At an Outback Steakhouse Franchise, Surveillance Blooms | Hacker News Reader

At an Outback Steakhouse Franchise, Surveillance Blooms

wired.com

61 pointslnguyen50 comments

So much wrong with this. Look, hire good people. If you need to pay a little more, do it. Then trust them to do their jobs. If they don't, the customers will let you know. But for ... sake, just treat your employees like people; people who have bills to pay and family to take care of.

And make the food better. I was at a (admittedly not Outback) restaurant the other week and the food tasted about as good as what you would pour out of a frozen bag. Why do people eat out if this is what they get?

This incessant wringing of every penny out of every dollar is tiring. Tell your investors quality matters, employees matter, not their returns.

I wouldn't patron an establishment that utilizes such a system, out of respect for the waitstaff.

Anyone who has ever worked at a call center knows just how soul-sapping these types of metric-monitoring systems can be.

I imagine you also keep an eye on the manager everywhere you dine to ensure they aren't actively monitoring the patrons or staff?

This article is the kind of sensationalism that discredits very real concerns about a technology by bundling all use cases up with a big, scary bow.

>I imagine you also keep an eye on the manager everywhere you dine to ensure they aren't actively monitoring the patrons or staff?

Surely you're not suggesting that human managers and a 24/7 machine learning-powered surveillance system are the same? We expect managers to do their rounds through the kitchen and the dining room to check on both customers and employees, and to speak with people directly so that they can understand the many nuances of why things are the way they are that come with running a restaurant. Cameras placed above diners feeding raw data to management at the end of the day not only A.) Doesn't allow issues to be resolved as they're happening, and B.) Does not take into account the variety of nuances that occur in a restaurant on a nightly basis.

Managers can be sent texts in real-time if, say, the number of people waiting for a table exceeds a certain threshold, but c'mon, is it truly cost-effective? Why implement costly machine learning software, and place the extra stress of 24/7 job performance surveillance on your employees, for something like this if your waitlist is managed digitally and you can easily look at the total number of people waiting? Even if it's not managed digitally, it's easy to look at a sheet of paper or a crowd in front of you and know that you've got a problem.

Yeah, I do. If a manager is terrible and I get the sense the waitstaff is stressed or mistreated, they've lost a customer. I feel bad enough driving past the homeless on the way to work. I'm not going to incentivize mistreating workers by paying for a service I can get elsewhere without the guilt.

Restaurants treat wait staff like straws, cheap, of no value and easily discarded and replaced.

Using surveillance to track the efficiency of people who are poorly trained, poorly managed, and poorly paid is the hallmark idea of a consulting company trying to prevent a company from sliding into oblivion because their food is just not that compelling.

How is this different from Jira, or remote worker software that periodically captures your screen to be sure you're actually writing code and not grabbing a coffee?

The amount of surveillance I've seen lately is scary. We had a new policy come down from on-high that said we can't bring laptops to meetings anymore because whatever the folks upstairs were using to track us said there were too many emails being sent by people who were scheduled in outlook as being in a meeting.

I'm required to go to these pointless meetings and also required to get all my points done by sprint close, almost always requiring lots of overtime, that I can't track. I have to fill out timesheets, but I can't put more than 8 hours a day even though I work 14, but yet if I'm out of the office for half a day for a dentist appointment, I can only report 4 hours even though I skip lunch almost every day to rework some story the BA's got wrong because they didn't really care what the business wanted.

And if we don't meet the sprint deadline, all hell breaks loose and the bosses ask why the developers are losing productivity when the system is 1000x bigger now but you require us to put the same points on stories as when there was no code written, no other systems to integrate with, no regression tests to execute. And don't even think about working on automated testing because that's not a deliverable. No, you need to retest those 100 scenarios manually. Then the business says, "Oh wait, we forgot about this scenario." Recode, Retest, Re-architect the system to track more data, rebuild all the forms, reports, audit logs, on and on...

But I have to care and all the mistakes made up stream from me are on my back to solve and I don't even get to record how long it actually takes?

Frankly, if you're waiting my table and I need more water, you should bring me more water.

If surveillance helped me meet my customer demands better, then by all means, watch me like a hawk. If it's just there as automated paperwork for the project manager then buzz off.

> How is this different from Jira, or remote worker software that periodically captures your screen to be sure you're actually writing code and not grabbing a coffee?

Those are... two extremely different things. Did you really intend to put a communal chalkboard and an invasive surveillance program in the same category?

They are different but certainly Jira is tracking your individual productivity and reporting to leadership.

The difference is that one let's you set your terms for working while the other forces management's practices on you.

If you’re working somewhere that treats Jira stays as a measure of your worth as an employee, that’s a company problem, not a Jira problem. We literally wouldn’t function as a team if we didn’t use some kind of task/epic tracking. Remote screen capture isn’t even on the same planet as Jira.

Much of management's function is to measure and improve worker productivity. http://bostonreview.net/race/caitlin-c-rosenthal-how-slavery...

"If surveillance helped me meet my customer demands better, then by all means, watch me like a hawk. If it's just there as automated paperwork for the project manager then buzz off."

This is the primary problem. Managers exist because they're supposed to know the business and manage projects. Normalizing surveillance across society in the name of efficiency or profit is already sending us down a dark path.

I guess we'll have to legislate privacy and jail anyone violating it.

> Frankly, if you're waiting my table and I need more water, you should bring me more water.

is the logic here that as a software developer, your quality of life should certainly be better than that of the people waiting on you? that seems wrong to me. i mean, i know this is a common sort of latent assumption in our society, but it is one that's worth examining.

regardless, you need to find a more sane and human dev job.

Your job sucks. Leave.

> At the end of a shift, managers receive an email of the compiled statistics, which they can then use to identify problems and infer whether servers, hostesses, and kitchen staff are adequately doing their jobs.

> “It’s not that different from a Fitbit or something like that,” says Suri. “It’s basically the same

This is completely and utterly unlike "a Fitbit". They are presenting their metrics to the managers first. Thus not allowing the employees the chance to self-correct, and to even know what metrics are being evaluated. THAT would be "like a Fitbit".In such a system, you don't even need to present metrics to the management (although I reckon the chances it would be implemented like this would be slim).

Not to mention, that's a massive disrespect to the employees.

Another thing that makes it different from "a Fitbit" is that most Fitbit users wear the device completely voluntarily. But with this device tied to employment these workers now would have to choose between their privacy or their job. Very unlike a Fitbit as far as the general implications.

If they're watching their employees, ya think they're not going to use those same cameras to collect customer data at very low marginal cost? And if the workers want to make a stink about it to the media or the like, I would suggest that they pound that point until it reached the Earth's core.

What customer data? That you chew with your mouth open? What are you doing in a restaurant that is such a tremendous, valuable secret?

I suppose one risk would be if you collect who is in the restaurant with whom and then this data "leaks" out from some S3 bucket. It would be similar to the dating/cheating sites that were breached some time ago. Do all of these systems link up with the payment system or tie into any systems that can do facial recognition? /shrug Maybe not yet.

Typing passcodes? Taking a long lunch? A ton of things come to mind.

What customer data?

Congratulations, in your efforts to be contradictory, you've managed to completely missed the point. I'll keep it simple, "hey, Outback customers, they're watching you with surveillance cameras!" What? Still looking for a snappy, rational comeback? Then let's try again: "hey, they have cameras trained on your children!" There, I put a trigger word in there that ought to tell you that a well-reasoned argument is not the point.

The point is that Outback is being dicks to our fellow laborers. Is that not enough? Workers of the world, unite!

The issue with all these systems is: you aren't measuring anything useful, you are just measuring what you can measure AND the people who use these reports are clueless.

More common sense about the real world is needed. In economics, you have people making huge top-down decisions who, often, have spent years studying how to become stupid. More and more of the world is going this way as the "specialists/self-appointed experts" take over.

For those that do not know, the Bloomin' Onion is an iconic appetizer available at Outback Steakhouse. It's a battered deep fried onion that's been sort of julienned to look like a flower.

And its delicious

When they do it properly! I remember my first bloomin' onion as a revelation. But the next two times I went back over the years, what I received as a soggy mess, sometimes with undercooked batter. I have coincidentally only gone to Outback three times, since I was so disappointed by the repeated failure on my third attempt that I felt no need to return a fourth time. (This was back in the '00s at multiple franchises.)

My partner and I were recently eating at an Olive Garden. On each table at Olive Garden there are these Ziosk tablets that you can use to call your waiter, order drinks, or close out your bill with a card.

Our server was a bit irritable and disengaged, and food was taking a loooooooong time to come out. We noticed that tables that were seated after us were being served. It wasn't a big deal -- we weren't in a hurry and were doing fine talking and sipping our drinks. I used to work in restaurants for years so I tend to empathize a little with underpaid, overworked, and now evidently hyper-surveilled waiters and waitresses, so her demeanor didn't really bug me.

Anyway after close to an hour I said to my partner "yikes... Food is super late and the service really left something to be desired huh?"

Perhaps a minute later, a non-uniformed, well-dressed managerial looking fellow tapped my shoulder, and said "I am so, so sorry for the experience that you had here tonight. Your food will be out in just a few minutes."

Shortly thereafter, the waitress arrived, looking flustered, and said "Your food is on its way out guys -- is there anything else I can get for you? Your drinks are on the house tonight".

Our food came, and the rest of the night her demeanor was entirely different: she was hyper-attentive, warm, and apologetic.

I read later that the Ziosk tablets are equipped with microphones and cameras. I could find one article about the tablets mentioning the microphones and cameras [0], but it seems unclear as to whether or not restaurants use them to surveil patrons -- both Ziosk and the restaurants themselves deny doing so.

I'm aware that our experience was probably purely a fluke and completely explainable by my comments by chance coinciding with someone in the kitchen finally noticing our ticket, but the whole experience really irked me regardless.

Probably because it's technically feasible -- the tablets are literally equipped with microphones, cameras, and possibly other sensors and are already speaking with remote servers to handle payments and ordering -- and probably also because this sort of thing is already happening at scale in other physical and digital spaces we inhabit, where pointy haired types mindlessly seek opportunities to gather data allegedly in the name of optimizing process and driving basket sizes.

[0]https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/11/18/call-kurtis-inves...

I've known more than a few restaurant managers in my day, and I have zero confidence any of them would have been able to keep a secret if they were actively surveilling their customers.

Or perhaps the server taps a button to order food and the kitchen taps a button to clear the ticket when food goes out, and when the wait time is over a certain threshold, the ticket turns red on their screens and the manager notices and that is what triggers the “food is late” chain of events you experienced.

(This is exactly what happens at some restaurants. No knowledge of Olive Garden in particular.)

I think we almost have enough technology for someone to build the manna system for a restaurant (1). What do you guys think?

Instead of monitoring what they do and punishing them why not just tell them what to do at all times?

(1) https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Indeed; I would consider this story (by the HowStuffWorks guy) required reading if you’re in the field.

We have a lot of important decisions to make soon regarding what kind of society we want in the future.

Reminds me of a good story.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

In college I waited tables at a Big Corporate Restaurant, the one that gives out unlimited breadsticks.

This was like 2014-2016, and the trend we see here was already in full swing. They came out with these little touch screens where the customers could swipe their card to pay instead of waiting for the check(which was actually a cool feature). But they would also be prompted to take a survey after their meal, rating their experience. The managers would print the survey results for the 60-something servers on staff and posted them outside the office. If you were below an 80 out of 100 for three shifts in a row you would get your hours cut. If you couldnt get the rating up it was widely understood that you would be essentially fired by just not getting on the schedule.

It was all incredibly stupid and clear that whoever came up with the idea had NEVER worked in a restaurant in any capacity. Like yeah, lets give the customers, the people with the LEAST information about whats happening in the restaurant, the ability to be the sole evaluators of performance. Its "the customer is always right" in its absolute worst iteration ever.

So if the star dishwasher had the bubonic plague and was out for two weeks, and the kitchen was backed up because the line cooks had to do double duty washing dishes, and the host team kept forgetting to give custmers silverware because they were constantly waiting for all of it to be cleaned, then the surveys were fucked because theres nothing you can do to make someone happy if their food take 45 minutes to come out and they dont have silverware when they get it. And it all went on the servers, who then lost money by losing shifts.

I could see how this Outback system may even be an improvement on certain aspects of the data. First, you are not relying on the idiot customers of Outback to rate your restaurant's performance - something a manager should be trained to do anyway. Second, if the above scenario happens, the servers can avoid culpability by showing that they are doing their job- check tables often and refill drinks - so if customer is pissed that their food took 45 minutes at least you can narrow it down and be able to tell whose fault it is. That sounds like an improvement to me.

BUT, i would never trust the managers to actually be able to interpret the data and pinpoint something like that. The average manager of TGI Chilibees, or Outback, or Olive Garden, does not know anything about data or how to interpret survey results. So more often than not, the numbers just become another weapon for them to exercise their power trip with. And the more numbers they get, the more opportunity to screw it up. Its gonna be too much information for them to handle.

Hell, it would be too much info for a full blown data savant to handle considering how damn busy running a restaurant is, and dealing with the human element of employees and customers on top of the data. Even if they aced their high school statistics class and are capable of properly interpreting the data to make adjustments, they will NEVER have enough time to sit there and crunch numbers enough to make proper "data driven" decisions. For that reason, this will fail.

> Presto Vision takes advantage of preexisting surveillance cameras that many restaurants already have installed.

For staff, this isn't going to go over well.

For customers, this isn't _adding_ more surveillance than they already have in their restaurants. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy when dining out.

"You have no reasonable expectation of privacy when dining out."

What's reasonable is a matter of opinion.

Let's say it was revealed that for many years some popular restaurant had had hidden microphones at each of their tables recording all their customers' conversations.

I think most people would be outraged at such revelation because they did in fact expect privacy when dining out.

They might tolerate being filmed, but not overheard when talking at their table "in private".

I believe parent was using "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the well-defined legal sense [1]. While it may be a matter of opinion in casual discourse it is much less so by law.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy

> For customers, this isn't _adding_ more surveillance than they already have in their restaurants.

That depends on how you measure quantity of surveillance. It's not increasing the scope of surveillance, it is increasing the distribution, and therefore the risk of it entering the hands of someone who would abuse it against you somehow.

“You have no reasonabe expectation of privacy when dining out.”

Maybe we should change that thinking. how long will it take to add microphones to all these cameras and record/analyze all conversations? Now that total surveillance is economically and technically becoming viable for a lot of players we should rethink the concept of privacy. Otherwise I see a dystopia developing more sophisticated than 1984.

>... how long will it take to add microphones to all these cameras and record/analyze all conversations?

To my mind, that's the only way to make a machine learning system like this actually be viable in restaurants. This system just tracks people and spits out raw data, when in reality the "why" of things in restaurants can be incredibly nuanced. You've got a waiter/waitress dealing with tables full of people with wildly different personalities and needs, and I really don't understand how any of the data mentioned in this article could actually be helpful or cost-effective. As I mentioned in another post, so what if this machine learning-powered system lets you know that the number of people waiting for a table has crossed a certain threshold? Shouldn't that already not only be available on your wait list, but visually obvious to you as a manager? How can a manager get frustrated over someone based on data from this if they don't know the reality of what the host or wait staff was dealing with from the people they were serving?

For instance, if someone is dealing with an incredibly picky, demanding customer at one table, they may take an extra minute to refill the drinks at another table. You and I might not be bothered if our drinks need refilling, but the system might still flag it and get them in trouble for not refilling our drinks. The system doesn't know the other table was being overly difficult, nor does it know that the table short on drinks didn't actually mind, but here you are as a waiter/waitress being asked, "Wtf?" by your manager the next morning.

Edit: I suppose I should clarify, while I do think that the only way to make this kind of system viable is to be able to hear what's happening at each table, I don't support mic'ing restaurants like that at all.

You have no reasonable expectation of privacy when dining out.

You have no reasonable expectation of enough privacy for sex.

That doesn't mean it's open season and you should expect photos and audio recordings of your conversations to be on the local front page.

Privacy exists along a continuum. It isn't an on/off switch type thing.

There's nothing in the article that implies they're going to be making audio recordings of customer conversations. They're using existing surveillance cameras, so even if that were possible, it's already been the status quo.

Do you have an expectation of privacy in regard to whether your drink got refilled when you're at a restaurant? I should hope not.

When I was child, you simply didn't have the kind of ubiquitous cheap tech you have now. You didn't need to worry that anyone would photograph you or record you and publish it for free via a medium -- the internet -- that could reach millions of people.

It's a slippery slope. Arguing this small thing doesn't matter and that small thing doesn't matter ends up having consequences down the line.

When I was a child, yes, you had a completely reasonable expectation that no one was going to record anything you did at a restaurant. And our sense of privacy has fundamentally changed with the rise of the ability to record and broadcast things so readily and easily.

My comment was not about the article per se. My comment was about a sweeping statement that I don't agree with.

I don't know how old you are, but I was a kid in the 80s. There were surveillance cameras then.

The society page in the newspaper is even older and that consists mainly of taking pictures of people at restaurants and publishing them in the local newspaper.

Society pages were considered shocking when they first came out and generally were pictures of famous people, not random nobodies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_reporting

I'm just pointing out that it was always possible for someone to take your picture in a restaurant. And even to publish it in the newspaper if they wanted to. In the future, as in the past, there is no reason for anyone to do this if you aren't a celebrity.

Lots of things were controversial when they came out. People thought cameras would steal your soul at first. Time moves on and it becomes commonplace.

> "You have no reasonable expectation of privacy when dining out."

I can see it now. You take your date to a nice restaurant, ask to sit in a quiet area. During dessert you ask her to marry you and then all the sudden balloons and confetti drop and the wait staff hurries over with cheap sparkling stuff.

Yay. Thanks Presto Vision!

Is not having your face scanned and matched/uploaded/sold to any number of databases/orgs when you just want to go to dinner an unreasonable expectation ?

Maybe the applicable laws involve stalking

> You have no reasonable expectation of privacy when dining out.

You're citing a legal standard in a reply to a comment that isn't about the law.

For my part, I won't eat at a place that doesn't give me a reasonable amount of privacy no matter what the law says they can do.

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