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Comment by CGamesPlay | Hacker News Reader

The absolute worst menu experience I ever had was the Newark airport. All restaurants appear to be required to place tablets on the tables, which display a QR code that I have to scan on my phone, which requires me to create an account to order, does not accept cash, and has the audacity to ask for a tip. I flagged down a server to ask if I could just order directly, but apparently that's not allowed. I ended up going to Starbucks and getting a croissant, because I guess they had enough clout to not get roped into the mandatory ordering system.

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I hate Newark airport so much because of this. Even worse, as a non-American just visiting, I tend to not have mobile data stateside. The wifi is pretty shit in many spots, I've had to literally leave one place because I could not get a wifi signal to even order and the staff refused to help. All this nonsense while there is a tablet right in front of me! Stupid company that does this, stupid airport that allowed a company to do this.

Newark is unquestionably one of the worst airports in the country. It seems to be carefully designed to make people feel unwelcome. It reminds me of the Terry Pratchett book where a building had been constructed in the shape of a demonic rune so that people moving around would activate it as if it were an evil prayer wheel.

It uses a lot of the same "hostile architecture" techniques that public spaces use to keep homeless people out. There's literally nowhere you can get comfortable, unless you want to lay on the ground in the middle of traffic.

Side note, I was thinking of Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett + Neil Gaiman, and it was a roadway, not a building:

> In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil odegra in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds." The thousands of motorists who daily fume their way around its serpentine lengths have the same effect as water on a prayer wheel, grinding out an endless fog of low-grade evil to pollute the metaphysical atmosphere for scores of miles around.

Magnificent book.

I had an experience at Newark where I sat down an opened one of the mobile menu's only for a 30 second ad to start playing, the server told me "oh yeah just watch the ad and you can order after that". Like really? I'm already paying way over what the food would normally cost and you guys have the audacity to stuff an ad in front of me before I even have the privilege.

Nice I will never fly through here ever in my life and will pay like 300$ extra just to avoid it in the future if I have to. Thanks for the tip, that is actually super useful.

Reading this has made me unreasonably angry.

If you're paying, you're still the product.

> All restaurants appear to be required to place tablets on the tables

All the shops (except Starbucks) are operated by a single company: OTG. They are absolutely swimming in the monopoly dividend. There are several such airports in USA.

I’m all for QR code ordering (and even better, QR code payment!). With a well thought out, streamlined UX, it can be a great timesaver. But it needs to be optional: trying to force it on everyone is just crazy.

I agree with this. After entering my card into Toast once, now from any restaurant I can scan the code, enter my tip amount and I'm done. So much better than using either cash or a card.

Just the time saving in not having to flag down a waiter to get the bill is great!

Similarly the online ordering for pickup sites that have sprung up to power the “non-DoorDash/Uber” option that restaurants want you to use. I like them, I like the usually not-inflated prices, but wish they would (A) be a fast, simple UI that works, and (B) stick to Apple/Google Pay and ask for no other info. No I don’t want to create a password or sign up for your newsletter!

Why would we do QR code payments in a world where NFC payment flows exist and are well established?

iPhones can only do what Apple allows developers to do, which isn’t much.

A random payment provider can’t use NFC on the iPhone, but they can use the camera. So here we are. QR payments are super popular all over Asia (and yes they suck, but you can blame Apple)

The QR code is physically attached to the table and links directly to the menu and/or your bill. QR codes are cheap (any printer can print one) so don't need special equipment. And people already understand how to use QR codes: they might not understand what an NFC tag/beacon is, or it might not work with all devices.

What would NFC add that you can't do with a QR code?

(Use of a QR code doesn't preclude paying in the normal way by calling over a server and using a contactless payment terminal. It just gives you the option to skip that and pay directly from your device.)

If it makes you feel any better, Newark's restaurant ordering system was terrible right from when they replaced all the restaurants and added those IPads at every seat even before they threw QR codes into the mix. I wrote a blog post about it in around 2014 or so (ignore the update date - that was me resurrecting the blog after a server failure) https://www.uncarved.com/articles/falafel/

China has the best adaptation of this trend that I have seen. Simple UIs with no registration, and direct payment with Alipay and Wechat. Seamless and helps with the language barrier as well.

In many cases you probably never even have to leave Wechat. That's assuming you even needed your phone at all and the waiter didn't just scan your face to pay.

Scanning to pay ? Damn that's horrifying.

Maybe. They don't seem to mind...

You mean like they don't mind the great firewall, the good citizen passport and the concentration camp?

That wasn't part of the conversation.

But I'll bite.

Somehow I always end up defending China on HN but really I'm just sharing what I have seen/heard during my time there.

The majority of the Chinese do not worry about those things.

The great firewall is probably the greatest inconvenience you listed. However, the Chinese that come here and see FB and Google say, hey, maybe the firewall is not a bad idea. It's easy to circumvent anyway. It just blocks the majority of the population from western media.

The social credit system I don't know anything about, sorry.

The camps, AFAIK, are for Uyghurs classified as dangerous or high risk. At least, that's what the Han believe. The general understanding is if you do something like text "terrorism" as a Uyghur - you disappear for a while. I think part of this is because they are terrified the US will radicalize the muslim extremists. The truth is we barely have to - they hate the Chinese enough there are recorded events of the Uyghers just running around killing Han Chinese with knives. This was before cameras were super popular, but there is potato footage. This is partly why large cities in Xinjiang have such high security (think officers with MP5s outside every K-6 school) So, the Han do not protest at such camps.

Looks like the great firewall worked well for you. Painting an entire ethnicity as terrorists who slash away randomly at people is exactly the kind of propaganda it serves. Israel does the same for Palestinians. Yes, terrorism exists and should be supressed, but you can’t de-humanize entire populations based on that.

Picture yourself being jailed, taken away from your family, forced to learn another language and change your customs because “people who look like you can be dangerous”.

I'm not saying it's justified, I'm just saying that is how they view it.

I'm actually in the USA. The question was how do the Chinese feel. I conveyed the general feeling.

Internal destabilization by manipulating group fractures is a known specialty of US foreign policy.

China has valid reasons to be concerned about such methods given explicit admissions from the US government at the highest levels, that they are considered an enemy.

I'm in Thailand right now. The US is attempting to destabilize Thailand with the coming elections in order to break its strong ties to China, ties that are quite reasonable and rational given the cultural and economic ties between the countries. The Americans are seeking to get rid of the Thai monarchy, which the average Thai is not particularly interested in doing.

> The camps, AFAIK, are for Uyghurs classified as dangerous or high risk. At least, that's what the Han believe.

I have a quite sobering article for you, which has a very different take on the Chinese propaganda.

https://www.theatlantic.com/the-uyghur-chronicles/

It's certainly interesting. I also find this shocking:

https://youtu.be/mCtOh_7_tDo

Maybe they got used to not having freedom

If you ask them, they will say they feel pretty free, since they can send their kid to school without worrying about it being shot :)

This is an honest to God, real reply to that question :D

Since I live in France, I also can claim that shotless schooling experience, but I also happen to be allowed to write on this very comment:

"Macron is an asshole"

Without thinking it will affect my life in any way.

So at this point, I'll just assume you are a troll and ignore you.

I mean, that's a good point, for sure. However, I'm just the messenger here, you should ask them. I've talked to a lot of them.

I think that, in terms of insulting the leader... most Chinese are pretty happy with Xi? But yeah, totalitarian regime, insulting leader, bad idea.

Why do the Paris police carry military rifles?

Even in the US your kids are not likely to get shot unless they're involved with youth drug gangs, that's where most of the child gun deaths come from. In France they trade the mass shooting incidents in for truck or bomb attacks.

The fact that you think this is something you should be concerned about when sending your kid to school shows that you lack critical thinking and base your idea of the US on agenda pushing media instead of rationality.

I don't know how many times I have to make this clear but as I said, this is what they say.

> since they can send their kid to school without worrying about it being shot :)

Propaganda and brainwashing is probably a worse risk than that.

Well I was recently at a US airport that had automatic "scan your face to board the plane" gates (non-optional) instead of providing boarding pass + passport, so from there to "scan your face to pay" it's a very small leap. They already know all about you and have your biometric identity, what's tacking a payment method to it?

Airport is a very punctual and security specific situation.

Buying things is a benign thing of your day to day life. Scanning your face to pay is a wet dream for surveillance states.

Sorry, I was responding in the original context of GP talking about Newark airport's terrible system. In it, scan your face to pay doesn't seem too far fetched; outside of it, I agree, pretty scary stuff.

So all I have to do to go on an unlimited spending spree is kidnap and lock up one of those hyper realistic mask makers? Nice

Unfortunately kidnapping them is the problem because they're always so well disguised.

It is most definitely optional

What would happen if identical twins wanted to board different flights from the same airport on the same day?

Hah, I thought I was the only one! You sit in-front of that tablet at EWR and fiddle around.. I thought it might be due to a lot of people/orders, but places are always available. It's not Heathrow-like lines to enter restaurant.

Absolutely. Newark airport is a food desert disaster because of this. I've learned that if I need to stop through Newark, always buy enough food for the layover at the previous airport since it's impossible to get anything in Newark. Thanks for the Starbucks tip, I hadn't noticed that (as I don't drink coffee).

How is that legal not to accept cash?

I believe as long as the place of business is not a government agency, they are not obligated to accept all payment types.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm

maybe federally, but there are local laws too, including the states of massachusetts, rhode island, and new jersey. Also NYC, Philly, and San Francisco: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/16/fac...

Blocking unbanked people from the economy is sorta bad if you have any kind of homeless population.

Not that familiar with the US, but presumably (just because it seems reasonable, and is the case here) they don't have to serve you at all (err, as long as it's not discriminating on grounds of a protected characteristic) so it would be weird for the law to require accepting cash when it also allowed them to nominally comply with that but then refuse to serve anyone who wouldn't pay by card?

cash is legal tender recognized by the country you are in. There should be no rationale to refuse it.

I believe the general rule in the US (unless there are state-specific laws that override this) is that a company is free to not do business with a cash customer, but once they do business with a customer, they cannot refuse cash payment. IE, a store could refuse to sell products for cash, but a restaurant couldn't refuse to accept cash in payment for the meal you've already eaten.

If you ate, and tried to give the restaurant $50 cash to cover the bill, what's the restaurant going to do? Call the cops? The cops will just tell the owner to take the cash or forget about it.

For the debt already incurred. No food served, no debt incurred by customer, business don't have to take cash.

Classic Newark.

I think they're trying to "scale" out order-taking to sell more. But interestingly it seems like they screw up the order more than if they took it from you in person.

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