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Comment by neogodless | Hacker News Reader

> While some consumers may appreciate the novelty or added convenience, the conveniences come at the cost of entry-level jobs.

Added convenience? In the past, someone else would translate my spoken word into the inputs that the computer screen required. Now, I don't have to speak, but I do have to figure out how to use this interface. Any bets how long it takes me order my food? If Wawa is any indicator, at least 3 times as long.

(Insert secondary rant about the "convenience" of DIY grocery checkout. I cannot stand those things!)

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About the same amount of time. I used these and it’s just a huuuge iPad with pictures in the middle and categories on the left. No slower at all.

I appreciate the convenience, I’d rather have the freedom to poke around and explore the menu at my own pace. And avoid talking to a person.

If I had to guess, the speed of ordering will depend heavily on how custom your order ends up being.

I order items without cheese, which tends to take longer with cashiers anyway, who tend to assume you really mean you want it with cheese even if you say "hamburger". And there's about a 25% failure rate for the "no cheese" directive to be followed anyway.

But I reserve the right to (really) pass judgement until I've actually experienced a kiosk! Hopefully the UI is logical and doesn't hide options. (The current trend in menus seems to be bigger pictures and fewer options shown by default, while there are items that are still available but hard to find. Used to be able to look for "Dollar Menu" but now "value items" are kind of scattered throughout. Just finding the price of french fries seems to be a challenge for my feeble mind sometimes.)

> I order items without cheese,

The kiosk app makes you go through a screen to customize items. The first time I wanted to order a hamburger I was stuck because there were only cheeseburgers. Later a screen offered the option of removing the cheese.

I appreciate the choice myself, but PSA, my impression [0] is even when we consciously think we don't want to talk to anyone, simple human interactions, even with service workers, actually DO raise our base mood/happiness a non-trivial amount.

[0] https://verybadwizards.fireside.fm/136

I'll listen to this today, thank you.

  simple human interactions... actually DO raise our base mood/happiness

Not if it's a negative interaction.

> (Insert secondary rant about the "convenience" of DIY grocery checkout. I cannot stand those things!)

I LOVE those things. Yes, lots of people have problems with them, but at the store I frequent (WinCo), most people have an entire cartful (filled to the brim) of stuff. I live nearby and go multiple times a week. Usually I have less than a basket of stuff. It almost always gets me out 3-5 minutes faster than a line.

Downvote? What is in there to downvote? I'm doubling-down.

I LOVE those things.

One of my local grocery stores just got rid of a bunch of their checkouts in favor of self-service. It's OK if I'm just picking up a couple of barcoded items. But it's a huge PITA for things like produce to the point where I've largely switched to another chain.

Ditto on that. It works awesome when you need to skip a queue while buying a couple of well packaged items.

Worst part is if barcode is mangled. Some of the systems don't allow to enter barcode by hand which suuuuucks big time. Then I need to wait for "assistance" just to insert magic key and enter the damn barcode.

I got so fed up w/ the poor service at my grocery store that I've been using Amazon Prime Now for groceries. So far, so good.

I used to live in a Peapod area, and it was awesome.

Amazon's grocery service in Seattle was also my go-to for a while.

But where I am now, Amazon Prime/Amazon Pantry is close to double the store price or more for fresh items. For example, a gallon of milk is $1.49 at the neighborhood supermarket. Prime Now is $5-6/gallon. I like largely because you can only buy organic.

I used Peapod for a period when I had a broken foot. Maybe I'll give them another shot one of these days.

I don't get Amazon Prime. I can get Instacart but not for Whole Foods.

Produce isn't bad at my chain. you can input via code, name, or picture. Easy.

most of the time the (mininum wage) employees are not very good at it either. you end up repeating yourself, confirming everything, and still wait on them to push the buttons..

Both solutions are less than ideal.

You'd think that using the kiosks would reduce error, but my experience over the last six months or so has been that the error rate is actually higher, compared with ordering at the counter.

And the kiosks aren't all that sturdy. One time it failed to print a receipt, which you need to pick up your food. Another time two of the six positions were offline (blank screen).

However, I only go to McDonald's about one every other month, so my sample rate is very low.

they are a sort of portal into a dystopian AI controlled future

I have way fewer issues with self-serve checkout that require me to line up at the customer service desk.

My main gripe is that efficient pipelining is prevented by machines that weigh every individual item that is scanned before admitting the next one. This is insane; weighing the previous item can easily overlap with scanning the next one; as long as they are put down in the order they were scanned.

That's why I am going to 24-hr McDonald at 2AM to practice ordering using the Kiosk, to help saving time for others. You see? /s

You can have multiple kiosks so you can parallelize the ordering process.

At least here in Israel, the added conveneince for me comes in the form of the McDonalds app.

It has my favorites on it, and I can order them with only a few clicks, customized to what I like, and do it all before I even arrive at the restaurant. I can literally spend 1 minute on my iPhone without even having to get near the restaurant, and arrive there to have my food ready.

>Insert secondary rant about the "convenience" of DIY grocery checkout. I cannot stand those things!

I prefer them, but I'm well aware that the convenience is more for the store not having to pay someone to do what they've trained me to do for free.

Only a matter of time before your phone will transfer your order over when you walked in.

It’s sold as a convenience, but the reality is they’re having the customer do the job, but without pay. If I wanted to be a cashier I wouldn’t have gone to school. Of course this gets some traction with people who’s major goal in life is to minimize human-human contact, but for the rest of us this is a pain in the ass. On the other hand, this will still be the least objectionable part of the McDonald’s experience, with the food being second worst, and the supersonic diarrhea being worst.

The funny thing is, it's a perverted version of the DIY movement of the 1970s. Being able to cut professionals out of any equation was seen as empowerment for individuals. Pump your own gas! Fix your own car! Knit your own sweaters! Shingle your own roof!

Now, you get to cosplay as the formerly employed teenagers who used to do these jobs, which in turn empowers the bourgeoisie. Bag your own groceries! Scan your own groceries! Order your own food!

Facebook and the like have long been exploiting users to train their machine-learning models. Classify our data for us! It's fun for you!

Next we'll probably have self-service sandwich shops (if they don't exist already) so you can make your own food as well while paying someone for the privilege.

Need an operation? Suture self!

If you’re going to ask me to check out and bag my own groceries, I’d expect you to at least pay me minimum wage to do it. What’s next? Customers have to stock the shelves and empty the trash too?

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