Mobile ordering and delivery have made food service objectively worse and if you use them I think you're pathetic.
Mobile ordering and delivery have made food service objectively worse and if you use them I think you're pathetic.
Working in food sucks in general. I would know I've been doing it for almost 14 years now. You drive to the store. You enter the store. You order your food. If there are any complications with your order you're told right then and there.
But I'll never forget the day my job introduced mobile ordering. It immediately made everything worse in almost every way. Customers ordering shit we ran out of, shit we no longer offer, setting the pickup time 5 minutes after placing the order then getting mad when it's not done on time. All this while we can't communicate with the customer at all until they arrive to find the order incomplete because we couldn't contact them to figure out what they wanted to do.
Then door dash became a thing and all those exact problems became even worse. It slows down the entire store to the point of disrupting the customers who came in to order.
Why the fuck would you go through a third party system to obtain food when you can just go get the fucking food
Basically if you use mobile ordering or a delivery service you're a big part of why food service has done nothing but get harder and more frustrating. And I do hold it against you.
Edit: I don't think lemmy understands how unpopularopinion is supposed to work...
Edit 2: Considering how many people clearly disagree with me and seeing how few upvotes this post has gotten, lemmy clearly has no idea how unpopularopinion works.
Glad to know the Reddit custom of ignoring that still lives on.
15% of the world self-identifies as having a disability. The most common category of disability is mobility-related. E.g "going to the and entering the store" may not be as easy as it is for you, or even impossible. Even if you don't have a mobility problem and can do that just fine, for other people "ordering and dealing with complications" is a lot harder if you have trouble hearing, or have facial paralysis and can't speak, or even if you just don't speak the local language fluently. There are a million reasons that might make the simple task of getting food impossible for a person, and there's way more people out there who experience things like this than you might guess.
Maybe you simply never saw these people in person previously, because they weren't able to order from you at all. Maybe you just assumed your customers didn't have a disability because they didn't say so. You have no idea how many people ordering from you have disabilities. You can't know. Assume it's one out of every 4 people you meet if you live somewhere poorer, because that's realistic.
When mobile ordering went online, it meant that so many more people were able to choose what to eat, which meant more business for restaurants, which meant restaurants needed to staff their restaurant sufficiently, or upgrade tools. They don't just get to enjoy the extra profits for nothing.
And yet your frustration is directed at the people who are just trying to eat. I would like to offer you a reframing of this situation and suggest that your problem is not with customers at all.
Customers ordering shit we ran out of
People can't be expected to know a restaurant's stock inventory. The responsibility is on the business to communicate that to the customers. Some restaurant's make the cashiers say it in person to every single customer. Some restaurants erase them from displayed menus in the store. These days, restaurants can just tick the box "unavailable" in an app to let all future and present customers know immediately. It can even be scheduled, or automatically respond to events like "removing the last pack of an ingredient from the fridge". These options all exist already, your employers need to figure out how to use them properly, or the software they use needs to add these features, or they can just not accept online orders when the restaurant is too busy. Your beef is with management or the order service companies they use.
shit we no longer offer
Same deal, but an even worse look for your management for not ensuring they tell their delivery services that something is permanently gone. Your beef is with management or the services they use.
setting the pickup time 5 minutes after placing the order then getting mad when it’s not done on time.
Still a software and management problem. They need to be able to set minimum waiting times, and management needs to update them if they know the restaurant is too busy. Your beef is with management or the services they use.
All this while we can’t communicate with the customer at all until they arrive to find the order incomplete because we couldn’t contact them to figure out what they wanted to do.
I have ordered online and later received an automated notification when the restaurant has had to extend waiting times unexpectedly.
I have also ordered online and then had a restaurant send an automated notification that a specific item went out of stock after I ordered and asked me to choose an alternative item or just leave it off the order. It also automatically recalculated my payment when I decided to leave it off. No in-person interaction required.
These features all already exist. It's up to the managers of the restaurant to use them and to take the burden off the people they manage. It's up to the owner to only use companies which provide useful tools that don't harm their employees and customers. It's up to the software companies to put features in which don't harm customers and restaurants.
Your beef is with management or the services they use. You are misdirecting your frustration at the only people in the situation with the most reasonable time-sensitive important problem out of everyone involved. None of the problems you listed are the customer's fault, they have no idea how your workplace runs or what is normal for them.
Start a union instead of blaming people for ordering food and you might not have to experience years more of the same.
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The apps don't actually help disabled people, they just exploit and rip them off.
Of course people with disabilities are getting exploited and ripped off, so is everyone in a system where profit is the motive.
But at least I can eat my favourite foods now while it happens. Not many other forms of exploitation provide me with any value at all. And the purpose-built disability service providers where I am are often some of the most exploitative, because they know their clients are vulnerable. Uber just thinks I'm lazy.
How is it exploitation to offer a service to someone for money?
I like your unpopular opinion, here is my take on it:
Don't fucking offer mobile ordering of it's such an inconvenience. It's not like you're forced to offer it.
To be fair (and again I can only speak to the UK here so maybe it's different in the US). If a takeaway place isn't on these sorts of services, then they're going to miss out on an awful lot of custom.
Actually some third party companies will list businesses even if the business doesn't offer delivery, so long as they have online ordering. The only solution would be to not allow take out of any kind.
I don't drive and live a bit from the city centre; I try not to do it often as I'm a poor, but occasionally order takeaway.
Once I rang a store to ask why certain items from a deal were missing and they said they were not running such a deal and were very fed up with people requesting it. Seems the site (might've been justeat but was a while and memory is fallible) had inserted a deal where none existed.
The Korean fast food place close my house doesn't have their own delivery driver anymore, it was fired. Now you have to go there (no problem for me because is a 3 minutes walk) or use one the third party apps.
Unless he owns the company in not sure he has a choice.
Except we are. The people in the store have no control on what corporate tells us to do.
Unless you own the store you have no say on whatever bs they decided to dump on us. Unless you decide to just quit but you'll just end up at a different store with the exact same mobile/delivery bullshit
This sounds like your employer set up the online ordering poorly. Most places have the food set as available minimum 15 minutes after you order. They should remove items that are out of stock from the mobile site.
Usually the problem I see is that the order volume is higher than the kitchen staff can support and their management doesn't want to turn it off or hire more people.
These things are an absolute godsend for the disabled.
Also those of us with crippling anxiety issues.
I don't, however, like the added fees or how they screw over the people who do the work. I try and avoid using gig-type delivery services, and prefer the regular kind that existed long before Uber and DoorDash. Like a pizza or Chinese place do.
Crippling anxiety is considered a disability.
Edit: You're lucky the Chinese and pizza places near you are still doing their own in-house delivery. In my city, they have almost all exclusively switched to using GrubHub, UberEats, whatever else. So you can't avoid those extra fees.
Sounds like most of the problems you are complaining about are the structure of the system. Ordering things you don't have/offer or for a ridiculously fast delivery time shouldn't even be options.
I agree apps like door dash make all the problems of delivery worse, but delivery in of itself is a good thing. Restaurants and individual locations should just have all the power, not some weird intermediary that takes a huge cut.
Why? Because it's more convenient dude, at least in the UK. Is it lazy?, yes. Is it negatively affecting the takeaway industry?, also yes. Is it more convenient than going out of my house when I've finally got the kids to bed and just want to settle down onto the sofa and wait for someone to bring me food? Absolutely it is.
I'd probably direct my anger towards the shitty companies who exploit you, the drivers and the customers rather than the people just trying to get some grub down their throats after a long shitty day.
I'm mad at both tbh. I know I'm being exploited. But I'd be being exploited less if people simply understood that every convenience for you as a customer is another pile on top of the shit load of inconveniences we already deal with daily.
As a disabled person, I'd also love it if people simply understood that what is a convenience for them is a life-changing tool for someone else, and blaming me for your employers exploiting you is another pile of top of the shit load of barriers I already deal with daily.
You left out orders that get reassigned to three drivers who accept and cancel because the tip isn't big enough, so customer gets cold food and restaurant gets negative reviews.
It's so bad of a system that in some areas doordash is telling customers to pick up their own food because of wait time/drivers cancelling. So now door dash is causing prices marked up 30%, and you are doing carryout instead of direct ordering at restaurant to begin with.
It's got to be the laziest generation. Up until now people had to run errands. Now they are too busy watching tiktok to drive 2 mins to get deodorant or takeout.
Wtf is wrong with ordering from mobile to go pick it up yourself? It slows nothing down; those orders are added in the same order as those taken in-store. It doesn't charge more. It doesn't even really take a job away from anyone since the cashiers at these places aren't just cashiers. Nobody is getting screwed, unless the app fucks up.
It does actually mess things up because it happens without warning. You already have dozens of other in store orders to deal with and now you have 15 mobile orders every 10 minutes. It takes employee attention away from inside customers and gives them more work to do in general.
Not to mention everything I said in my post about orders being left incomplete because we have no way of contacting the customer despite not having what they want.
No. It doesn't. If those mobile orders were real people in the store instead, it would be way worse, cuz now they have to have someone stop cooking to take an order. The way mobile orders drop in, is entirely seamless to the people on the line making the food, with the added bonus of not taking a worker away from the line to work the cash register.
You also do have a way to contact the customer, since the customers info is included in the orders, even those from a 3rd party. At least on the POS systems used in the McDonald's and Jack in the Box I've worked in.
The more I read here, the more is sounds like you're just mad that your job makes you do work.
I've been ordering delivery since the '70s.
You've been ordering fast food delivery since the 70's? You've been having restaurants deliver your food for that long?
Meanwhile, I've called places to ask to order food only to be told that I have to order online!
While I appreciated being able to order basically everything as takeout during the pandemic, some places took it too far.
Hey my fellow lemming
Here's my take on your edits: they're pathetic.
Great use of this thread, I disagree with your opinion but love hearing your viewpoint. I agree there a problem with the whole set up and I don't know the solution. But I like that i have way more options than 10/15 years ago when i could only pick from chippy, Chinese, curry or pizza for a lazy dinner. (Uk).
I remember the first time I really noticed online ordering. I had gone to Starbucks to get a couple coffees. While waiting in line, and then waiting for my order people continued to pour in and pick up drinks. There were drinks littered all over the pickup counter with no one there to get them. They were making these drinks that would sit there, ahead of the people waiting in the shop. I think that was the last time I ever went into a Starbucks like 7 years ago.
There's serious problems with the way online ordering/delivery services get implemented. Customers in the building should never lose priority to someone sitting on the couch at home.
Unpopular and I agree it is even more that pathetic. This reality has created a world of delivery slaves and as you said, the product is poor. I never ordered anything from these shitty realities .
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Food ordering/delivery services are a double edge swords. Its convient but it "keeps you in your pod".
I am not bothered by these services as long I can still go to the restaurant itself and get the food in person.
Does it not bother you that your experience in the store is made worse because these same companies demand we take care of mobile/delivery orders before helping customers inside?
It bothers me a bit, but you're blaming the wrong person here. The problem isn't the person using a valid service. The problem is the capitalist machine treating people like shit. The stores having awful inventory management software or over burdening employees is not the customers fault.
I talk often with the pick up and go crew. They like their job and seem to be treated reasonably well given the late-stage capitalism we're all living in. If I found out they were miserable I wouldn't order anymore. I do find out about flaws in the system and do what I can to remedy that on my end.
THAT's the lead on this story - if it were implemented differently it could be much better, expanding people's choices without taking away existing ones. It's like those amusement parks where if you pay extra on top of the already exorbitant rates to begin with, you can cut in front of the line, so rich people can make "the poors" stand there, literally at the very front of the line, for hours on end as those who pay extra cut in front of them. Thus even if the price of a regular ticket were to remain the same, what you get in return takes a nosedive in quality, essentially taking something away from you, compared to the way it was before. (Okay so I never go to such parks, I am far too cheap for that, that's mostly just how I imagine it would be:-)
I've seen restaurants that refuse to pay their workers (cough Chipotle cough) get short staffed and literally shut down their in-person service, so if you show up at the door, the only option was to pay the extra fee for the "convenience" of the pickup option. Same food, same door you physically walk through, a register literally one foot away from the other one... but you need to pay more for the privilege.
It's all about the money.
If you don’t kill your own meat I think you’re pathetic.
If you hurt animals for the personal pleasure of your taste buds, then I think you're pathetic.
No different than watching dogs or chickens fight because you enjoy watching it.
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Door Dash I will never. Nor will I Uber Eats. I don't even order by phone at places with door dash because I'm afraid they take a cut of that too. Small places I go in, order, wait, tip, the whole thing.
But corporate apps like Panera? Yes. It doesn't let you order stuff that's not in inventory (and seems to have a cushion built in for in person orders.) Turns you down entirely if the shop is too busy for online orders. Easier to customize stuff, the kitchen can SEE what I ordered so I am more likely to get what I ordered.
If you are just saying it makes in person dining worse, then yes. I agree. But it's at least partly because the restaurant is doing more business, which isn't all bad.