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> 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 par

by 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 ago
Still 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 ago
  If 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
    We're talking about Waffle House staff here so I'd be surprised if the turnover was low.
- tivert 3y ago
  > Still would take a lot of training to get right. I don't think it would take that much extra training, especially compared to whatever shorthand a waitress or ordering system would have to use. And it seems like it's something that's possible to get right. All the alternatives I can think of suffer from serious problems this one doesn't (e.g. having to mentally keep track of the correspondence between the order ticket and palate, which invites lots of error). > Its not intuitive. It actually seems pretty intuitive. There appears to be a pretty clear correspondence between the code and what it means in most cases.

by tivert 3y ago

TheGRS 3y ago

Still 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 ago
If 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
  We're talking about Waffle House staff here so I'd be surprised if the turnover was low.
tivert 3y ago
> Still would take a lot of training to get right. I don't think it would take that much extra training, especially compared to whatever shorthand a waitress or ordering system would have to use. And it seems like it's something that's possible to get right. All the alternatives I can think of suffer from serious problems this one doesn't (e.g. having to mentally keep track of the correspondence between the order ticket and palate, which invites lots of error). > Its not intuitive. It actually seems pretty intuitive. There appears to be a pretty clear correspondence between the code and what it means in most cases.