Working in food sucks in general. I would know I’ve been doing it for almost 14 years now. You drive to the store. You enter the store. You order your food. If there are any complications with your order you’re told right then and there.
But I’ll never forget the day my job introduced mobile ordering. It immediately made everything worse in almost every way. Customers ordering shit we ran out of, shit we no longer offer, setting the pickup time 5 minutes after placing the order then getting mad when it’s not done on time. All this while we can’t communicate with the customer at all until they arrive to find the order incomplete because we couldn’t contact them to figure out what they wanted to do.
Then door dash became a thing and all those exact problems became even worse. It slows down the entire store to the point of disrupting the customers who came in to order.
Why the fuck would you go through a third party system to obtain food when you can just go get the fucking food
Basically if you use mobile ordering or a delivery service you’re a big part of why food service has done nothing but get harder and more frustrating. And I do hold it against you.
Edit: I don’t think lemmy understands how unpopularopinion is supposed to work…
Edit 2: Considering how many people clearly disagree with me and seeing how few upvotes this post has gotten, lemmy clearly has no idea how unpopularopinion works.
Glad to know the Reddit custom of ignoring that still lives on.
15% of the world self-identifies as having a disability. The most common category of disability is mobility-related. E.g “going to the and entering the store” may not be as easy as it is for you, or even impossible. Even if you don’t have a mobility problem and can do that just fine, for other people “ordering and dealing with complications” is a lot harder if you have trouble hearing, or have facial paralysis and can’t speak, or even if you just don’t speak the local language fluently. There are a million reasons that might make the simple task of getting food impossible for a person, and there’s way more people out there who experience things like this than you might guess.
Maybe you simply never saw these people in person previously, because they weren’t able to order from you at all. Maybe you just assumed your customers didn’t have a disability because they didn’t say so. You have no idea how many people ordering from you have disabilities. You can’t know. Assume it’s one out of every 4 people you meet if you live somewhere poorer, because that’s realistic.
When mobile ordering went online, it meant that so many more people were able to choose what to eat, which meant more business for restaurants, which meant restaurants needed to staff their restaurant sufficiently, or upgrade tools. They don’t just get to enjoy the extra profits for nothing.
And yet your frustration is directed at the people who are just trying to eat. I would like to offer you a reframing of this situation and suggest that your problem is not with customers at all.
Customers ordering shit we ran out of
People can’t be expected to know a restaurant’s stock inventory. The responsibility is on the business to communicate that to the customers. Some restaurant’s make the cashiers say it in person to every single customer. Some restaurants erase them from displayed menus in the store. These days, restaurants can just tick the box “unavailable” in an app to let all future and present customers know immediately. It can even be scheduled, or automatically respond to events like “removing the last pack of an ingredient from the fridge”. These options all exist already, your employers need to figure out how to use them properly, or the software they use needs to add these features, or they can just not accept online orders when the restaurant is too busy. Your beef is with management or the order service companies they use.
shit we no longer offer
Same deal, but an even worse look for your management for not ensuring they tell their delivery services that something is permanently gone. Your beef is with management or the services they use.
setting the pickup time 5 minutes after placing the order then getting mad when it’s not done on time.
Still a software and management problem. They need to be able to set minimum waiting times, and management needs to update them if they know the restaurant is too busy. Your beef is with management or the services they use.
All this while we can’t communicate with the customer at all until they arrive to find the order incomplete because we couldn’t contact them to figure out what they wanted to do.
I have ordered online and later received an automated notification when the restaurant has had to extend waiting times unexpectedly.
I have also ordered online and then had a restaurant send an automated notification that a specific item went out of stock after I ordered and asked me to choose an alternative item or just leave it off the order. It also automatically recalculated my payment when I decided to leave it off. No in-person interaction required.
These features all already exist. It’s up to the managers of the restaurant to use them and to take the burden off the people they manage. It’s up to the owner to only use companies which provide useful tools that don’t harm their employees and customers. It’s up to the software companies to put features in which don’t harm customers and restaurants.
Your beef is with management or the services they use. You are misdirecting your frustration at the only people in the situation with the most reasonable time-sensitive important problem out of everyone involved. None of the problems you listed are the customer’s fault, they have no idea how your workplace runs or what is normal for them.
Start a union instead of blaming people for ordering food and you might not have to experience years more of the same.
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Temporary self-inflicted disabilities are still disabilities!
I honestly think it probably has though. People will still make bad risky decisions when drunk, but if it’s just as easy not to use that option, there has to be beneficial results. It would make an interesting study, for sure.
If “Temporary self-inflicted disabilities” qualify as disabilities, then I think that percentage would be a lot higher 😂
The apps don’t actually help disabled people, they just exploit and rip them off.
Of course people with disabilities are getting exploited and ripped off, so is everyone in a system where profit is the motive.
But at least I can eat my favourite foods now while it happens. Not many other forms of exploitation provide me with any value at all. And the purpose-built disability service providers where I am are often some of the most exploitative, because they know their clients are vulnerable. Uber just thinks I’m lazy.
How is it exploitation to offer a service to someone for money?
I like your unpopular opinion, here is my take on it:
Don’t fucking offer mobile ordering of it’s such an inconvenience. It’s not like you’re forced to offer it.
To be fair (and again I can only speak to the UK here so maybe it’s different in the US). If a takeaway place isn’t on these sorts of services, then they’re going to miss out on an awful lot of custom.
But this is directly contradictory to the statement of op saying offering it actually grinds the operations to a halt resulting in LESS customers being served?
Customers don’t see that though. They just assume their food is late and decide to use a different restaurant next time, or just wait a bit longer.
The Korean fast food place close my house doesn’t have their own delivery driver anymore, it was fired. Now you have to go there (no problem for me because is a 3 minutes walk) or use one the third party apps.
Actually some third party companies will list businesses even if the business doesn’t offer delivery, so long as they have online ordering. The only solution would be to not allow take out of any kind.
I don’t drive and live a bit from the city centre; I try not to do it often as I’m a poor, but occasionally order takeaway.
Once I rang a store to ask why certain items from a deal were missing and they said they were not running such a deal and were very fed up with people requesting it. Seems the site (might’ve been justeat but was a while and memory is fallible) had inserted a deal where none existed.
Yeah, spot on. There was a local pizza pub I used to frequent that would always get upset because door dash and grub hub would add their business without permission. The place offered delivery (pizza duh), but hated third party delivery because it took business away from their drivers (you kinda want a critical mass of business to justify having delivery) and they often had customers call in to complain that their order/deal/special was wrong. I remember the manager would look on delivery sites each week and call any that had listed the business without their permission.
Running a franchise must be stressful enough, insane that they have to actively police websites adding them without their consent on top of that.
Or require ID to pick it up….
So would the business just not make the food until you show up with your ID or do they throw away orders for people who don’t have a matching ID? Also, what about people who don’t have an ID at all?
Unless he owns the company in not sure he has a choice.
Except we are. The people in the store have no control on what corporate tells us to do.
Unless you own the store you have no say on whatever bs they decided to dump on us. Unless you decide to just quit but you’ll just end up at a different store with the exact same mobile/delivery bullshit
Please help me understand. What’s in your opinion the reason why a competitive disadvantage would be this widespread?
Not the person you replied to, but there is a sit down burger bar near me that I quite enjoy. This place is popular with third party deliveries. I like to go, sit at the bar, and have a burger and beers. I stopped going to the place because every time I go the bar is full of delivery drivers waiting on food to be ready for delivery. We’re talking probably 20 orders per hour. I don’t so much mind the delivery people, but they come and go so frequently, they often lurk about because they want to get going, and they distract the bartender so she can’t do her job well.
The business is making more money by having more sales, but the impact on the dine in experience is so terrible that their delivery gains are likely muted by the loss of dine in business. The only thing corporate sees at the end of the day is that there were more sales transactions which means they made more money, they don’t see the business they lost by having a poor dine in experience.
Then they didn’t lose any business they just served a different customer base.
Because the companies are still making money off it because even though it’s a complete shit show customers still use it.
It boils down to the customers which is why this was directed at them. If you use these services you’re the sole reason they still exist.
This sounds like your employer set up the online ordering poorly. Most places have the food set as available minimum 15 minutes after you order. They should remove items that are out of stock from the mobile site.
Usually the problem I see is that the order volume is higher than the kitchen staff can support and their management doesn’t want to turn it off or hire more people.
These things are an absolute godsend for the disabled.
Also those of us with crippling anxiety issues.
I don’t, however, like the added fees or how they screw over the people who do the work. I try and avoid using gig-type delivery services, and prefer the regular kind that existed long before Uber and DoorDash. Like a pizza or Chinese place do.
Crippling anxiety is considered a disability.
Edit: You’re lucky the Chinese and pizza places near you are still doing their own in-house delivery. In my city, they have almost all exclusively switched to using GrubHub, UberEats, whatever else. So you can’t avoid those extra fees.
If those were the majority of the orders I wouldn’t mind at all.
How do you know they aren’t?
He works in the store and can see who is coming in to pick up the orders?
I have huge news for you about invisible and less visible disabilities.
Most disabilities are not visible.
You wouldn’t know what percentage of orders are placed by disabled people. Relatively few disabilities are visibly obvious.
Sounds like most of the problems you are complaining about are the structure of the system. Ordering things you don’t have/offer or for a ridiculously fast delivery time shouldn’t even be options.
I agree apps like door dash make all the problems of delivery worse, but delivery in of itself is a good thing. Restaurants and individual locations should just have all the power, not some weird intermediary that takes a huge cut.
Why? Because it’s more convenient dude, at least in the UK. Is it lazy?, yes. Is it negatively affecting the takeaway industry?, also yes. Is it more convenient than going out of my house when I’ve finally got the kids to bed and just want to settle down onto the sofa and wait for someone to bring me food? Absolutely it is.
I’d probably direct my anger towards the shitty companies who exploit you, the drivers and the customers rather than the people just trying to get some grub down their throats after a long shitty day.
I’m mad at both tbh. I know I’m being exploited. But I’d be being exploited less if people simply understood that every convenience for you as a customer is another pile on top of the shit load of inconveniences we already deal with daily.
As a disabled person, I’d also love it if people simply understood that what is a convenience for them is a life-changing tool for someone else, and blaming me for your employers exploiting you is another pile of top of the shit load of barriers I already deal with daily.
You left out orders that get reassigned to three drivers who accept and cancel because the tip isn’t big enough, so customer gets cold food and restaurant gets negative reviews.
It’s so bad of a system that in some areas doordash is telling customers to pick up their own food because of wait time/drivers cancelling. So now door dash is causing prices marked up 30%, and you are doing carryout instead of direct ordering at restaurant to begin with.
It’s got to be the laziest generation. Up until now people had to run errands. Now they are too busy watching tiktok to drive 2 mins to get deodorant or takeout.
I was a delivery driver. Most customers were 40+ it’s not a kids these days thing. We don’t have the money to order delivery. We deliver it.
Wtf is wrong with ordering from mobile to go pick it up yourself? It slows nothing down; those orders are added in the same order as those taken in-store. It doesn’t charge more. It doesn’t even really take a job away from anyone since the cashiers at these places aren’t just cashiers. Nobody is getting screwed, unless the app fucks up.
It does actually mess things up because it happens without warning. You already have dozens of other in store orders to deal with and now you have 15 mobile orders every 10 minutes. It takes employee attention away from inside customers and gives them more work to do in general.
Not to mention everything I said in my post about orders being left incomplete because we have no way of contacting the customer despite not having what they want.
Sounds like you’re blaming customers when the business didn’t hire enough staff or implement a good app - eg; it shouldn’t be an option to set the pickup time 5 mins after ordering, and the app should give staff a way to communicate with customers
So the customer walking into an overloaded store that’s already busy af and deciding to stay doesn’t make them part of the problem?
I’ve already stated multiple times in this thread that I know it’s the companies fault I’m understaffed.
But you as a customer know we’re understaffed and still expect us to have your shit ready instantly. You as a customer hear that it’s gonna be an hour wait and decide “that’s fine I’d rather stand around for an hour than deal with the horrible inconvenience of just going somewhere else” and that’s what makes you a big part of the problem.
Y’all wanna keep blaming the companies while taking no accountability of your own actions.
Literally every time I’ve ordered online, it has adjusted the earliest pick up time automatically based on how busy the store is. There have been times I’ve had it tell me the earliest that I can have my food is 1.5 hours out.
If people are placing online orders at your store and expecting it to be ready in 5 minutes, it’s because your website or app isn’t doing what the vast majority of them do - which you need to talk to your manager /owner about
No. It doesn’t. If those mobile orders were real people in the store instead, it would be way worse, cuz now they have to have someone stop cooking to take an order. The way mobile orders drop in, is entirely seamless to the people on the line making the food, with the added bonus of not taking a worker away from the line to work the cash register.
You also do have a way to contact the customer, since the customers info is included in the orders, even those from a 3rd party. At least on the POS systems used in the McDonald’s and Jack in the Box I’ve worked in.
The more I read here, the more is sounds like you’re just mad that your job makes you do work.
I’ve been ordering delivery since the '70s.
You’ve been ordering fast food delivery since the 70’s? You’ve been having restaurants deliver your food for that long?
A few places, like New York City have had delivery from a lot of Resturants for a long time, basically since phones went in.
That’s fair. I live in Ohio and only a select few stores offered delivery outside of pizza. Other than those if you wanted it you had to go get it yourself or do without.
Yes. It’s not like it’s a new thing.
Ah yes I remember getting McDonald’s delivered to my door as a boy. Or the local Mexican restaurant offering delivery for decades. /s
It is a new thing by far. Fast food companies and restaurants barely ever offered delivery until the past decade. And they sure as fuck didn’t have mobile ordering.
Alright, I’m happy for you. We, my family, would regularly order Chinese delivery when I was a kid. And that was many decades ago. It may be new to you, but it’s most definitely not a new thing as hard as that might be to believe. Hell, my parents lived in Japan before I was born and had regular delivery there back in the '60s. I’m sorry you’re upset at reality, but I’m not sure what else to say. I mean, yeah, they didn’t have mobile ordering, but we did have phones back then.
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Yeah… Do you not have Dominos?
Yes because I’m clearly talking about fucking pizza delivery which has been around for decades.
Did you even read what I said?
I’ve had local fast food delivery for years, too. Maybe not McDonald’s, but the locally owned and operated burger joints and other non-national chain fast-food places and most regular restaurants have offered delivery for decades. I see another comment where you sarcastically talk about your local Mexican place delivering; but they probably do.
Hey my fellow lemming
Here’s my take on your edits: they’re pathetic.
Meanwhile, I’ve called places to ask to order food only to be told that I have to order online!
While I appreciated being able to order basically everything as takeout during the pandemic, some places took it too far.
Great use of this thread, I disagree with your opinion but love hearing your viewpoint. I agree there a problem with the whole set up and I don’t know the solution. But I like that i have way more options than 10/15 years ago when i could only pick from chippy, Chinese, curry or pizza for a lazy dinner. (Uk).
I remember the first time I really noticed online ordering. I had gone to Starbucks to get a couple coffees. While waiting in line, and then waiting for my order people continued to pour in and pick up drinks. There were drinks littered all over the pickup counter with no one there to get them. They were making these drinks that would sit there, ahead of the people waiting in the shop. I think that was the last time I ever went into a Starbucks like 7 years ago.
There’s serious problems with the way online ordering/delivery services get implemented. Customers in the building should never lose priority to someone sitting on the couch at home.
If grocery delivery was mass adopted there would be less gas consumed and fewer cars on the road.
I don’t consider grocery to be food service. It’s retail.
OK. Sorry to
crossderail the subject.Well OP is the one who keeps using the word ‘store’, not sure why if they’re exclusively referring to food service where ‘restaurant’ would seem more appropriate.
Because I don’t consider fast food stores restaurants. As someone who’s worked in both they operate completely differently.
I wasn’t meaning to come off harshly. I was just stating my opinion on the difference
If you don’t kill your own meat I think you’re pathetic.
If you hurt animals for the personal pleasure of your taste buds, then I think you’re pathetic.
No different than watching dogs or chickens fight because you enjoy watching it.
Unpopular and I agree it is even more that pathetic. This reality has created a world of delivery slaves and as you said, the product is poor. I never ordered anything from these shitty realities .
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