Comment by tazjin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tazjin | Hacker News Reader

I lived in a fancy apartment complex in the east of Moscow for about a year recently. We had physical keys (except for an NFC-card to open the outside doors/gates, which was tolerable), but there was no doorbell of any kind.

The idea was that you'd have a fancy app that would let you "register" guests and the doormen would receive notifications about this with information about the guests (privacy concerns anyone?!).

In practice all of the following happened:

- Nobody used the app. I believe that nobody in that building even knows _how_ to use the app, including staff. My landlord had no idea, the doormen had no idea, etc. What ended up happening is that the concierge desk got a "blessed" landline phone and anyone who knew that phone number was implicitly "authorised" to allow them to let anyone in. Some doormen didn't even bother and just let anyone in who looked like they wanted to enter.

- Unannounced visitors had absolutely no way to make themselves known to you if they didn't have another way to contact you (e.g. technicians showing up). This actually happened to me once with a delivery driver who somehow didn't get my phone number, and got stuck in "doorman limbo" until I realised that something was off and went downstairs to ask the doorman if he'd seen anyone, and found the poor guy hanging out in the lobby.

- On the off chance that somebody would have figured out how to use the app, it's likely it wouldn't have worked because I don't think any of the workflows of anyone there involved looking at whatever/wherever the app was supposed to do its thing.

This is just the most recent example of this kind of crap for me. Sometime earlier I had an experience with a similar building in Oslo, where I ended up being the only person who could get into the building during a power outage because I absolutely insisted on having a physical key for the front door.

Internet connected "things" just suck.

I say the same of "menu apps" in restaurants. This crap existed before the pandemic but covid made's it a million times worse. Jesus Christ am I sick of scanning a QR code and straining at my tiny phone screen to choose my order from a crappy, unresponsive website where each page takes ten seconds to load. How is this possibly an improvement over a paper menu?

It is am improvement from the restaurant's point of view. They get dine-in order and take-out orders through the same system, where they all appear instantly on a reliable system right in the kitchen. Paying waiters to walk to your table, listen to what you want, and either scribble on a notepad or navigate the same annoying website is not a good use of resources.

I know that the restaurant's concerns are not necessarily your concerns, but unlike many other industries, neighbourhood casual dining is competitive enough that the savings probably get passed on to you.

All restaurants i have been to that had QR code menus either had waiters that would come to you for your order (just skipping the giving a menu part) or you had to order at the bar. Never have i seen such a order online system, probably because it would be dead easy to adversarially order food to be wasted.

After scanning one QR code for a restaurant menu in 2020, I resolved not to repeat that experience. Subsequently requested and usually received a paper menu, even in 2020-2021. On the rare occasion that one was not available, a dish was chosen via Socratic chat (non-GPT).

When I know what I want in a place I frequent it is super convenient.

It is also super nice if you just there to get quick food and beer and don’t have time to browse menu and expect “dining experience”.

I was recently at a restaurant that used a QR menu. However, they are in a weird location and have no cellular service for my <major carrier> provider. They also have no wifi. I simply couldn't get enough connection (a trickling 1-bar) to actually load the menu.

They had no paper menus.

I had to use another patron's phone to get the menu to order. Nonsense.

The whole back-and-forth of this, asking the server to try to find a paper menu, etc took almost 20 minutes, and left me as a customer immensely frustrated with the business and despite that it is a very unique spot, I haven't been back since.

At least my phone is back lit and I can pinch zoom to read it. As you get older, reading a paper menu with a small, poorly chosen font in the "mood lighting" present in many restaurants becomes quite the chore.

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