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Waffle House's Magic Marker System
- ramesh31 3y agoThere's something absurdly comforting in the banality of this.
- somewhereoutth 3y agoIndeed. But also a little disturbing, given that no matter how many choices for the customer this signalling system facilitates, they still get equally low quality food.
- TheGRS 3y agoI was feeling the same way, there is probably some camaraderie that develops in the waffle house staff just around this unique shared language.
- jimbob45 3y ago[flagged]
- stets 3y agoC'mon. Super pretentious viewpoint to think that employees at Waffle House are illiterate enough that they can't assemble orders without symbols.
- ryandrake 3y agoThis stuff can be Googled to level-set the conversation. First search result says: - 54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level. - 21% of Americans 18 and older are illiterate in 2022. We can dig further to find more sources of data and judge how reputable they are. If those numbers are incorrect, correct them and go from there.
- choilive 3y agoWhat are you trying to say? That all waffle house employees are functionally illiterate? Because that is not what the data says.
- ryandrake 3y agoNo, I have no idea. It does seem that overall US literacy rates are much lower than you’d guess though. Certainly 2x worse than I thought before doing a single Google search. So it seems wise for companies in general to make their processes accessible to the illiterate, especially if they have more accurate data about their employees’ literacy than this general data. I only replied because OP seems to be getting jumped on for making a guess that feels uncomfortable to talk about.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoThat is incredibly state dependent however, looking at https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/How-Serious-Is-Americas-Literacy-Problem https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/How-Serious-Is-Americas..., you are in a different world of literacy if you live in Washington State vs. Texas. The south happens to be where Waffle House is common.
- 082349872349872 3y agoLuckily https://dollyparton.com/imagination-library https://dollyparton.com/imagination-library is a thing
- 082349872349872 3y agoOn a county level, the south doesn't look too bad as long as you're in an urban area: Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, etc. https://preview.redd.it/adult-literacy-in-the-us-by-county-v0-qpwvom079hlb1.png?auto=webp&s=7719fd485ad02526b87d208dd3c6a8e70d0db1f8 https://preview.redd.it/adult-literacy-in-the-us-by-county-v...
- 3y ago
- Lammy 3y ago“So if you've ever been to a Waffle House and you notice the menu has pictures of the food on it? …yeah.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwkdGr9JYmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwkdGr9JYmE As someone who is always in the mood for an All-Star Special I would agree that this joke is pretentious and reflects poorly on Hicks despite the very funny delivery :)
- jimbob45 3y agoIt wasn’t my original thought. That’s been the popular justification on Reddit for the system. Makes sense considering WH is a southern-centric restaurant and many in the south would still have struggled with literacy circa 1955 when it was founded.
- bdcravens 3y agoCan also address issues with language barriers and sloppy handwriting. If a person doesn't read a given language, that's not the same as illiteracy.
- jeppesen-io 3y ago> likely illiteracy of their workforce Seriously? >teaching the workforce just 3-5 letters and using combinations of those letters would be a massive upgrade over this system. Upgrade, how exactly? This works fast, does not require paper or pens (which run out, dry out or go missing). See it in action - it works fast as hell
- gwill 3y agoalso the medium on which the message is "written" is the plate that the order will be served on and elements that accompany the order. super efficient.
- lebean 3y ago????? Illiterate or not, with this system, you can "read" the order at a glance rather than having to read a list of items or decoding a set of symbols. That might shave a second per order. Another point, ink in markers run out and thermal printers frequently run out of paper at inopportune times. I presume condiments are well stocked. No hunting for a new marker or fetching a new roll of receipt paper with this system.
- joezydeco 3y agoGo watch craps dealers in a casino. They use a visual placement system to track 16 players at a time covering dozens of possible bets per player. No letters or writing needed at all. And casino dealers are highly skilled people.
- zer00eyz 3y agoIt's not the workforce, though I would understand why you might think that. It is the work. Go do a shift in a kitchen, during rush, on a Friday. The term "in the weeds" will make sudden sense. All the pressure of desk job and product will seem easy. The system is optimized to use what you have, and can't loose. If you run out of pickles or mayo you fucked up so bad that god help you.
- ssl-3 3y agoCan I get a kick in the pants along with the old "they work in the [some other] industry instead of in tech, so they are likely to be idiots" nonsense?
- jefurii 3y agoRather it's a system for encoding orders and tracking their state through the process using the materials in the process itself. It enables chefs to plow through orders without having to keep state information in their heads, and probably (I've never observed a Waffle House kitchen in action) makes it possible to swap out chefs without having to describe everything or even interrupt the process. It's genius as it is. Adding writing to it would only slow things down.
- axus 3y agoWhat are your thoughts on Reduced Instruction Set Computers?
- pjscott 3y agoI'm not the OP, but I'm pretty sure there's a simple, uncontroversial answer here. They were an excellent idea at the time, allowing much more pipelining with the microarchitecture design techniques in use back then. In the time since, the complexity of the instruction set has stopped being such a big deal.
- wannacboatmovie 3y agoEating at a Waffle House (preferably at 1am following a night out) is a unique American cultural experience that especially those confined to the Bay Area have been denied. It's a place where those from all walks of life come together.
- treflop 3y agoSounds like IHOP / Denny's in other places
- dartos 3y agoAs someone who lives near all 3 and a Cracker Barrel. Waffle House is special.
- i_am_soo_tired 3y agoCracker Barrel is truly awful. Worst chain restaurant in America.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoIt could be worse, they could take away the rocking chairs and peg board game one day.
- brk 3y agoOlive Garden has entered the chat.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoNope, just when you think Olive Garden is awful, Applebee's manages to dig the hole deeper. TBF, we should just agree that they're all nasty at this point.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoThe sad thing is that they used to be good. At least not that long ago, the one near me was my go-to for corned beef hash. However, after the last visit barely 5 years ago, never going there again.
- 082349872349872 3y agowhich, with a little surfing, leads to: https://www.acontinuouslean.com/2009/03/02/hand-signals-at-the-stork-club/ https://www.acontinuouslean.com/2009/03/02/hand-signals-at-t...
- frankus 3y agoAs a regular customer of the onboard dining on BC Ferries, I was always a bit mystified about how the cashier (maybe 20 m from the counter where you order) seemed to have some kind of clairvoyance regarding which type burger(s) to charge for, as they all use the same kind of wrapper. It turns out the wrapper (that's printed with patches of stripes and crosshatches in different colo(u)rs), can be wrapped in a way that exposes a particular pattern on the outside of the finished package that indicates what's inside. I'm sure this sort of system is used elsewhere but I've never noticed it anywhere else.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 3y agoLots of fast food places use wrappers like this. Here's a picture of a Taco Bell wrapper that can be a regular taco, taco supreme, double decker taco, or "special" depending on the fold: https://www.flickr.com/photos/target_man_2000/16329290081 https://www.flickr.com/photos/target_man_2000/16329290081
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jiveturkey 3y agoI first saw this at McDonald's. Drink lids (everywhere) have those little bubbles that can be pressed to indicate what type of drink as well. Diet, Sprite, etc.
- sp332 3y agoSure but aren't those all the same price?
- throwway120385 3y agoYeah but if you order a diet coke and your friend orders a regular coke you want to make sure you get the right drink out of the carrier.
- 3y ago
- peppertree 3y agoPro: less likely to mixup orders since the order is encoded into the plate. Con: running out of condiment could be a show stopper.
- skyyler 3y agoThey have at least two weeks worth in storage. Waffle House running out of any particular ingredient should never happen, barring serious supply chain malfunction or mis-management. I briefly worked at one before getting into IT and it was neat to learn how tightly controlled the operations of a restaurant can be. Glad I have those memories.
- keane 3y agoThis reminds me of the simple substitution cipher that coin, diamond, and antique dealers use on their price tags to encode the lowest price their staff are allowed to take during bartering: https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/760945/how-do-dealers-come-up-with-their-price-codes https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/760945/how-do-deale... https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/109089/cracking-prices https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/109089/cracking... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_cipher#:~:text=In%20lists%20and%20catalogues%20for%20salespeople https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitution_cipher#:~:text=In... Also related, only very tangentially, but ever-interesting, FEMA's Waffle House Index (2016): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15105662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15105662
- fckgw 3y agoOh wow, this brought up an old memory. Fry's Electronics used to have a code like this in their old "green screen" quote system. There was a group of letters at the bottom of every screen that listed the true cost of the item. The cipher word was "Pathfinder". This was used to help sales managers determine discounts and markdowns on used/damaged/clearance product.
- Closi 3y agoWhile I sort-of-love-it, it does seem very complicated for new starters. I'm sure this system is great once you know it, but it is a high learning curve and I do struggle to imagine a world where ePOS with a ticket system doesn't work better (both for the 'caller' and for the chef).
- giraffe_lady 3y agoI've learned similarly complex food signaling systems and the thing is that you're seeing dozens if not hundreds per shift, and training already takes a couple weeks for other reasons. So by the time you're on your own and needing to know it confidently you've had plenty of practice.
- jmward01 3y agoI suspect it forces out people quickly which may actually help keep better qualified workers. I've personally found the average Waffle House employee a cut above other places so maybe this is the reason.
- taylorfinley 3y agoI don't know how common this is, but for me pickles (and their juice) trigger intense disgust and involuntary gagging. If pickles were on the cutting board or touched the knife, I will not be able to enjoy the sandwich. When ordering a sandwich I'll always ask for no pickles on the sandwich or the plate/take out container. It seems I'm an edge case this system doesn't anticipate, I wonder how they handle pickle-averse customers?
- scottyah 3y agoFrom what I've seen, your level of pickle sensitivity and hate is very uncommon, and based off how much they seem to cater their menus to people I do not expect they have a system in place to address it.
- jzemeocala 3y agoHooters does the same thing with various coloured toothpicks, plate papers and pickles
- POVKING_89 3y ago[dead]
- TheGRS 3y agoI can't help thinking its simultaneously ingenious and hilariously convoluted. Looks like it would be fast to setup, easy to read from the line cook area, and also simple to modify. I'm sure if I was doing the work I could learn the system pretty quickly, but glancing over it as an outsider all I can think about it how ridiculous it sounds that an upright jam packet over a mustard packet means 3 eggs. And they use what they have, these places always need pickles and jam packets, whereas a real magic marker can dry up and you might forget to order replacement. Fascinating for sure.
- tivert 3y ago> I can't help thinking its simultaneously ingenious and hilariously convoluted. It's just ingenious, they're coding the order onto the customer's plate by partially setting it up. They're getting some of the work done, and they don't have to fumble with some separate source of truth.
- TheGRS 3y agoStill would take a lot of training to get right. Its not intuitive. And I can certainly find a lot of humor in how its implemented.
- alexpotato 3y agoIf you have a system with low turnover of staff then intuitive is not the goal. The goal is to efficiently transfer information with additional steps in a common language. A similar example is the hand signals from the old trading exchange floors [1]. The point wasn't for it to be easy to learn. The point was to make it easy to transfer visual information across a very loud and boisterous place. Plus, you had to do it with both people you knew well and people you may never have worked with before. 1 - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/07/opinion/20080407_TRADING_GRAPHIC.html#step1 https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008...
- TheGRS 3y ago
- gretch 3y agoDoesn't this encoding scheme seem extremely brittle to errors during operation? Like for example, you put the jelly pack at 12 o'clock, and then if someone rotates the plate, now it's at 6 o'clock and you have the wrong meat for the order. Or, someone simply bumps into the plate and the packet slides to the other side. Even if you bumped it and it did not slide, you could not verify that it did not slide. My general take away here is that someone tried to invent a new language basically (pictographic). And english (pen/paper) was probably sufficient? Inventing new languages (and having everyone learn them) is extremely hard. Edit: btw, I've eaten at waffle house several times, although it was 10+ years ago when I was regular. They did frequently get my order wrong by forgetting things. I don't think it was attributable to this encoding scheme (one time the waiter tried to memorize the whole order and simply failed)
- mdekkers 3y agoThese folks don’t get paid enough