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Comment by lapetitejort | Hacker News Reader

There's a local burger joint with two screens where customers can ring up their own order. There's always a line at the register and never at the screens. I've walked in, keyed in my order, and received my food faster than people in line. And yet people just don't seem to want to use them. Yesterday I walked in and both screens had an "Out of order" sticky note on it. Minimum wage jobs have a few more years of life left.

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I love those screens,so much easier than looking at the menu board,which they make increasingly confusing. I still remember this conversation at McDonald's a couple of years ago: do you have ice-cream? Yes. Can I have one. What type would you like? What have you got. Mcthis Mcthat,etc.. The hell is that I'm thinking. I ask for a random choice just to get out of the situation.

I don’t want to learn every point of sale system at every restaurant I go to. I sometimes have custom orders. If I screw something up, I want to be able to say, “sorry, can I change that?”. I have to touch a screen that others have touched. The UI might be bad, the machine might be slow. About 1/3rd of the time at Home Depot I end up having to wait for someone to come over for some reason at the self checkout.

Regardless of how I order at a fast food joint, I have to see someone hand me food, and it is a bit dehumanizing if there is no line for me to walk in and use a machine instead of talk to them, especially when they hand me the food. (I’d definitely use a self-order if there was a line and saved time)

An app is different - there is a clear benefit to ordering ahead and having food ready. The only expected interaction is the pickup.

I sympathize the dehumanizing bit and get where you're coming from, but in general I greatly prefer to use the touchscreen machines at fast food places. I like to look through all the options and take my time choosing, which translates to a very awkward verbal interaction, no matter how polite the person taking my order is.

Entirely dependent on location. In France those screens were used by people ( same as "automatic" checkout kiosques at supermarkets), but now post pandemic they're sometimes the only option to order, the register being only for paying with cash what you've ordered at the screens, and picking up your order. It makes sense in the pandemic world ( screens can be more spread out and more numerous that registers), and in general. It doesn't seem to me that has resulted in less employees though, from the looks of it there's roughly the same number of people as before, but now instead of accepting orders and doing payments they only focus on collecting prepared food and putting it in bags/plates/etc.

It's faster and more efficient ( mostly space-wise), for the restaurant and for customers.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're living in the US, where I've heard there are some very weird ( for me) things expected from the service industry ( e.g. constant attention from a waiter in a restaurant, that the grocery store clerk will put your stuff in bags for you ( unless you're handicapped, what?!)), and that's probably what's driving a part of the reluctance you're seeing. Many people feel entitled to human service, above and beyond, and they feel that such jobs are beneath them ( "burger flipping"), hence their reluctance to do it themselves.

> Many people feel entitled to human service, above and beyond, and they feel that such jobs are beneath them ( "burger flipping"), hence their reluctance to do it themselves.

Your comment is a bit rude.

One reason I personally refuse to use these screens or the self-checkout line is to make sure the people working these jobs will still have a job...

> constant attention from a waiter in a restaurant

After being ignored in french restaurants (please, someone, anyone, give me water! please!!), I can only love and praise the professionalism of our waiters!

> some very weird ( for me) things expected

It's called good service. Something I was really not expecting in Europe, and something that, as expected, was not delivered :)

I can recall people saying similar things about grocery store checkouts. Lines were quicker if you went through the self-checkout, but people still stood around to have a person do the work and socialize. At some point in the last last few years that seems to have completely flipped, there are rarely people going through the human lines with the bulk doing self-checkout.

My hypothesis is that self-checkout created a new way to shop for groceries, that is, less more frequently. I'm certainly guilty of doing this, picking up odds and ends, but I still use a human to check me out if I need to use a cart to shop that day.

Every Mc Donalds in my town has 100% moved to these screens, you cannot place your order at the counter anymore. Burger King has an app you can order on, but still allows counter orders.

McDonalds has had an app for years now. There are lots of discounts if you use it, and it's extremely convenient to get your order when you arrive. No lines.

Franchise adoption has been scattered though, up until about a year only about half of my local McDonalds would take orders through the app.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

There were "fully automated" restaurants (obviously more of a mechanical turk type operation) well over a hundred years ago. Doesn't seem like they've caught on yet.

By using these screens, you are quite literally rubbing your fingers in human waste. [1]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/29/mcdonalds-touchscreen-kiosks...

What happens in a fast food restaurant is only the tip of the iceberg for the whole supply chain needed to get that hamburger into your mouth. All the agriculture, transportation and food processing that has to happen before anything makes it to a restaurant is already heavily automated.

I do that, literally for the reason I want to keep people in jobs in the community.

Ordering food by using some kind of machine is quite common in Japan.

there's a cultural factor to this, I've seen self-service kiosks earlier and more frequently used in other countries

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