would be not to even bother with all of that but it's easy for owners to fall for grifters selling "the future" to them.

chasil 3y ago
All examples that I have seen require the download of a PDF. If the restaurant isn't smart enough to compose an HTML menu which is very friendly with mobile devices, then they should not be using QR codes.
- Beldin 3y ago
  This. If you're forcing me to look at your menu on my tiny screen, optimise for that. Do !not! optimize for fricking print when you're not going to give me the printed version! Grrrrrmbl.
- franga2000 3y ago
  My favourite are the ones that straight up give you the print-prepped PDF: CYMK color space, bleed, crop marks, test patterns and a whopping 12 MB for a single page.