The Approximately Monthly Zoomer
Can we please go back to paper menus?
2023-01-06
My brother in Christ, I do not need assistance with scanning a QR code, just give me the frickin’ paper menu!!!!11!1!
Recently I’ve let a restaurant ruin my mood by using a buggy menu behind a QR code instead of handing me a proper menu and that made me think, so here are all the reasons I could come up with in the shower about why we should reject modernity, embrace tradition, and use good old-fashioned paper menus.
Why would I want to look at a tiny screen smaller than my hand instead of a large (paper) menu with a large font with godlike contrast that can display more than a few lines at a time?
SoMeBoDy tHiNk oF tHe cHiLdReN - but unironically. Not all children who are capable readers posess a smartphone or should be encouraged to use one during a meal.
I don’t want to be advertised to on a restaurant menu you greedy fucks. Louis Rossmann had a similar experience where the first thing he saw after loading the site were three advertisements that blocked nearly all of the page.
Cookies - but not the kind you want at a restaurant. Clicking through dark-pattern cookie dialogues just to order food in a restaurant. Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
Security - If someone on the street handed you a QR code to scan and said “trust me bro, it’s 100% safe and legit” I’m sure you’d do exactly as asked. Bonus points if the site allows you to directly pay by credit card. Also, what about exploits in the QR scanning software or just regular browser exploits? What if some non tech-savvy senior gets tricked into downloading the offishal™ restaurant app? Or someone leaves a fake QR code at the table?
Tracking scripts. Why do goolag and friends need to know where I’ve been eating?
Poor web design - Clicking back and forth through categories/menus just so you can see the appetizers, main courses, side dishes and desserts separately. And god forbid you want to see the ingredients, that’s another click on the item and scroll down. Then you have to click the back button which doesn’t bring you back to the same place on the page but all the way to the top.
It distracts. Looking at your phone there will certainly be some other things that may disctract you, your friend texting you, a missed call from your coworker, a calendar reminder, any notification really. I for one don’t have the mental fortitude to block out all those stimuli and focus solely on looking at the menu in my browser, and neither do some of my friends, who ended up spending a large amount time checking other notifications every time they went to take a look at the menu.
We’re inside, in a large building. Large buildings have lots of walls, lots of thick walls. Mostly from reinforced concrete, which has a pretty high linear attenuation coefficient. An internet connection is needed to load all the fancy 4K pictures of the food. Do you see where I’m going with this? They already have reception problems with their GSM credit card reader, waving it around trying to catch some bytes floating around the ether, let alone downloading high res pictures.
Public WiFi. That fancy new speakeasy you can only enter with a password is in a basement? No need to worry about reception, just use their free WiFi! Yeah, sure. Even if you’re so inebriated that connecting to a public and unencrypted WiFi seems like a good idea, what do you think will happen when everyone tries to open the menu at once using their shit-tier ISP-provided 54mbps dsl 802.11g router? What about the couple sitting in the other corner away from the router?
The Good Things
Not everything about those QR menus is bad, there are some small benefits, but most have one thing in common: only the restaurant benefits from it.
You can change prices on a whim! No more reprinting menus, just a few clicks in your POS (both meanings) system and you can adjust for real-time inflation should you live in Argentina. Someone with gucci crocs and a rolex just walked in? Have the QR code on their table link to a more suitable “premium” menu!
You save money and trees by not printing paper menus. Well yes, but actually no. Most of the time they still have good old-fashioned cellulose menus as a backup, so those trees are already dead.
When combined with an ordering system, you can fire some of the staff and keep more of the profits to yourself.
That’s it?
Unless you completely dread social interaction with waiters and holding menus other people have held before you (why are you at a reastaurant then?), I fail to see how menus behind QR codes benefit you, the customer, in any way.