> The McDonald's touch-screen self-order kiosk takes 27 clicks to get a meal. They try to up-sell you 3 times. Just let me pay for my fucking burger, Jesus Christ. The product manager, the programmer, the executives. None of these people care.
I was working in this space! And I got fired for refusing to work on more upsell features for clients like Coca Cola and such.
I don't want to work on adding fucking ADS into checkout. That is fucked up.
I have an interesting anecdote about that. I was consulting for a very large tech company on their advertising product. They essentially wanted an upsell product to sell to advertisers, like a premium offering to increase their reach. My first step is always to establish a baseline by backtesting their algorithm against simple zeroth and first-order estimators. Measuring this is a little bit complicated, but it seemed their targeting was worse than naive-bayes by a large factor, especially with respect to customer conversion. I was a pretty good data scientist, but this company paid their DS people an awful lot of money, so I couldn’t have been the first to actually discover this. The short story is that they didn’t want a better algorithm. They wanted an upsell feature. I started getting a lot of work in advertising, and it took me a number of clients to see a general trend that the advertising business is not interested in delivering ads to the people that want the product. Their real interest is in creating a stratification of product offerings that are all roughly as valuable to the advertiser as the price paid for them. They have to find ways to split up the tranches of conversion probability and sell them all separately, without revealing that this is only possible by selling ad placements that are intentionally not as good as they could be. Note that this is not insider knowledge of actual policy, just common observations from analyzing data at different places.
One thing you know about ad guys—they are really good at tricking people into spending money. I mean, it’s right there in their job description. For some reason their customers don’t seem think they’ll fall for it, I guess.
In terms of the people with products to advertise being crewed over by the ad industry, I think it is more that they don't see the similarity between the ad industry brain-washing us and the ad industry brain-washing them. Perhaps the disconnect happens because they want to interact with the ad industry, so get their stuff hawked to us, but we'd usually rather not.
Another interesting disconnect is that sometimes a person is both the “us” and the “them” in different contexts. i knew someone who would complain about some of it on other sides but when pointed out that his site used some of the same tricks he'd respond with “yeah, but I need that because …”.
Meh. I have no idea if I am smart or not -- the last several years proved to me I am definitely stupider than I thought -- but I know that with time I only started buying things I directly derive value from or in the worst-case scenario, I'll undoubtedly need during the next few months. No cutesy phone cases, no gadgets "because why not", no extra socks "because you never know", no new toaster because the current one just a tad too big etc. Almost no unnecessary purchases.
It's much more related to maturing on this or that axis than being smart IMO.
Effectively the advertisers could buy less ad space and get the same or better conversion? That is somewhat hilarious because that means that not only are the end-users "the product" the advertisers are as well. There's only cows for the milking, on either side... and shareholders.
Yes. It works really well. You can do a WHOLE LOTTA ARB(tm)(circle R), buying the crap placements at super low CPMs and selling the performance difference to clients. This is mitigated by those clients who ONLY WANT THE BEST (but of course, sir, right this way) - but there are ways around that, too - like the MFA (made for advertising) domains of all the big-name sites you can think of that solely exist for your RTB machine to pump ads stacked on top of each other, and only visible to bots and crawlers. It doesn't help that on one side, you have folks astute with math (Data Scientists et al.) and on the other, a metric shit ton of Media Planners/Buyers who are just handed a budget and are often pretty naive about the intricacies of how it all works. But it all sort of goes back to the original point - people put on blinders. They just wanna see the metric get hit, the numbers go up. Most of the time they don't care how any of that works as long as they look good to their boss, and the industry mostly obliges.
> They have to find ways to split up the tranches of conversion probability and sell them all separately, without revealing that this is only possible by selling ad placements that are intentionally not as good as they could be.
I worked in the adtech space for almost 10 years and can confirm this is where we landed, too.
>The short story is that they didn’t want a better algorithm. They wanted an upsell feature.
This is why I got out. No one cares about getting the right ad to the right person. There's layers upon layers of hand-waving, fraud, and grift. Adtech is a true embodiment of "The Emperor's New Clothes."
Is there a solution? Obviously those companies are not going to change, so what can everyone else do about it - besides already being very rich, starting a competing ad-tech without funding, managing to get market share, and managing to remain one of the good guys.
The only thing I can think of is to use things like influencer ads on places like Instagram or Youtube which ironically sound like much better value for money as you actually know what you're getting for the money.
Lately, the number of times (across different businesses/industries) where I've found myself thinking "Will you please just fucking take my money and stop bothering me?" is too damn high.
Yup, it's not good enough that you're already a paying customer- they have to try their best to manipulate and coerce you into spending even more. It's insulting, abusive and honestly pathetic. These thirsty lamers have to try every trick in the book to eke a few more cents out of me? Embarrassing. Modern tech/business does not have a shred of pride or dignity, as per TFA.
Businesses aren't in business to prioritize the customer point of view [1].
They are not in business to prioritize the employees point of view.
They are in business to maximise revenue, and profit.
If you work for a business, your job is to work on their priorities. By all means object or quit if you don't agree with them. (And yes, assume you'll be fired for refusing to do their tasks.)
If you're a customer, and you font like their behavior stop being their customer. You have agency. Use it.
[1] good customer service, good customer experience, are all good for revenue. Happy customers are the ultimate success. But maximizing the revenue from those happy customers is very much the business goal.
The old "use your agency" response never gets old does it, no matter how much consumer alternatives are whittled away, and no matter how much the abusive corporate behaviour gets ratcheted up and normalized. Do you actually make a profit yourself from forcing ads on paying customers who can't choose to avoid your services, or just aspire to one day?
If an "alternative" to McDonald's does exactly the same abusive thing it isn't a real alternative to McDonald's at all.
If an "alternative" to McDonald's forces you to drive excessive distances to reach it, or it costs much more, or it sells Thai food instead of burgers, then it isn't a real alternative to McDonald's.
A suitable alternative to McDonald's would be one similar enough to McDonald's for your purposes that you can use it to replace McDonald's. I'm sure some people have that, but I'm also sure many people don't.
There are lots of things that don't actually have suitable alternatives. There are entire product categories that are completely filled with consumer hostile garbage, with zero competitors offering a suitable alternative, because sometimes it will always be more profitable for companies to refuse to give consumers what they want.
Cooking for yourself is a trope? You realise that's what most of the world does every day.
If making your own meals is literally out of your reach then I feel really sad for you. That must truly suck to be so dependent on companies just to eat...
Are you being obtuse on purpose or are you really desperate to "win" this debate?
EXTREMELY OBVIOUSLY I meant this part of your comment:
> As long as you keep signaling to MD that you'll tolerate more and more crap for lower prices, they happily oblige.
That is the trope many use, yourself included. A lot of people signal their displeasure with various status quo. Still nothing changes. I wonder how does the one-dimensional quote above addresses the messy and complex real world out there.
Sorry, it wasn't obvious to me. I misread your point.
I'm not really trying to "win" anything. I'm telling you that you have agency. Whether that means anything to you, or if you do anything with it, I guess that's up to you.
Personally I'm not looking for my agency to change anyone else or how any company behaves. I don't do it for them, I do it for me.
I choose to support companies that align with my requirements. If a company makes me feel like crap I go elsewhere. I'm not out to change the world, just choose how I live in it.
Do you grow 100% of your own food? It may be helpful for your understanding (and this conversation) to get off the high horse and realise that you're also dependent on companies "just to eat".
I never said I wasn't dependent on companies. I very much am. For everything. But I have choices and, when I gave the opportunity, I make those choices meaningfully.
For example, I don't much care for the McDonald's experience, so I go elsewhere. Indeed on occasion I find going 'nowhere' to be preferable if there's no alternative. I haven't been to MD in 30 years.
I'm not trying to be on a high horse. I follow a path that works for me, and I don't complain about it. You choose the path that works best for you.
I think I understand you: everyone at the bottom end of society should just have more money or more personal time, or both. I wonder how we could make that happen.
Different people are in different places. And obviously some people have been fortunate enough to have choices, and some do not.
I would assume that most people in this thread are not working 3 jobs to survive etc. My context is not their context.
I'd also guess they are far less invested in concepts like whether or not the server offers fries with that. In my long ago, limited experience, I couldn't have cared less about how many adverts there were, there were more pressing things to worry about.
Back to your point - I choose personal time over more money. My spending is modest, my income is likely much lower than most here. Frankly I have more than enough. Living is a lot cheaper when the goal isn't money.
What if I can't drive all the way to an ad-free restaurant or for that matter an ad-free gas pump? What if I buy a plane ticket to get out of this bad situation and the airline is using the emergency PA to harass their captive audience of paying customers to join their miles club? What can't be avoided must endured, but there is no reason for people like you to insist that this is fine or normal, or that it's something one can opt out of. You're actively building the dystopia when you do that
>What if I can't drive all the way to an ad-free restaurant
Eating at a restaurant is a luxury. If you don't like the experience, don't go (or don't go back). You're free to make your own food with stuff you buy at the supermarket, and you'll most likely get something healthier and much lower-priced. The entire point of a restaurant is to pay more money, frequently a LOT more, for a combination of convenience, service, ambiance, and food that might not be so easy for you to make at home (e.g. pizza) due to skill or equipment limitations.
Most of the supermarket is essentially ad-space. Companies often negotiate quite hard for good eye-line shelf positions for their products.
That special offer Tesco has on Pepsi products? Tesco is probably making exactly the same markup on each sale and the saving is actually coming from a supply price deal they have arranged with Pepsi in exchange for their products getting extra shelf space and end-isle displays.
High-shelf space (too high for customers to safely reach, so otherwise empty or used to store boxes of product to open when it is time to replace sold stock on lower shelves) often has advertising hoardings for products on other isles these days, again this is effectively paid ad space for the suppliers. If no external supplier is currently paying for it, the space is used to advertise own-brand ranges.
As others make clear here you have agency in theory, but in practice your ability to use that agency is very much dependent on how well the world enables the exercise of that agency. Something to think about, interdependence and all that.
> They are in business to maximise revenue, and profit.
Correction, "they" are not a hivemind with one goal, they are a collection of individuals with individual goals to maximize their own profit. If some marketing employee can get a bonus or promotion by showing ephemeral monetary gains at the expense of the long-term integrity of the product, they'll jump all over that.
It does not have to be this way. This should not be claimed as some kind of law of gravity-like nature of the universe. Businesses have operated in an enormous variety of manners over the years and continue to do so. Businesses have agency.
Just look at EA vs Nintendo for one. And I'm not even a Nintendo fan.
Badmouthing bullshit practices of a company is also a part of the agency here.
E.g. Yes, I hate that McDonalds (like tons of other companies) is incessantly bugging me and quite blatantly trying to upsell me. As a result, I rarely go to such places anymore. So they lose my business. But I will also complain out loud. This is part of the deal with bullshitting your customer base. This is part of my agency. Losing me as a customer, as well as getting badmouthed left and right is the cost of extracting that 3 additional cents from me. Now the company also has a choice.
I think some small businesses start because the owner wants to do something well. Sometimes this aligns with some group of customers and it's sustainable.
Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because while they do a task well, they're bad at the business part.
Once you get large (McDonald's in the parent thread) the focus is necessarily on the business part. At that scale it's not "doing the thing as well as possible " - it is "making money as well as possible".
Clearly lots of people use McDonald's. So they provide customers with satisfaction. But that doesn't mean they aren't out to maximize revenue.
One of the things that’s surprising about traveling to Europe and Japan is that this revenue maximizing business strategy isn’t as prevalent. You don’t see the same upsells everywhere and tipping culture is also mostly non-existent. Many US businesses managed to behave in a manner that was vastly less extractive to their customers for most of the last century as well. It really is possible to care about the quality of your business in some cultures, it’s just harder to do so here today.
It's exactly harder but when customers prioritize price above everything it's hard to succeed if you offer better, but charge more.
The hard truth is that American consumers care only about price, and so businesses optimize for that (or go under). Which means they lean into other sources of revenue, or ways to reduce costs.
Elsewhere people care about value more than price, and are willing to spend more to get more. Restaurants post the real price (including service) because that's what it costs.
Ryanair exists to fill the need for those who want low price above all else. KLM exists for those who want a better experience and are prepared to pay more.
Do you think it is possible for a society to switch from emphasizing price to emphasizing value? If so, how do you think such a change would take place?
It's really hard for cultures to change. Outside of a major event (WW2 scale event) its likely to take multiple generations.
It can happen locally. Farmers markets are a thing. Supporting local owner-run, not chain, restaurants is a thing.
But in big cities, or nationally? Probably not in pur lifetime.
But it doesn't really matter what others do. It starts with what you do, for yourself. Look around, find small-scale suppliers. Support local producers where you can, and so on. The quality is usually better.
The problem is that the number of suppliers seems to be constantly going down. Chains are taking over public spaces, successful smaller companies get bought out, and the successful independent ones eventually get a new CEO who is incentivized to maximize profits (see e.g., Chipotle hiring Taco Bell's CEO.)
Obviously this is highly location dependent, and I don't doubt there are places where this is true.
Also, there may not be sufficient people in your area to support independent businesses that believe in providing more value at a higher price.
But it's worth looking and asking around. They may exist, but you won't see them on TV. Ask in local Facebook groups, look out for weekend markets and do on. Asking in those places can give you clues.
But I agree that the vast majority of Americans care only about price, so there will be lots of places where quality simply doesn't exist outside of what you cook yourself.
McDonalds has fallen so far in the past few decades. I used to eat there or at least grab a soda several times a week. I never go there anymore. The kiosks suck; I refuse to use them, but they don't staff the counter half the time so there's no other way to order. The drive-thru expects you've already ordered on the app. Fuck that. It's all way too complicated. I want a Big Mac meal with a coke. That used to take me 3 seconds to order and I had it on a tray in about another minute. Now I have to dick around on the kiosk for a couple of minutes, pay, and then wait 5-10 minutes for the food. It's absurd.
This is a bizarre take to me. If food is on my tray in 60 seconds, I'm concerned what corners they are cutting to serve food this fast. It sounds terribly stressful for the employees. How can 5-10 minutes be considered slow?
I think in any case, this is an entirely different qualm than the other issues, like taking orders only via kiosk, or constantly up-selling you during the order.
Personally, I hate the McDonald's app. All the vouchers seem quite plainly optimized to encourage you to come back. I hate this kind of psychological micro-optimization of human behaviours. I would take a ten minute order every time if they stopped trying to manipulate me.
behind the counter-guy, in that wide silver opening, is a black plastic slope with with burgers queuing up. The cooks are constantly cooking, even when nobody has ordered anything, and that means they can get the efficiency boost of making 5 Big Macs at the same time - laying out 5 boxes, 5 buns, 5 patties cooking, etc. - and with no customer waiting on them, there need be no immediate rush[1]. The cashier only picks one up and puts it on your tray, much less than 60 seconds and no stress[1]. Contrast with Subway where the cashier has to assemble one custom sandwich at a time while the customer and queue of waiting people all watch (stressor); they can not get custom sandwiches into muscle memory, or the efficiency of doing several at once (slow), and the cashier delaying for a moment doesn't relieve pressure by letting the buffer fill, it just adds more pressure.
If McDonalds is now taking 5-10 minutes for a typical order, what has gone wrong with their fast-food-factory-production-line design?
[1] Maybe it isn't actually low stress or no-rush in McDonalds, but that design of food service could be.
They changed their model a while ago to trying to optimise the assembly time of each item, and produce them as they are ordered. The hot parts are pre-cooked and put into warmers, but not assembled (put into buns with toppings etc.) until you order.
Allows for easier customisation and less food wastage (and you don't have to keep track of when something was made), at the cost of time for 'easy' orders.
> Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because while they do a task well, they're bad at the business part.
Some small businesses fail because larger ones see their initial success and compete by making a slightly worse product a bit cheaper. Sometimes a significantly worse product. Once the superior but smaller competition is either out of business or has been forced to reduce their quality to try compete on price, the bigger business can either reduce the quality & price further (the big business will usually win in this sort of race-to-the-bottom because they can afford to take losses on individual products for a time, where a smaller business cannot) or bump their price up to improve margins.
It sometimes isn't that the small business is bad at the business part, but that they refuse to play dirty even if playing dirty is the only way to compete. It is easier to rationalise some tactics in a bigger company, because there is no one who has to look the customer in the eye who is also making product quality affecting decisions.
Actually, in a way this is already true. If you consent to installing their mobile app (which includes god knows what kind of analytics), you are rewarded with at least 20% off all McDonald’s food list prices.
So you can pay for “McDonald’s without analytics” by paying list prices in cash at the register.
Now, if there was an option when booking a flight to pick a fare class not subjected to the stupid branded credit card offer walk of shame prior to landing, I would sign up in a heartbeat.
> So you can pay for “McDonald’s without analytics” by paying list prices in cash at the register.
I didn't know they took orders at the register still. I've only been in once (last year) in the past 20 years, but they seemed to insist on kiosk-only. Not sure if the drive-thru is like that too.
You still pay the unsubsidized full menu price at the kiosk or drive through. I believe you can order at the kiosk and not use a card (pay cash at register)
I recently went to a gas station where the pump worked right! No affinity cards. No car wash offer. No asking for a ZIP code, since I'd been there before. No screen with ads. Press card against RFID reader, select octane, pump gas.
I went inside and complemented the worker on their pumps being so easy to use.
I go back there occasionally, even though the station with the ad screen is cheaper.
nah - gas pumps that ask for phone numbers for savings card id's are great opportunities to save cents at the pump. 555-555-5555 always works everywhere and half the time gets you savings.
Enough people use 867-5309 as their grocery loyalty card's phone number that it's often got savings available at the gas pump. Use the local area code. It works great for filling up rentals while traveling, too.
This seemed like a poor example for the author to choose, of "not caring." Annoying, sure. But these extra upsells originate from someone who definitely cares about increasing revenue and is aggressively exploring multiple avenues to achieve it.
Companies don’t care about you, they care about your wallet, extraction of money from. The most pleasant companies to deal with are the ones who have found a niche where customer satisfaction helps with the goal of wallet, extraction from. But at best it’s a means to an end, and McDonald’s is definitely not one of those companies.
I understand that, but it included this particular example which doesn’t fit. I guarantee the people at McDonald’s in charge of the kiosk design care a great deal about wallet.
I've found books that had ads inserted into them [1]. It seemed to be a thing from maybe the 1960/1970s. The ad page was a different type of paper, and no text from the book was on it (that is---the ad wasn't on one side and book text on the other).
Paper magazines still have "blow ins", though - advertising cards that are injected into the magazine with compressed air after printing. They're not bound in. They fall out.
There was a post, here, some time ago, about how many paperbacks had ads actually woven into the story. Apparently, it was quite common practice, at one time. Sort of an obnoxious “product placement” thing. I think the author had nothing to do with it.
i sent an email to have them removed. it was a thing some years ago at least (though I don't know if US-ians are allowed to do that or if it's just in the EU)
I actually recently purchased my first Kindle, as well as an gift upgrade for my partner. I researched and talked to a friend of mine who owns one.
At first I was determined I would purchase the ad-free version (I think the price difference was like ~20€), but after talking to my friend they kind of convinced me that the ad version is not so bad.
2 points on this:
1. The ad appears only on the lockscreen of the device, so you see it once and then never again until you reopen it. The ad is also only for a book in the Kindle store, never anything else (this might seem trivial, but I think one of the negative aspects of advertising is being blasted with stimuli about so many different things you don't care for)
2. The ads are personalized on books you bought and therefor a sort of recommendation engine. Both my friend and my partner told me they got some inspiration from those ads to find books they liked.
So all in all while I despise ads, I gave this one a try. Personally (and yeah, I know – subconciously) I have never looked at the lockscreen apart from the first time I launched it. It's a relatively non-intrusive ad about a book that I don't even need to engage with. And in case something relevant is on there, it leads to a good outcome for me.
So far, Kobos are the way better option in my opinion. No ads, and it's much easier to add your own books. It's (currently) a much more open system. But, not without fault. They've shut down some older readers for no good reason.
"Easier to add your own books"... it depends. Yes, if you have ePubs and want to transfer files to the reader via USB, Kobo is marginally easier. But Kindle is easier for wireless delivery (regardless of format), and supports it on all of their models instead of just a limited subset.
The Onyx Boox readers have a feature called BooxDrop which runs a web server on the device when you enable it that provides file management and upload. It simple, wireless, and works great.
The readers work perfectly fine without an account and the Poke 5 I have is a fair bit smaller than the last Kindle I had with the same size screen.
It runs Android and I also use Termux plus a bluetooth keyboard with it for a rather nice minimal writing experience.
I've been tempted by their products in the past, but unless they've improved their stance on their use of GPL covered code in a non-compliant manner I don't want to support their business.
If you put them into the Kindle Kids mode you get a much cleaner, more streamlined, ad-free experience without paying extra. I've seen a few adults say that they prefer it to the full-featured mode.
There are kindle alternatives. Luckily the technology isn't that advanced and any/all of them pretty much MUST support a general PDF (or whatever other similar format). You might have to manage your own library a bit but that means you can just use these devices completely offline
I think e-readers are not that high on the list of technologies most at risk to be taken over by ads
At the dominant pharmacy/convenience store in my area (Shoppers Drug Mart), it can take up to 12 clicks to self-checkout, depending on what garbage they're upselling on the day. I counted them.
I refuse to use them, and (annoyingly, I know) let the cashier know why each time as they're checking me out. I feel bad for the poor cashier but unfortunately for them, they're my only interface to the company.
Yes. Our local IKEA recently started doing this. During self-checkout, you have to click through hot dog, ice cream, cinnamon buns and drink offers, and the inevitable offer to get an IKEA family card before you are actually able to pay for your furniture.
Seeing this after waiting in line for 10 minutes, navigating a sluggish, unresponsive touch screen terminal and unsuccessfully trying to scan slightly bend bar codes while 10 people are watching you doesn't exactly increase my desire to return to this store.
I really think a huge part of the problem is that there isn't a direct interaction with a human anymore. If IKEA would ask their cashiers to advertise all this crap to customers before accepting their money, they would revert this after a single day because many customers would very, very strongly complain, and the cashiers would care and threaten to quit.
But you cannot complain to a self-checkout-terminal, which makes this even more frustrating. As another comment has pointed out, there is just a "No thanks" button. I want a "I am seriously offended that you try to milk me like a brainless cash-cow, you should be ashamed to even advertise this to me after I bought a couch for 1,400 EUR, and I will not return anytime soon" button.
Last time I went it was only one food upsell. But it is still really annoying. Before this they had basically a perfect self-checkout, fast and easy to use. But now it is adding crap and I fear that I'm going to have to stop shopping there like many of the other self-checkouts around me.
I feel like this reveals some sampling error in the OP rant. When you see something negative get made that makes you think "nobody cares", you're not seeing the people who did care and left.
Which relates to the linked incentives piece: when you create incentives, you think you're changing people's behaviour. Actually you're selecting for people who respond to the incentive.
The iOS app “Calendars” recently starting showing a modal on launch trying to up-sell something - I don’t give a shit what it was - the “no” option was labeled “Thank you”. I had to click “Thank you” to dismiss it so that I could use the fucking app I pay a yearly subscription for. Or in this case: paid. The cheek of these people.
That "Thank you" button just raised the bar on cheek, I think.
I'm actually chuckling at it -- just the sheer passive-aggressive childishness of its attempt at shaming users. I mean, what did they think writing that on the button would achieve? It has literally no effect except to infuriate people who were already going to opt out. Labelling it "I suck" would have been better.
Silicon Valley is like a creepy and terrible suitor, never knowing what "no" means or letting its counterparty express "no". It's always "ask me later".
I hate that the options when faced with a location permissions request is "block" or "allow". why isnt ignore an option?? Block adds the site to a discrete local list which i dont need recorded on my computer...
Exactly? I may not want a site to have my location now, but I may be okay with it in the future. Eg, I’m not in a place where I want my location tagged at the moment.
Yes. Similarly, the “agree” should have the option for “Okay yes, but just for this session.”
The fact that this part of the UI is not escapable by the user is hostile and breaks the interaction model. If the “webpage” is asking me this question, why is the browser acting as a middleman and forwarding me this message without letting my continue unless I answer. Let me respond to the webpage or ignore it as well.
if you don't, someone else will. Maybe you could've introduced a "bug" that makes it so it usually doesn't work except when a member of the QA team is looking at it :P
Well.. I did implement most of the framework. The good thing is that I'm waaaayyyyy detail oriented, and I made an extremely sophisticated system for it.
Maybe a little bit TOO sophisticated
Not my proudest _engineering_ achievement, but as an R&D project? I consider it a success.
and decoupling order taking with service makes for "funny" times. since mcdonalds installed the tablets i regularly wait 10 minutes while looking at confused / avoidant employees not knowing what to do, even if there's nobody else waiting.
i can almost feel the meeting where someone managed to sell this idea to shareholders... "decouple everything, more efficient !"
That seems more indicative of just bad management.
It’s been over a decade since I’ve been in (specially) a McDonalds, but I used to frequent them easier in my life. The ones I went to were well run and efficient. But still as seemed as decoupled as kiosk ordering. The cashier would take the order and put it into the computer. The food preparers would prepare the food and put it on the trays where the packagers would subsequently take it and put it on your tray or in your bag. There was 0 communication between the three groups in 99% of the cases. Often I would make small talk with the cashiers or packagers if there was nobody behind me.
I don’t see how kiosk/tablet ordering would change that significantly.
it's pretty obvious, there's no more tension in the job, the cooks still have a list of things to do, but people serving customers have no idea who ordered what beside a number. they have no real relationship with any of us waiting and quite often I see them roaming around aimlessly, not sure if I've been called or not
This is a result of Taylorist management brain rot drive to reduce drive thru wait time metrics at the expense of anybody not in the drive through. Watch the shot clock near the drive through window (they're highly visible at Taco Bell) and observe that drive thru customers almost never wait more than 60-80 seconds.
you can't say "they don't care" though, the folks making these screens are obviously pretty motivated to keep squeezing out more profits and care a lot about that. if they "didn't care" they'd have told you "ok fine, im going for break"
McDonald's touch-screen were only profitable because users ordered more. Possibly Covid and processes to get costs down have changed this, but not to begin.
I feel like your comment falls under "Nobody cares"
I love the touch screens and having the time to order what I want. I used to rush my order at the checkout and never got exactly what I wanted.
If you did a start-up 'ethical ordering' you'd care, made money, and probably forced McDonalds to change it's touch screens. In South Korea it asks the user are you sure, here's the extra kJ, when it does an upsell.
> In South Korea it asks the user are you sure, here's the extra kJ, when it does an upsell.
Really? I guess I've just never taken up such an upsell, but I'll try to remember it next time I go just to see the UI. Barely ever go there now that ironically Lotteria has more veggie burger options here (1) than McDonalds (0), and their chicken burgers are imo worse than KFC's.
I was working in this space! And I got fired for refusing to work on more upsell features for clients like Coca Cola and such.
I don't want to work on adding fucking ADS into checkout. That is fucked up.