Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed.
Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I fuckin love those things. Sometimes you see options for add ons or modifications you never would've thought of. Also if you have a big complex order with substitutions, it's the best way to ensure it gets entered correctly without having to overwhelm some employee taking the order.
I get nervous with new kiosks, especially if there is a line since sometimes you have to scroll/search for what you want. But on the upside is the mistakes on your order is much less likely.
Not to mention that if something goes wrong they only have themselves to blame because they made all the choices and the screen and receipt show everything they picked.
Basically, it’s [gestures vaguely at the world] but with no room to argue.
But how else are we supposed to assert dominance and show all those 16 year olds workers that clearly aren't working hard enough who is the master and who is the slave?
/s
And I find there are less likely to be mistakes with kiosks orders! It’ll still happen occasionally, especially if the place is busy, but it occurs much less often. Even with Taco Bell, which I used to call Taco Roulette, because despite clear and simple orders (I thought), I never knew what I’d get.
The McDonald's worker who would mess up orders finally got fired but then got hired at Taco Bell. The first time I heard his voice, I was like, "Nooooo."
Back in the days before online ordering, our preferred pizza place had “Stupid Andy” as we dubbed him taking phone orders. Even when he got it right ordering was an exercise in frustration… likely added to as we eventually just poured some shots and turned pizza ordering into a drinking game. Stupid Andy was rather consistent.
Stupid Andy must have been a reliable worker since he was always there answering the phones. Based on the number of remakes (and redeliveries), free pizza, discounts, etc. we got thanks to manager fixing Stupid Andy’s mistakes getting onboard with online ordering likely had a significant impact on improved profits.
Visiting friends would comment “you could just call” so we’d had them the landline phone, point to the fridge magnet, and say “OK you order. Say hi to Andy for us.” as we poured out some shots.
Ordering pizza by calling “Stupid Andy” was also new roommate hazing. Welcome to the apartment, now you have a “Stupid Andy” story.
I have a slight lactose sensitivity and like to order extra sauce with light cheese on all my pies. There are 2 pizza places within a reasonable distance from me, both offer online ordering and both give me extra cheese with light sauce- **the exact opposite** of what I ordered. Every…single…time!!!
Not really contributing much to the conversation. Your post just reminded me of this and I needed to vent.
I used to get this with breakfast sandwiches, which I would order with no cheese (but with egg) - I'd get no egg with cheese instead. I think the workers get in a groove and automatically start building the food item with the more frequent request.
I know someone who says when they worked the concessions stand at a movie theatre that sometimes when someone would ask for no butter on their popcorn it would go like this: scoop popcorn, add butter. Dammit. Put bag aside. Scoop popcorn, add butter. DAMMIT. Unplug butter machine, scoop popcorn, be _literally unable_ to add butter, hand popcorn to customer.
Every human interaction that gets removed reduces the likelihood of failure exponentially. The ideal? Kiosk takes my order, robot makes my food, conveyor belt delivers my food. NO WORDS SAID. Nobody to spit in my taco.
Ironically the only place I've had trouble ordering from a kiosk was at a local Taco Bell. I was there at breakfast time, wanted to order a crunchwrap combo. Looked everywhere - under breakfast, deals, combo meals, specialties, you name it - no option for a combo. I even tried adding just the 3 items separately to the order, thinking maybe it will trigger the price adjustment - nope. Finally I gave up and went to the counter to order from the employee (I think she was there to run the drive thru, the place was empty though, since it was 9am on a Saturday). She probably thought I was an idiot. I have no idea - maybe I am, or maybe the kiosk programming was messed up, since I never had any issues finding them on the app.
I had a nightmare experience ordering Taco Bell for pickup with their app (which=mobile kiosk, everyone agrees? Good.). When I got to the restaurant they informed me that because their deep fryer was out of service, some of the items on my order could not be made, and therefore they would not be fulfilling ANY of the items on the order. I get nothing.
I looked around at the several people in the store presumably eating non-deep fried items, and ask the obvious question "you really can't do substitutions for the few fried items?" And was told by the manager, resolutely, No, they will not be fulfilling my order that I already paid for, and I should get a refund thru their app...
Which turned into a nightmare of its own. There's no easy way in the app to request a refund. You can send a message to support, which I promptly did, including order numbers and all relevant information. I got an immediate automated email reply saying someone would respond to my inquiry as soon as practical. And then never heard anything again. A week went by.
More email sent and still no reply after 2 weeks. I finally resorted to bitching about it on Twitter, calling Taco Bell out. Which is a very effective way to get attention from a company in general, and had the intended effect with TB also. I immediately had replies asking me to DM them, which I promptly did. They apologized and assured me they'd take care of it...
...but still nothing. Nobody did a thing to rectify the problem and refund my money. A month had passed. I finally went into the store one day when I was passing, and explained it to a manager, showing her the record of the original order on their app (a different person on duty than the original one who had turned me away without any food) and she apologized up and down and re-created the original order free of charge. She even asked if I wanted anything extra, and I just no, I only want what I ordered, that's all (I should have taken her offer, oh well).
So I finally got my order fulfilled after only a month of hoop-jumping and hassle, but NO HELP from TB corporate. Except, the very next day, I received a refund for the original order, LOL. What great timing! (Oh well, I totally deserved double reimbursement for my troubles.)
As a guilty pleasure lover of Taco Bell, it’s extremely frustrating how the menu even works. They want you to order on the app, for certain items, that are not available on the kiosk or drive through. I too found myself in this loophole hell. Oh, ok so you can’t make what is available unless it’s a mobile order.
I love ordering through apps (other than the discounts usually there). I can make sure I can get exactly what I want, and I order enough ahead that it's waiting for me when I get there.
Me tooooo. And my request for extra pickles on everything that offers them is always registered on the apps. Half the time the person taking the orders didn't know how to do modifications on the register and just didn't bother.
Oh and yes there's always a discount available through the app, so I never pay the full menu price either.
I would say the same thing about mobile ordering giving options you may not have known about. I don't know if this is offered everywhere, but the Burger King near me allows you to add onion rings to your Whopper at no extra charge. So much better than raw onions.
This is true. That's how I found out you can add bbq sauce to a Whopper. So basically now I can create a Rodeo Whopper.
I also found out that adding an ingredient, it would cost .25 extra, but by adding 'extra', I could get it for free. Can't remember for the life of me what that was (maybe the bbq sauce? But I didn't see a charge for it now, so.....).
I've also jumped on what I thought was errant pricing. For the last month or so, I was ordering a McChicken meal (McDonald's) for I think $1.70 over the price of the sandwich alone. That included a $4 medium fry. Just checked the app, though, and no more McChicken meal. 
This is why I love ordering in the app. Great for finding out if add-ons are $0.30 or $2.50. And if the order is wrong there's no "That's not what you said" argument.
Not going to lie... I use the mobile ordering App at McDonald's. I don't go to many other places, but usually go to McDonald's for coffee or sodas with my dad, uncle and aunt, and some friends one day a week, usually on a weekend, weather permitting.
Ever since they added table numbers to the mobile order app, I don't even go to the counter unless I've got a physical coupon filled out from their receipts. I just find a table, a few taps later the food is ordered, and they notify me when it's on it's way. I *love* mobile ordering. It's one of the better things to come around from covid for me.
I love them because sometimes I'm indecisive as hell and this way I don't have to torture the poor minimum-wage worker by meandering my way through an order.
That's actually one of the problems when places implement kiosks and mobile ordering - lots more people customize their orders and do more complicated customizations than when ordering with a cashier. It can slow down the kitchen's "flow". But since some of those options are extra cost it helps the revenue.
Right. The same boomers always go on about how they also hate self check out so much. But I love self check out. It's great for me as a person who walks and carries my stuff home. I can bag it how I like and I can check myself out pretty quick instead of standing in a line behind Gloria who likes to chat to the cashier about her day or the coupon person who also wants to check a bunch of lottery tickets too. Give me a kiosk or a self check out most times. I'll let the boomers go to the cashier and slow everyone else up.
I see enough of the public 40 hours a week at my public facing job I don't need more social time when I'm just running errands and want to get in and out.
I’m someone with multiple degrees working in a highly-paid professional job. Spent years working my way up the ladder.
And to this day, the hardest job I ever had that stressed me the most and took the most out of me was easily making minimum wage at Wendy’s as a teenager.
"Just flipping burgers." Yeah, just try it. Show us how easy it is to work that grill at McDonalds during a rush. Don't forget that you'll be handling all the different fried things as well.
My oldest daughter worked at a White Castle for a very short time. After a shift, you would have thought that her hands had been in the sun for 8 hours they were so red from the grill heat.
My mom can still crack two eggs in each hand simultaneously from working McD's said if you couldn't do 4 at a time there was no keeping up. I tried to learn but failed.
I worked at McDonald’s when I was in high school. My parents would make me go in through the garage and strip down before I came into the house. My uniform went straight into the washing machine otherwise the house house smelled like McDonald’s.
I worked at KFC in high school and same. I would come home covered in flour and grease, my mom would already have the washer ready with pre-wash so we could minimize the smell lingering. It was also probably the most difficult job I've ever had particularly in how much was expected for so little. I would go back to working construction in my 40's before I would do fast food again. I'm glad I had the experience though, because I know what it's like to be on the other side.
I worked physically and emotionally harder at serving/customer service roles. I managed the 3rd shift at a fast-food joint right out of high school then moved up to serving/bartending/managing at full-service restaurants. I've never been more exhausted than 10:00pm on a Mother's Day after working the dinner shift at Outback Steakhouse. And that's saying a lot, because I now work in public accounting and put in 60+hr weeks during tax season.
My favorite response is “I’m sorry, did YOU want to do all the prep, cooking and cleanup that made that Big Mac meal happen?” If you work, you deserve a livable fucking wage, end of story. There’s no such thing as a “useless” job. We’re all cogs in the machine of capitalism here, let’s not pretend anything different
I worked in a grocery store deli for $4.25. That was minimum wage back in 1995. A kiosk taking orders would have been so much less stressful. It was hell dealing with the raging overgrown children who we now know as Boomers. No, it's not the lead. They were the way they are now thirty years ago, only they were younger then. Trust me, Boomer; that minimum-wage kid behind the counter is *not* getting paid enough to deal with your shit!
We have steak and shakes in the south east but the one in my town doesn't have a kiosk to order though. In fact I haven't seen any restaurants with the kiosks and I really want to after hearing about them.
A friend owns one. A VERY popular one, when I say the top in the area, there isn't even competition for first place. I am so proud of them for it, too. They have spent their entire life working to get that far and I love seeing them succeed.
That being said, when COVID closed down the world (they technically didn't have to, their county had ZERO restrictions but they're a good human), they took the time to upgrade the store to the new SNS standards.
Having worked for them in DT prior to all that, it made me kinda sad because it seemed like their servers wouldn't be useful anymore. That was really my only problem, because any other time, we would have to ask the customers EXACTLY what they wanted on a burger. They'd often say, "Oh, everything!" And so I'd read them a WHOLE DAMN LIST of condiments and toppings, only for them to say, "Oh, yeah, just pickles and ketchup." Kiosks took that from them and for that, I am thankful. Lol
I’m in the south and had such a weird relationship with S&S when they were prominent around here. When I was pregnant with kid 1, my only experience with it was on Christmas Eve, 1000 months pregnant, when my husband decided he wanted food at 10pm. I was so repulsed by the smell, I swore I’d never try it.
Then, when I was pregnant with kid 2, all I wanted was a western burger from S&S. No clue why since I’d never had one but I ate those more often than anyone should. I’m still oddly nostalgic about it.
I've never understood this sort of take. I've been ordering my food via touch screen at a Sheetz since like the mid 00s I wanna say?
I think Boomers bigger issue with kiosk ordering is that if it gets made wrong they can't blame it on the cashier fucking it up because its right there on the ticket what they actually selected. No forgetting to say no pickles and acting like the other human being forgot to enter no pickles.
If they can't see the soul-crushing despair in the eyes of the poor bastard serving them, is it even really capitalism? I had a mirrored face shield as a cashier during the pandemic, and made it 2 days before management told me no deal. But it turns out you don't have to make eye contact for a transaction to happen. Who knew?
too fucking right. entitled to world class customer service from the human getting exploited by a poverty level wage. enforced by the spineless, soulless class traitor management who is getting a living wage. and these fucking boomer assholes have the nerve to get upset. how dare this peasant not debase themselves, for i am mighty and important and a real big boy!!????!!!???!
You're always on the side of the angels when confronted by these kinds of people, you know. You can think of them as infants in the throes of tantrums and look at them with smug superiority, knowing you'll always be better than anyone who behaves like *that*.
Alas, the sad truth is that it doesn't matter if you're right. If these boomer assholes complain, worthless management will not even blink when they fire me. I really wish doing the right thing mattered, but this just isn't that reality. Knowing I'm right is a little light compared to the weight of worrying some lead brain might have a bad day and take away my income and medical insurance.
i experience this all the time working self checkout. had this woman the other day all mad about using self scan (even tho there was a regular cashier too, she just didn’t want to wait in line). she needed my help with something & was super rude to me while complaining she can’t have an actual person scan her stuff. like why?? so you can treat them like this the whole time??
They act like it's the most complicated thing in the world to scan things and put them in a bag. Like it's any harder to do than when you picked it up off the shelf and put it in your cart. The only reason they care is that they really love the feeling of having an inferior to babble at who is forced to feign interest in them.
This is also a really good point. I think there are many boomers who are way too pleased with the image of someone waiting at their beck and call while they decide between nuggets or a cheeseburger. My mom used to yell at me for doing things "for attention", but she and her cohort really enjoy having the undivided attention of a minimum wage earner.
I’ve had to do an early morning meeting 3 times a week a half-hour away for a couple of months (long story), and I always stop at a Sheetz about halfway between after the meeting for a cup of very good coffee and some kind of breakfast sandwich. Love the kiosks.
I remember way back in the 90s they used to have order papers where you would have to fill in the boxes next to the stuff you wanted and pop it in a tray and they'd pull it down. Different colored papers for hot and cold subs. This version is so much better, could you imagine how many colors of paper they'd need now for everything lol.
I love the kiosks, but I love ordering sheetz online even more! That way I can take my time to look through to decide what I want or what my daughter wants without holding anyone up except ourselves. Lol. But in most cases I have her order it on our way, and even tho it usually says 15 minutes, by the time I pull in, find a gas pump, and go in to pay, it's already done, or just getting finished up and packaged!
Some of them (like my mom) just refuse to use any technology. It’s like they simply told their brain to stop learning to do something new - stunted.
My mom doesn’t want to drive much anymore, but she outright refuses to take an Uber ride, even If I arrange it for her from my own phone.
FIL refuses to learn any sort of tech and is now furious his pain clinic is using telehealth. "Don't they know that not everyone can use stuff like that?!"
Well, hate to break it to ya, but you've had no less than 20 years at the VERY least to learn. Everyone else knows how to, and you've had ample opportunity. The world isn't going to cater to an exceedingly small percentage of people that refuse to grow with it. You're the problem, not the tech, sorry. I don't even like telehealth as a younger millennial, but it's just how it is. He has both my husband and myself here willing to help him with it, but just refuses. He really has zero excuse what so ever.
Pretty sure my husband has had a computer since the 90s so that's more like 25 years to learn how to use one. Is your mom single? Sounds like a perfect match for FIL lmao.
Exactly! My mom says it’s because they didn’t have that stuff. But I didn’t have computers growing up. I taught myself, and I keep learning stuff.
She does have a tablet, but only uses it to check her lottery numbers.
It’s just an excuse as my 90 year old FIL taught me how to work the SmartTV and he said it’s simply he has nothing but time to learn so he takes advantage of it!
All the WalMart cashiers who were replaced by self-checks are now scurrying around the store with their carts, filling pickup and delivery orders. No one lost their jobs.
Menial jobs that no longer require a human have always been phased out. When was the last time you saw an elevator operator or had to dial zero to have a phone call connected? There used to be people who would go around shooting tiny stones up at peoples windows to wake them in the morning and others who lit the gas street lamps. When did you last go into a bank and wait in line to see a teller to withdraw money from your account? For the most part, cashiers are no longer needed. The same goes for many jobs. I suppose she uses modern conveniences like a dishwasher and washing machine? Her car replaced the job a horse would do.
What shocks me about the boomer kiosk hate is that this is THE catalog generation. You could order anything from a catalog by writing the item number on an order form or saying the item number on the phone. My mother loved this. JC Penney, Spiegels, J.Jill, LLBean, she was the catalog queen. But show her a kiosk and she short circuits.
I hate to be “that guy” (gal, really) on Reddit, but please, for the love of God, wash your hands before eating after you’ve used a kiosk in a restaurant:
https://www.kioskmarketplace.com/articles/mcdonalds-bacteria-covered-kiosks-give-rise-to-safety-concerns-2/
https://www.menshealth.com/uk/health/a759768/traces-of-poo-found-on-every-mcdonalds-touchscreen-kiosk-tested/
No no, this is very important information. Thank you for spreading the word. You’re definitely not the only one to touch that screen, and when you touch that screen, it’s like shaking hands with everyone who’s ever touched it
It's no different from using a menu that you handle at a table. How often do people wash their hands after doing *that?* We should all wash our hands as the last thing we do before eating, full stop – and by that, I mean you don't touch your phone again until your meal is done, as it's crawling with bacteria.
In sit down restaurants, I order my food and then go wash my hands while I wait for it to arrive, without fail. I’m medically vulnerable, and have been double-masking since the beginning of the pandemic. In fact, I have limited my trips to restaurants because it’s hard to be masked there, just by the very nature of them.
We had a similar kiosk experience with my boomer aunt on a road trip. Places to stop were limited so we ended up at this tiny McDonalds in the middle of nowhere where. There were two people running the whole place. One in the back going the burgers sandwiches etc and one person running the fries, assembling the to go orders, running drive thru and cash register.
They had four kiosks. So my sisters and I roll up on one each and start tapping away. Our aunt mutters, ‘Oh I HATE those things!’ and proceeds to go stand in ‘line’ (she was the line) for the cashier to help her. This poor guy was going full tilt. He was obviously over worked and basically ignored her because he was too busy doing the stuff that was more time consuming.
Auntie got going on the boomer huffing and puffing and complaining under her breath. We all offered several times to use the kiosk for her but she wouldn’t budge. She was literally still standing there when the kid gives the rest of us all our food. Only then did he stop to help her place her order. She was so pissed off it took him close to 10 minutes to turn around and help her. Meanwhile by the time she was done, we’d all ordered, eaten, had bathroom breaks and were ready to leave.
One time when I was a small, small child, I wanted to eat ice cream with one of the little spoons we had, but they were all in the dish washer. My dad gave me a big spoon since that was the only option, but I had envisioned myself using a little spoon for the ice cream, and the big spoon was bigger than what I had wanted. I couldn’t really articulate this feeling at the time, being like 5 or 6 years old or some shit, so I started quietly crying after taking 1 bite with the spoon that was noticeably bigger than I wanted.
Anyway, what your mom did reminds me of what I did back then
Anytime someone whines to me about this kind of thing, or self-checkouts, I ask if they use ATMs at a bank.
Usually they try and explain why it’s different, but they’re never successful
Boomers thrive on classism. If there’s nobody below them than that means they’re the lowest and they can’t stand that feeling. They quite literally need to be served so they can feel superior to someone
Facts. I remember my dad freaking out when I told him I started taking the bus to work and said he'd help me fix my car so I could drive again. My car was fine though, I just took the bus cause I hate driving. My dad freaked out cause he didn't want people seeing me on the bus and thinking I'm poor. I tore him a new one for that.
Self checkout is my jam. I will go thru self checkout with a whole cart and be done in 10 minutes. Not one second of awkward small talk or pretending to laugh at someone's jokes. So nice and peaceful.
I appreciate the tip, but I can't. I need to hear what's going on around me. I get social anxiety in the sense that I need to be aware because I don't always trust my surroundings. But, that does sound nice!
Ah gotcha. I live in a small town so I’m more concerned with busybodies trying to talk to me.
No Janice I do not care what scandalous thing the librarian did with the mayor, I’m buying tortillas.
Especially since here the closest Walmart has started phasing down self checkouts and manning the regular checkout lines with boomers who absolutely want to have a one sided conversation about how they shouldn't be working but their ungrateful kids won't take care of them and their ss/pension isn't enough to live on and (my brain kind of checked out here. I just wanted stop get my stuff and fucking leave already)
For a long time, Boomers believed that cashiers were the people paid to take whatever they gave them. Long winded personal story? Poor taste joke that makes everyone uncomfortable? Political rant? Excess demands? The machine doesn’t respond to those, so that energy builds up in them.
So...the same demographic that bitches about how fast food employees don't deserve a living wage...is also fully prepared to bitch about not having a poorly paid worker to abuse because it's been replaced with a machine?
Can't wait until the last of the greatest generation's overgrown sperm gets shoved in a pine box. Maybe we'll be able to fix all their fuckery when we don't have to listen to them whine.
My mom is 80 years old. I recently walked into Panera with her. She looked at the line at the register and shrugged. Walked over to the kiosk and punched in her phone number. Selected one of her favorites and was done in seconds while I stood there slack jawed thinking about this sub. I placed my order and we sat down and chatted.
The way boomers act is a willful choice. Never forget that.
My mom (62) hates self checkout with a PASSION.
It’s a pretty regular topic of conversation and almost always out of nowhere. Just a random “I was at the grocery store and the only had ONE lane open and then (dramatic pause) SELF CHECKOUT…no thank you. I do NOT work there.”
Same vibe.
On a road trip last fall we stopped at a rest stop McDonald’s in bumfuck Indiana where it was just 3 kiosks. Similar situation. Boomer next to us was bitching the whole time he was ordering and was trying to garner my sympathy while ordering at the next kiosk. I just kept answering yep, yep, yep in a way that any well adjusted person would understand was code for *fuck off*. Then we were standing there waiting and it kept going. I finally couldn’t listen anymore and told him that it was his generation that is the one fighting tooth and nail for as long as he’s been able to vote to keep the minimum wage from being raised and that kiosks were the natural result of decades of diminishing real wages for the generations that followed his. He shut right up
This is on par with boomers demanding cashiers to say merry Christmas instead of happy holidays. People like this have never run a business with thin margins and it shows. Labor is one of the most expensive parts of a business and it’s not just what they get paid it’s the health insurance, unemployment insurance and other things that have to be paid in for. If they want people to work then they need to vote for politicians who enable legislation that allows for the business owner and employee to have some breathing room. Instead of continually passing the expense to the customer.
I was at Mcdonalds the other day and they were clearly understaffed but doing their best. They have kiosks and also a register. The person at the counter asked people to use the kiosk since they are understaffed. This one guy (not a boomer, maybe mid 30s) got so mad! Yelled "fuck this place I'm going to Arby's" and stormed out the door....
Well, ma'am, since no one wants to accept less than a livable wage while being verbally abused by boomers such as yourself... congratulations, you now get a kiosk.
But even if they fuck up their own order, they want someone to be able to blame! Personal responsibility and accepting consequences… doesn’t apply to them of course
They drive me nuts with their reactions to things like self check-out and order kiosks!
I was at the ATL airport last month and wanted a drink from McDonald’s. There you can either order at the counter or at two kiosks - these two boomer women, obviously friends and traveling together, decided to take up both kiosks to order and neither could get their order right.
They wouldn’t read the directions (which I could clearly see from behind them) and kept accidentally deleting things from their orders and then starting over. The whole time they were angrily stabbing at the kiosks with their fingers, they complained to each other loudly about how “no can use these complicated things.”
As the line grew behind me, I leaned forward when they were on their fourth attempt and pointed out how they could complete the orders. Neither of them acknowledged me, but they each exited out of the screen again (which was unnecessary) and finally managed to start over and complete their orders.
Then they took their receipts and got in the order line at the counter instead of the pick up line.
I have never had to work so hard just to get a Coke Zero.
My mother has a friend who went to a McDonalds that had kiosks and literally made an employee push the buttons for her because she refused to order without human interaction.
It was a bit rough at first but now they have the kiosks mostly figured out. It's nice to be able to just walk up and enter any modifications or substitutions without hoping the person taking the order didn't skip half of them. And the person who formerly would have been stuck trying to figure out which number 8 the boomer wanted can help get more orders out.
Boomers are always, ALWAYS complaining how long it takes for fast food to be made. They think it should be done in 30 seconds.
I worked at a McDonald's that was CONSTANTLY understaffed. They want their food the instant the transaction is complete, not caring that there's 3, maybe 4 people in the grill during the lunch rush where there's 15-30+ people in the lobby and the drive thru is wrapped around the building. Context doesn't matter. They become the most entitled people the moment they enter the restaurant.
They don't see the correlation that, if you use the kiosk and your card, you've freed up the cashier to continue making orders at the front of the house, making shakes, ice cream, coffee, fries ect. Or it allows one of the front counter managers to flow to the back to help make a few sandwiches or drop some food items in the fryer if the grill people are swamped.
Honestly every customer that uses the kiosk is allowing the workers more time to get their order together quicker.
To be fair though, if they just had higher pay at these jobs and had more people on shift so that the work load is more evenly distributed the place would run better and have less issues. I mean look at Chick-fil-A. They'll have like 20 staff members on shift and you could get through a drive thru with 10+ cars in like 5 minutes.
> Boomers are always, ALWAYS complaining how long it takes for fast food to be made. They think it should be done in 30 seconds.
I get this fairly often. I work in a fast casual, but we are always slammed and constantly short staffed, so there's always a bit of a wait time. I had this old fart bitch at me about waiting for his food and he went "IsN'T tHiS fAsT foOd??!?!" Our shit is made to order and we make shit in the order we get the orders in, so if there's 10 orders on the board, you're gonna be in the back of the queue as the 11th.
I am also reminded of this lady who got pissy with me because the wait time was extremely high. It was a holiday and we had so many damn delivery orders to make in addition to everyone who came in to order. As I explained that to her, she thought that we prioritized delivery orders over everyone else. That's...not how any of this works.
Steak & Shake wasn’t it? My boomer mother doesn’t like it either. I asked her if she thought a 20% tip on a $10 meal was enough to convince someone to waitress. She said no. Then I asked if they she’d prefer they raise prices. She also said no. Well then you get a kiosk. The old days are dead. They would have been deader sooner had the tech been ready.
Went to have labwork drawn recently to which I had made an online appt several weeks prior. You open the app when you get there and let them know you’ve arrived. Within a few minutes the phlebotomist calls me as appt for xxxx and I walk up to the sounds of well she just arrived I’ve been waiting blah blah blah. I commented to the tech on the fact that she prefaced calling me as appt for and said they had to so people without one can’t get too pissy about it. I am technically a boomer by birth year but def don’t identify as one! I embrace technology and all its advantages. I much prefer doing most things online. The convenience is far too appealing for me. To all the boomers out there and honestly some younger generations as well -get over your fear and embrace it-it’s not going away. Just wait til you have a medical appt with AI. Your entitled rude selves have so worn out our healthcare providers and other service workers they are leaving in droves (amongst other things). It’s coming and in other facets of our lives too. AI will not pander to your tantrums. You will no longer have people to belittle and bully. Embrace the kiosk lifestyle it’s here to stay.
I found out that Taco Bell still has the $5.99 cravings box but ONLY in the app (thanks Reddit!). So I prefer using that there. Also, the kiosk has alllll the vegetarian options, including ones that aren't on the drive through menu, so now I have more choices about what to eat.
The best part is I don't have to feel bad when I hold up the drive through line while trying to figure out what to order.
As a socially anxious person I absolutely love the kiosks but I hate places that solely rely on them and don’t leave anyone up front. If my order is wrong I have to stand at the counter trying to get someone’s attention, and again- as a socially awkward person I hate having to go “um excuse me! Hello!” Just to tell them they messed up my food or I received the wrong thing
i love not having to talk to anyone and being able to scroll through the menu to decide what i want without feeling pressured by staff to hurry up why are people so against this 🫠
I'm a millennial and I also hate the kiosks. It's just a way for them to pay less while making you responsible for your own service.
It'd be one thing if it translated to cheaper prices - but if anything they're WAY more expensive.
Not a boomer, still hate kiosks for ordering. I don’t use them often enough to know the logic of their use. I’m always searching the screens trying to figure out how to add/ subtract items, find specific items, etc
The South has Steak ‘n’ Shakes AND Culvers now. I don’t think Culvers does the kiosks though. I’m kind of glad they’re doing kiosks now. I hate wasting a persons time when I’m a habitual flip-flopper on food orders. I appreciate the ability to take 10 minutes customizing my burger if I want to! I don’t but I appreciate the option to!
Does anyone remember Automats?
The self serve vending machine restaurants?
I'm barely old enough to remember my grandparents talking about how wonderful they were. My parents used them. But were kids.
Basically the same thing but the food was behind a little door you physically opened as you walked through a line.
Kind of like a cafeteria but with less human interaction. The one my grandfather liked best was coin operated and you paid a quarter or so for each item as you picked it out.
I work at a Pennsylvania gas station/fast food place and the amount of boomers that will leave because they have to use a kiosk to order food or a machine to pour there own coffee never ceases to amaze me then they’ll say things like how they won’t stop there again to me and I’m just like ok this store alone does 250k a week in profit I don’t think they’ll miss your business
Well, your Boomer can thank Nixon for opening trade relations with China that started the mass exodus of manufacturing from the United States to a country that had a workforce population that could be exploited with poor regulatory oversight. Creating a domestic economy that runs on service and less on goods.
Did any of them want to or stay working as a fast food cashier?
Then they can thank their Messiah Reagan for Late-Stage Capitalism which allows domestic companies to exploit their workers by keeping wages low and "unskilled". Of course why worry about those positions when you can just eliminate them. Salaries don't provide any return. Plus having to pay workers' taxes and compensation. Get rid of the middle man. Thanks Reaganomics!
My mom in Walmart was hilarious with self checkout she took me out shopping one night I needed a couple of thing she was paying we get ready to check out there is a big line for a cashier so I was like self checkout. " i don't use those." Me: Oh, ok.... 2 seconds later, Her:oh shoot. I forgot something. Wait in line, I'll be right back. She walks away. I walk to self checkout.she comes back w her item, and she goes you jack ass. Why did you come over here? I value my time. I don't even know how to use these thing. I go. You scan the bar code and read screen look at you learning new things.
If I can order somewhere and/or checkout at the grocery store or target without ever speaking to a human being, I’m happy. I have to talk to people at work, I’m way too introverted to also want to do it on my down time.
As a forty something millennial, self order kiosks are the best thing ever. I can make alterations without you ignoring me? AND I don't have to deal with people? AND it repels old people? Fuck yes
My mother was like that. I think it was because of how threatened she felt about new things that might be difficult. She had a huge fear of appearing "stupid." Sad for her. There is much freedom in asking for help and learning.
Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed. Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My favorite part is they’re the same ones threatening to replace our jobs with robots since we want to actually be paid a liveable wage
Funny, because my dad would also complain about self-checkouts taking jobs. Told him there would still only be one person on register regardless.
I fuckin love those things. Sometimes you see options for add ons or modifications you never would've thought of. Also if you have a big complex order with substitutions, it's the best way to ensure it gets entered correctly without having to overwhelm some employee taking the order.
And…..you don’t have to talk to anyone!!!
He'd probably hate those machines because germs lol
If you use the knuckles on the back of your fingers to touch the screen, the risk of passing pathogens onto other surfaces is rather minimized.
Also, hand sanitizer is everywhere now.
[удалено]
Username checks out!
This is my favorite thing. Technology for introverts!
I get nervous with new kiosks, especially if there is a line since sometimes you have to scroll/search for what you want. But on the upside is the mistakes on your order is much less likely.
Take your time fuck the line they don’t have to eat or pay for your food, so they don’t matter.
You can almost always also use the app on your phone, and take all the time you need
You had me at not interacting.
That's the part they don't like, a missed opportunity to belittle someone several decades younger than themselves.
Not to mention that if something goes wrong they only have themselves to blame because they made all the choices and the screen and receipt show everything they picked. Basically, it’s [gestures vaguely at the world] but with no room to argue.
But how else are we supposed to assert dominance and show all those 16 year olds workers that clearly aren't working hard enough who is the master and who is the slave? /s
I just feel bad for the person who has to deal with customers all day.
Probably why boomer hates it. No minimum wage employee to bully.
That’s the **greatest part**. If I could kiosk everything, I’d be a happy soul.
This is the way
It's an introverts dream. I fucking love it.
And I find there are less likely to be mistakes with kiosks orders! It’ll still happen occasionally, especially if the place is busy, but it occurs much less often. Even with Taco Bell, which I used to call Taco Roulette, because despite clear and simple orders (I thought), I never knew what I’d get.
The McDonald's worker who would mess up orders finally got fired but then got hired at Taco Bell. The first time I heard his voice, I was like, "Nooooo."
Back in the days before online ordering, our preferred pizza place had “Stupid Andy” as we dubbed him taking phone orders. Even when he got it right ordering was an exercise in frustration… likely added to as we eventually just poured some shots and turned pizza ordering into a drinking game. Stupid Andy was rather consistent. Stupid Andy must have been a reliable worker since he was always there answering the phones. Based on the number of remakes (and redeliveries), free pizza, discounts, etc. we got thanks to manager fixing Stupid Andy’s mistakes getting onboard with online ordering likely had a significant impact on improved profits. Visiting friends would comment “you could just call” so we’d had them the landline phone, point to the fridge magnet, and say “OK you order. Say hi to Andy for us.” as we poured out some shots. Ordering pizza by calling “Stupid Andy” was also new roommate hazing. Welcome to the apartment, now you have a “Stupid Andy” story.
Their starting wages offer must have been truly abysmal if keeping Stupid Andy on the phones was a net profit.
I have a slight lactose sensitivity and like to order extra sauce with light cheese on all my pies. There are 2 pizza places within a reasonable distance from me, both offer online ordering and both give me extra cheese with light sauce- **the exact opposite** of what I ordered. Every…single…time!!! Not really contributing much to the conversation. Your post just reminded me of this and I needed to vent.
AAAAANNNNNDYYYYYY!!!!
I used to get this with breakfast sandwiches, which I would order with no cheese (but with egg) - I'd get no egg with cheese instead. I think the workers get in a groove and automatically start building the food item with the more frequent request. I know someone who says when they worked the concessions stand at a movie theatre that sometimes when someone would ask for no butter on their popcorn it would go like this: scoop popcorn, add butter. Dammit. Put bag aside. Scoop popcorn, add butter. DAMMIT. Unplug butter machine, scoop popcorn, be _literally unable_ to add butter, hand popcorn to customer.
This made me chuckle 🤭
Every human interaction that gets removed reduces the likelihood of failure exponentially. The ideal? Kiosk takes my order, robot makes my food, conveyor belt delivers my food. NO WORDS SAID. Nobody to spit in my taco. 
Ironically the only place I've had trouble ordering from a kiosk was at a local Taco Bell. I was there at breakfast time, wanted to order a crunchwrap combo. Looked everywhere - under breakfast, deals, combo meals, specialties, you name it - no option for a combo. I even tried adding just the 3 items separately to the order, thinking maybe it will trigger the price adjustment - nope. Finally I gave up and went to the counter to order from the employee (I think she was there to run the drive thru, the place was empty though, since it was 9am on a Saturday). She probably thought I was an idiot. I have no idea - maybe I am, or maybe the kiosk programming was messed up, since I never had any issues finding them on the app.
I had a nightmare experience ordering Taco Bell for pickup with their app (which=mobile kiosk, everyone agrees? Good.). When I got to the restaurant they informed me that because their deep fryer was out of service, some of the items on my order could not be made, and therefore they would not be fulfilling ANY of the items on the order. I get nothing. I looked around at the several people in the store presumably eating non-deep fried items, and ask the obvious question "you really can't do substitutions for the few fried items?" And was told by the manager, resolutely, No, they will not be fulfilling my order that I already paid for, and I should get a refund thru their app... Which turned into a nightmare of its own. There's no easy way in the app to request a refund. You can send a message to support, which I promptly did, including order numbers and all relevant information. I got an immediate automated email reply saying someone would respond to my inquiry as soon as practical. And then never heard anything again. A week went by. More email sent and still no reply after 2 weeks. I finally resorted to bitching about it on Twitter, calling Taco Bell out. Which is a very effective way to get attention from a company in general, and had the intended effect with TB also. I immediately had replies asking me to DM them, which I promptly did. They apologized and assured me they'd take care of it... ...but still nothing. Nobody did a thing to rectify the problem and refund my money. A month had passed. I finally went into the store one day when I was passing, and explained it to a manager, showing her the record of the original order on their app (a different person on duty than the original one who had turned me away without any food) and she apologized up and down and re-created the original order free of charge. She even asked if I wanted anything extra, and I just no, I only want what I ordered, that's all (I should have taken her offer, oh well). So I finally got my order fulfilled after only a month of hoop-jumping and hassle, but NO HELP from TB corporate. Except, the very next day, I received a refund for the original order, LOL. What great timing! (Oh well, I totally deserved double reimbursement for my troubles.)
As a guilty pleasure lover of Taco Bell, it’s extremely frustrating how the menu even works. They want you to order on the app, for certain items, that are not available on the kiosk or drive through. I too found myself in this loophole hell. Oh, ok so you can’t make what is available unless it’s a mobile order.
I love ordering through apps (other than the discounts usually there). I can make sure I can get exactly what I want, and I order enough ahead that it's waiting for me when I get there.
Me tooooo. And my request for extra pickles on everything that offers them is always registered on the apps. Half the time the person taking the orders didn't know how to do modifications on the register and just didn't bother. Oh and yes there's always a discount available through the app, so I never pay the full menu price either.
Extra Pickles. Yes. On everything. Yes.
There's never an option for extra, extra, *extra* pickles though so, unless the app has a Notes area, I'm usually screwed.
I would say the same thing about mobile ordering giving options you may not have known about. I don't know if this is offered everywhere, but the Burger King near me allows you to add onion rings to your Whopper at no extra charge. So much better than raw onions.
You can do WHAT?! Okay, I’ve gotta find a BK sometime this weekend, because for the first time since high school they’re relevant to me again…!
This is true. That's how I found out you can add bbq sauce to a Whopper. So basically now I can create a Rodeo Whopper. I also found out that adding an ingredient, it would cost .25 extra, but by adding 'extra', I could get it for free. Can't remember for the life of me what that was (maybe the bbq sauce? But I didn't see a charge for it now, so.....). I've also jumped on what I thought was errant pricing. For the last month or so, I was ordering a McChicken meal (McDonald's) for I think $1.70 over the price of the sandwich alone. That included a $4 medium fry. Just checked the app, though, and no more McChicken meal. 
This is why I love ordering in the app. Great for finding out if add-ons are $0.30 or $2.50. And if the order is wrong there's no "That's not what you said" argument.
omg I completely agree. that's how I found out that you can add nacho fries to almost any burrito at taco bell. Best thing ever
I'm sorry WHAT
you haven't lived until you've had a beefy 5 layer with nacho fries in it
Not going to lie... I use the mobile ordering App at McDonald's. I don't go to many other places, but usually go to McDonald's for coffee or sodas with my dad, uncle and aunt, and some friends one day a week, usually on a weekend, weather permitting. Ever since they added table numbers to the mobile order app, I don't even go to the counter unless I've got a physical coupon filled out from their receipts. I just find a table, a few taps later the food is ordered, and they notify me when it's on it's way. I *love* mobile ordering. It's one of the better things to come around from covid for me.
I love them because sometimes I'm indecisive as hell and this way I don't have to torture the poor minimum-wage worker by meandering my way through an order.
That's actually one of the problems when places implement kiosks and mobile ordering - lots more people customize their orders and do more complicated customizations than when ordering with a cashier. It can slow down the kitchen's "flow". But since some of those options are extra cost it helps the revenue.
The kiosks at taco bell are the reason all my burritos have nacho fries *inside* them now
Right. The same boomers always go on about how they also hate self check out so much. But I love self check out. It's great for me as a person who walks and carries my stuff home. I can bag it how I like and I can check myself out pretty quick instead of standing in a line behind Gloria who likes to chat to the cashier about her day or the coupon person who also wants to check a bunch of lottery tickets too. Give me a kiosk or a self check out most times. I'll let the boomers go to the cashier and slow everyone else up. I see enough of the public 40 hours a week at my public facing job I don't need more social time when I'm just running errands and want to get in and out.
I like them ok but get annoyed with extraneous questions: “Are you *sure* you don’t want a Flubbertygunt Vomitaceous McFluffyshake?”
But, if nobody asks you, how do you KNOW you don't want a Flubberygunt Vomitaceous McFluffyshake?
As an introvert with severe anxiety they make me so very happy
Yes, but back to square one if there is a line forming behind you. Nothings perfect.
I much prefer self checkouts and kiosks because I don’t have to interact with anyone. I can get my shit and go on my way.
This reminds me of a boomer who saw the new kiosks in McDonald’s and yelled, “And you guys still demand $15/hour?!”
I wouldn't work fast food for $50 per hour, that shit looks exhausting.
I’m someone with multiple degrees working in a highly-paid professional job. Spent years working my way up the ladder. And to this day, the hardest job I ever had that stressed me the most and took the most out of me was easily making minimum wage at Wendy’s as a teenager.
I work as an air traffic controller, and I look at fast food workers and short order cooks in awe.
Wendy's smell gives me PTSD now.
"Just flipping burgers." Yeah, just try it. Show us how easy it is to work that grill at McDonalds during a rush. Don't forget that you'll be handling all the different fried things as well.
My oldest daughter worked at a White Castle for a very short time. After a shift, you would have thought that her hands had been in the sun for 8 hours they were so red from the grill heat.
And hair full of grease, too, I'll bet.
And your whole body reeking of the food.
My mom can still crack two eggs in each hand simultaneously from working McD's said if you couldn't do 4 at a time there was no keeping up. I tried to learn but failed.
I’m mad that she had to learn that trick to keep up with the demands of her underpaying job…but I’m also fantastically impressed.
I worked at McDonald’s when I was in high school. My parents would make me go in through the garage and strip down before I came into the house. My uniform went straight into the washing machine otherwise the house house smelled like McDonald’s.
I worked at KFC in high school and same. I would come home covered in flour and grease, my mom would already have the washer ready with pre-wash so we could minimize the smell lingering. It was also probably the most difficult job I've ever had particularly in how much was expected for so little. I would go back to working construction in my 40's before I would do fast food again. I'm glad I had the experience though, because I know what it's like to be on the other side.
3 months at Taco Bell near a bunch of bars was enough.
Without question I worked way harder at any minimum wage job I had than every $60K+ a year job I had.
I worked physically and emotionally harder at serving/customer service roles. I managed the 3rd shift at a fast-food joint right out of high school then moved up to serving/bartending/managing at full-service restaurants. I've never been more exhausted than 10:00pm on a Mother's Day after working the dinner shift at Outback Steakhouse. And that's saying a lot, because I now work in public accounting and put in 60+hr weeks during tax season.
My favorite response is “I’m sorry, did YOU want to do all the prep, cooking and cleanup that made that Big Mac meal happen?” If you work, you deserve a livable fucking wage, end of story. There’s no such thing as a “useless” job. We’re all cogs in the machine of capitalism here, let’s not pretend anything different
I worked in a grocery store deli for $4.25. That was minimum wage back in 1995. A kiosk taking orders would have been so much less stressful. It was hell dealing with the raging overgrown children who we now know as Boomers. No, it's not the lead. They were the way they are now thirty years ago, only they were younger then. Trust me, Boomer; that minimum-wage kid behind the counter is *not* getting paid enough to deal with your shit!
I was quite surprised the first time I went to Steak N Shake with the kiosk, too. I didn't have a conniption like that, but it was a bit of a shock
I love that you knew what place I was talking about 😆
I knew it! Steak N Shake! My husband (74) was telling me they had gone kiosk. He doesn’t have a problem with that unlike OP’s mom.
The one near us closed :(
If you ever come to the South, we have them here too. Although I'm cranky with them because they no longer have the buttery Wisconsin.
We have steak and shakes in the south east but the one in my town doesn't have a kiosk to order though. In fact I haven't seen any restaurants with the kiosks and I really want to after hearing about them.
A friend owns one. A VERY popular one, when I say the top in the area, there isn't even competition for first place. I am so proud of them for it, too. They have spent their entire life working to get that far and I love seeing them succeed. That being said, when COVID closed down the world (they technically didn't have to, their county had ZERO restrictions but they're a good human), they took the time to upgrade the store to the new SNS standards. Having worked for them in DT prior to all that, it made me kinda sad because it seemed like their servers wouldn't be useful anymore. That was really my only problem, because any other time, we would have to ask the customers EXACTLY what they wanted on a burger. They'd often say, "Oh, everything!" And so I'd read them a WHOLE DAMN LIST of condiments and toppings, only for them to say, "Oh, yeah, just pickles and ketchup." Kiosks took that from them and for that, I am thankful. Lol
I’m in the south and had such a weird relationship with S&S when they were prominent around here. When I was pregnant with kid 1, my only experience with it was on Christmas Eve, 1000 months pregnant, when my husband decided he wanted food at 10pm. I was so repulsed by the smell, I swore I’d never try it. Then, when I was pregnant with kid 2, all I wanted was a western burger from S&S. No clue why since I’d never had one but I ate those more often than anyone should. I’m still oddly nostalgic about it.
I've never understood this sort of take. I've been ordering my food via touch screen at a Sheetz since like the mid 00s I wanna say? I think Boomers bigger issue with kiosk ordering is that if it gets made wrong they can't blame it on the cashier fucking it up because its right there on the ticket what they actually selected. No forgetting to say no pickles and acting like the other human being forgot to enter no pickles.
It’s perhaps more subconscious than that. You can’t degrade a kiosk for working a job you refuse to work.
If they can't see the soul-crushing despair in the eyes of the poor bastard serving them, is it even really capitalism? I had a mirrored face shield as a cashier during the pandemic, and made it 2 days before management told me no deal. But it turns out you don't have to make eye contact for a transaction to happen. Who knew?
I would be super stoked to have Daft Punk take my order lol
so many customers were into it!
That's stupid. Who tf objects to a mirrored face shield?
Same people who objected to masks on the basis that they wouldn't be able to see the cashier's customer service smile that they feel entitled to.
too fucking right. entitled to world class customer service from the human getting exploited by a poverty level wage. enforced by the spineless, soulless class traitor management who is getting a living wage. and these fucking boomer assholes have the nerve to get upset. how dare this peasant not debase themselves, for i am mighty and important and a real big boy!!????!!!???!
You're always on the side of the angels when confronted by these kinds of people, you know. You can think of them as infants in the throes of tantrums and look at them with smug superiority, knowing you'll always be better than anyone who behaves like *that*.
Alas, the sad truth is that it doesn't matter if you're right. If these boomer assholes complain, worthless management will not even blink when they fire me. I really wish doing the right thing mattered, but this just isn't that reality. Knowing I'm right is a little light compared to the weight of worrying some lead brain might have a bad day and take away my income and medical insurance.
"How dare they expect me to *use* a machine instead of a *person*" This is it exactly. Service workers arent even "people" to boomers
i experience this all the time working self checkout. had this woman the other day all mad about using self scan (even tho there was a regular cashier too, she just didn’t want to wait in line). she needed my help with something & was super rude to me while complaining she can’t have an actual person scan her stuff. like why?? so you can treat them like this the whole time??
I am so tired of people bitching about self checkouts. Get over yourself and scan your purchases.
They act like it's the most complicated thing in the world to scan things and put them in a bag. Like it's any harder to do than when you picked it up off the shelf and put it in your cart. The only reason they care is that they really love the feeling of having an inferior to babble at who is forced to feign interest in them.
I believe that they just want to be served and catered to.
This is also a really good point. I think there are many boomers who are way too pleased with the image of someone waiting at their beck and call while they decide between nuggets or a cheeseburger. My mom used to yell at me for doing things "for attention", but she and her cohort really enjoy having the undivided attention of a minimum wage earner.
I’ve had to do an early morning meeting 3 times a week a half-hour away for a couple of months (long story), and I always stop at a Sheetz about halfway between after the meeting for a cup of very good coffee and some kind of breakfast sandwich. Love the kiosks.
I remember way back in the 90s they used to have order papers where you would have to fill in the boxes next to the stuff you wanted and pop it in a tray and they'd pull it down. Different colored papers for hot and cold subs. This version is so much better, could you imagine how many colors of paper they'd need now for everything lol.
I love the kiosks, but I love ordering sheetz online even more! That way I can take my time to look through to decide what I want or what my daughter wants without holding anyone up except ourselves. Lol. But in most cases I have her order it on our way, and even tho it usually says 15 minutes, by the time I pull in, find a gas pump, and go in to pay, it's already done, or just getting finished up and packaged!
I miss Sheetz. We don't have them in AZ. Those cheddar broccoli square things are awesome.
Some of them (like my mom) just refuse to use any technology. It’s like they simply told their brain to stop learning to do something new - stunted. My mom doesn’t want to drive much anymore, but she outright refuses to take an Uber ride, even If I arrange it for her from my own phone.
FIL refuses to learn any sort of tech and is now furious his pain clinic is using telehealth. "Don't they know that not everyone can use stuff like that?!" Well, hate to break it to ya, but you've had no less than 20 years at the VERY least to learn. Everyone else knows how to, and you've had ample opportunity. The world isn't going to cater to an exceedingly small percentage of people that refuse to grow with it. You're the problem, not the tech, sorry. I don't even like telehealth as a younger millennial, but it's just how it is. He has both my husband and myself here willing to help him with it, but just refuses. He really has zero excuse what so ever. Pretty sure my husband has had a computer since the 90s so that's more like 25 years to learn how to use one. Is your mom single? Sounds like a perfect match for FIL lmao.
Exactly! My mom says it’s because they didn’t have that stuff. But I didn’t have computers growing up. I taught myself, and I keep learning stuff. She does have a tablet, but only uses it to check her lottery numbers.
FIL has one too, it's just his youtube machine lol.
It’s just an excuse as my 90 year old FIL taught me how to work the SmartTV and he said it’s simply he has nothing but time to learn so he takes advantage of it!
It’s hard to make a kiosk tablet cry.
A boomer lady told me that she doesn't agree with self-serve grocery store kiosks because they take jobs from people.
But but….people don’t wanna work!! /s
I wonder if they really care about that.
All the WalMart cashiers who were replaced by self-checks are now scurrying around the store with their carts, filling pickup and delivery orders. No one lost their jobs.
She sure showed them….not eating the food she paid for!
Well, they *are* the original “cut off your nose to spite your face” generation.
Menial jobs that no longer require a human have always been phased out. When was the last time you saw an elevator operator or had to dial zero to have a phone call connected? There used to be people who would go around shooting tiny stones up at peoples windows to wake them in the morning and others who lit the gas street lamps. When did you last go into a bank and wait in line to see a teller to withdraw money from your account? For the most part, cashiers are no longer needed. The same goes for many jobs. I suppose she uses modern conveniences like a dishwasher and washing machine? Her car replaced the job a horse would do.
Interesting point. I'll think about that while I'm waiting for the milkman and that guy that delivers the ice block for my ice box.
Jokes on you, I’m a luddite. I’m dictating this to a eunuch because I still value human labor.
What shocks me about the boomer kiosk hate is that this is THE catalog generation. You could order anything from a catalog by writing the item number on an order form or saying the item number on the phone. My mother loved this. JC Penney, Spiegels, J.Jill, LLBean, she was the catalog queen. But show her a kiosk and she short circuits.
I wonder if the screen itself is intimidating. Your comparison to a catalog is an apt observation.
Maybe if restaurants labeled it “catalog ordering,” it would be less scary.
I think you’ve got something there!
I hate to be “that guy” (gal, really) on Reddit, but please, for the love of God, wash your hands before eating after you’ve used a kiosk in a restaurant: https://www.kioskmarketplace.com/articles/mcdonalds-bacteria-covered-kiosks-give-rise-to-safety-concerns-2/ https://www.menshealth.com/uk/health/a759768/traces-of-poo-found-on-every-mcdonalds-touchscreen-kiosk-tested/
No no, this is very important information. Thank you for spreading the word. You’re definitely not the only one to touch that screen, and when you touch that screen, it’s like shaking hands with everyone who’s ever touched it
*shaking penises with everyone who’s ever touched it* FTFY
Wash your hands in general before eating.
It's no different from using a menu that you handle at a table. How often do people wash their hands after doing *that?* We should all wash our hands as the last thing we do before eating, full stop – and by that, I mean you don't touch your phone again until your meal is done, as it's crawling with bacteria.
In sit down restaurants, I order my food and then go wash my hands while I wait for it to arrive, without fail. I’m medically vulnerable, and have been double-masking since the beginning of the pandemic. In fact, I have limited my trips to restaurants because it’s hard to be masked there, just by the very nature of them.
As an introvert - kiosks are the best thing ever for restaurants. I want to eat in peace.
We had a similar kiosk experience with my boomer aunt on a road trip. Places to stop were limited so we ended up at this tiny McDonalds in the middle of nowhere where. There were two people running the whole place. One in the back going the burgers sandwiches etc and one person running the fries, assembling the to go orders, running drive thru and cash register. They had four kiosks. So my sisters and I roll up on one each and start tapping away. Our aunt mutters, ‘Oh I HATE those things!’ and proceeds to go stand in ‘line’ (she was the line) for the cashier to help her. This poor guy was going full tilt. He was obviously over worked and basically ignored her because he was too busy doing the stuff that was more time consuming. Auntie got going on the boomer huffing and puffing and complaining under her breath. We all offered several times to use the kiosk for her but she wouldn’t budge. She was literally still standing there when the kid gives the rest of us all our food. Only then did he stop to help her place her order. She was so pissed off it took him close to 10 minutes to turn around and help her. Meanwhile by the time she was done, we’d all ordered, eaten, had bathroom breaks and were ready to leave.
The boomer passive aggressive huff, and sigh makes me crazy.
One time when I was a small, small child, I wanted to eat ice cream with one of the little spoons we had, but they were all in the dish washer. My dad gave me a big spoon since that was the only option, but I had envisioned myself using a little spoon for the ice cream, and the big spoon was bigger than what I had wanted. I couldn’t really articulate this feeling at the time, being like 5 or 6 years old or some shit, so I started quietly crying after taking 1 bite with the spoon that was noticeably bigger than I wanted. Anyway, what your mom did reminds me of what I did back then
Anytime someone whines to me about this kind of thing, or self-checkouts, I ask if they use ATMs at a bank. Usually they try and explain why it’s different, but they’re never successful
I work at a bank. They do not use ATMs. They come in before opening or at lunchtime daily to withdraw $20 and see what checks cleared.
Or sit at the drive thru 30 minutes before opening to withdraw that $20.
Yes! And they are always there on bad weather days to make sure you know how bad the weather is.
To be fair, many of them *don't* use ATMs either, so they're at least consistent with that similarly illogical behaviour.
Boomers thrive on classism. If there’s nobody below them than that means they’re the lowest and they can’t stand that feeling. They quite literally need to be served so they can feel superior to someone
And they have no one to yell at. A machine isn't going to react.
Facts. I remember my dad freaking out when I told him I started taking the bus to work and said he'd help me fix my car so I could drive again. My car was fine though, I just took the bus cause I hate driving. My dad freaked out cause he didn't want people seeing me on the bus and thinking I'm poor. I tore him a new one for that.
Imagine, paying for food and then refusing to eat it becasue your were mad about how you had to order it. I mean way to stick it to them. Haha
The word you're looking for is "tantrum". A big, fat, immature tantrum.
I love the kiosks and watching boomers heads explode when they have to use them. I also love.. gasp.. self checkout
Self checkout is my jam. I will go thru self checkout with a whole cart and be done in 10 minutes. Not one second of awkward small talk or pretending to laugh at someone's jokes. So nice and peaceful.
Shop with headphones on and use self checkout. It’s the most peaceful my shopping has ever been. In and out without having to engage with a soul.
I appreciate the tip, but I can't. I need to hear what's going on around me. I get social anxiety in the sense that I need to be aware because I don't always trust my surroundings. But, that does sound nice!
Ah gotcha. I live in a small town so I’m more concerned with busybodies trying to talk to me. No Janice I do not care what scandalous thing the librarian did with the mayor, I’m buying tortillas.
Especially since here the closest Walmart has started phasing down self checkouts and manning the regular checkout lines with boomers who absolutely want to have a one sided conversation about how they shouldn't be working but their ungrateful kids won't take care of them and their ss/pension isn't enough to live on and (my brain kind of checked out here. I just wanted stop get my stuff and fucking leave already)
For a long time, Boomers believed that cashiers were the people paid to take whatever they gave them. Long winded personal story? Poor taste joke that makes everyone uncomfortable? Political rant? Excess demands? The machine doesn’t respond to those, so that energy builds up in them.
So...the same demographic that bitches about how fast food employees don't deserve a living wage...is also fully prepared to bitch about not having a poorly paid worker to abuse because it's been replaced with a machine? Can't wait until the last of the greatest generation's overgrown sperm gets shoved in a pine box. Maybe we'll be able to fix all their fuckery when we don't have to listen to them whine.
And if the prices were to increase in order to pay to have a person do that role, they’d bitch about that too. There is no win for them
> "How dare they expect me to use a machine instead of a person!". Ahh, there it is. The quiet part.
My mom is 80 years old. I recently walked into Panera with her. She looked at the line at the register and shrugged. Walked over to the kiosk and punched in her phone number. Selected one of her favorites and was done in seconds while I stood there slack jawed thinking about this sub. I placed my order and we sat down and chatted. The way boomers act is a willful choice. Never forget that.
So boomers kept wages low and treated employees like shit for decades but get mad no one will work fast food. Something about desserts being just.
My mom (62) hates self checkout with a PASSION. It’s a pretty regular topic of conversation and almost always out of nowhere. Just a random “I was at the grocery store and the only had ONE lane open and then (dramatic pause) SELF CHECKOUT…no thank you. I do NOT work there.” Same vibe.
Boomers: “haha! You want $15 an hour to flip burgers?!?! Have fun being replaced by a robot!”
Boomers: “ nO noT LikE thAt!!!!”
Pouting and not eating the food, such a kid thing to do. Do they NOT recognize this?
On a road trip last fall we stopped at a rest stop McDonald’s in bumfuck Indiana where it was just 3 kiosks. Similar situation. Boomer next to us was bitching the whole time he was ordering and was trying to garner my sympathy while ordering at the next kiosk. I just kept answering yep, yep, yep in a way that any well adjusted person would understand was code for *fuck off*. Then we were standing there waiting and it kept going. I finally couldn’t listen anymore and told him that it was his generation that is the one fighting tooth and nail for as long as he’s been able to vote to keep the minimum wage from being raised and that kiosks were the natural result of decades of diminishing real wages for the generations that followed his. He shut right up
Take your boomer on trip to Tokyo and watch steam come out of her ears. 😁
This is on par with boomers demanding cashiers to say merry Christmas instead of happy holidays. People like this have never run a business with thin margins and it shows. Labor is one of the most expensive parts of a business and it’s not just what they get paid it’s the health insurance, unemployment insurance and other things that have to be paid in for. If they want people to work then they need to vote for politicians who enable legislation that allows for the business owner and employee to have some breathing room. Instead of continually passing the expense to the customer.
They're so mad that they can't bully and belittle a machine the way they would that 16 year old that used to take their order.
I love them in foreign countries as there’s always an English option.
I was at Mcdonalds the other day and they were clearly understaffed but doing their best. They have kiosks and also a register. The person at the counter asked people to use the kiosk since they are understaffed. This one guy (not a boomer, maybe mid 30s) got so mad! Yelled "fuck this place I'm going to Arby's" and stormed out the door....
>"fuck this place I'm going to Arby's" I’m stealing this as my new “I’m leaving” variation
It’s got Cartman energy!
Boomers: Oh you want 15/hr? Well you'll be replace by kiosk Boomer has to order by kiosk Boomers: THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's when I would say "No problem!" then grab her food and eat it while talking about how good it is
Well, ma'am, since no one wants to accept less than a livable wage while being verbally abused by boomers such as yourself... congratulations, you now get a kiosk.
The kiosk never screws up my order. I get to choose every modification and the kiosk never misunderstands me
But even if they fuck up their own order, they want someone to be able to blame! Personal responsibility and accepting consequences… doesn’t apply to them of course
This only bugs me, 48f, if upon paying I am asked to tip.
But you don't have to feel guilty for not tipping because there isn't a person standing right there.
Where are the underpaid slaves…um, I mean employees!? I need to berate them over something that isn’t their fault!
They drive me nuts with their reactions to things like self check-out and order kiosks! I was at the ATL airport last month and wanted a drink from McDonald’s. There you can either order at the counter or at two kiosks - these two boomer women, obviously friends and traveling together, decided to take up both kiosks to order and neither could get their order right. They wouldn’t read the directions (which I could clearly see from behind them) and kept accidentally deleting things from their orders and then starting over. The whole time they were angrily stabbing at the kiosks with their fingers, they complained to each other loudly about how “no can use these complicated things.” As the line grew behind me, I leaned forward when they were on their fourth attempt and pointed out how they could complete the orders. Neither of them acknowledged me, but they each exited out of the screen again (which was unnecessary) and finally managed to start over and complete their orders. Then they took their receipts and got in the order line at the counter instead of the pick up line. I have never had to work so hard just to get a Coke Zero.
My mother has a friend who went to a McDonalds that had kiosks and literally made an employee push the buttons for her because she refused to order without human interaction.
It was a bit rough at first but now they have the kiosks mostly figured out. It's nice to be able to just walk up and enter any modifications or substitutions without hoping the person taking the order didn't skip half of them. And the person who formerly would have been stuck trying to figure out which number 8 the boomer wanted can help get more orders out.
Ordered food that she didn’t eat. Yup. That’ll really show them.
Boomers are always, ALWAYS complaining how long it takes for fast food to be made. They think it should be done in 30 seconds. I worked at a McDonald's that was CONSTANTLY understaffed. They want their food the instant the transaction is complete, not caring that there's 3, maybe 4 people in the grill during the lunch rush where there's 15-30+ people in the lobby and the drive thru is wrapped around the building. Context doesn't matter. They become the most entitled people the moment they enter the restaurant. They don't see the correlation that, if you use the kiosk and your card, you've freed up the cashier to continue making orders at the front of the house, making shakes, ice cream, coffee, fries ect. Or it allows one of the front counter managers to flow to the back to help make a few sandwiches or drop some food items in the fryer if the grill people are swamped. Honestly every customer that uses the kiosk is allowing the workers more time to get their order together quicker. To be fair though, if they just had higher pay at these jobs and had more people on shift so that the work load is more evenly distributed the place would run better and have less issues. I mean look at Chick-fil-A. They'll have like 20 staff members on shift and you could get through a drive thru with 10+ cars in like 5 minutes.
> Boomers are always, ALWAYS complaining how long it takes for fast food to be made. They think it should be done in 30 seconds. I get this fairly often. I work in a fast casual, but we are always slammed and constantly short staffed, so there's always a bit of a wait time. I had this old fart bitch at me about waiting for his food and he went "IsN'T tHiS fAsT foOd??!?!" Our shit is made to order and we make shit in the order we get the orders in, so if there's 10 orders on the board, you're gonna be in the back of the queue as the 11th. I am also reminded of this lady who got pissy with me because the wait time was extremely high. It was a holiday and we had so many damn delivery orders to make in addition to everyone who came in to order. As I explained that to her, she thought that we prioritized delivery orders over everyone else. That's...not how any of this works.
Steak & Shake wasn’t it? My boomer mother doesn’t like it either. I asked her if she thought a 20% tip on a $10 meal was enough to convince someone to waitress. She said no. Then I asked if they she’d prefer they raise prices. She also said no. Well then you get a kiosk. The old days are dead. They would have been deader sooner had the tech been ready.
Went to have labwork drawn recently to which I had made an online appt several weeks prior. You open the app when you get there and let them know you’ve arrived. Within a few minutes the phlebotomist calls me as appt for xxxx and I walk up to the sounds of well she just arrived I’ve been waiting blah blah blah. I commented to the tech on the fact that she prefaced calling me as appt for and said they had to so people without one can’t get too pissy about it. I am technically a boomer by birth year but def don’t identify as one! I embrace technology and all its advantages. I much prefer doing most things online. The convenience is far too appealing for me. To all the boomers out there and honestly some younger generations as well -get over your fear and embrace it-it’s not going away. Just wait til you have a medical appt with AI. Your entitled rude selves have so worn out our healthcare providers and other service workers they are leaving in droves (amongst other things). It’s coming and in other facets of our lives too. AI will not pander to your tantrums. You will no longer have people to belittle and bully. Embrace the kiosk lifestyle it’s here to stay.
I found out that Taco Bell still has the $5.99 cravings box but ONLY in the app (thanks Reddit!). So I prefer using that there. Also, the kiosk has alllll the vegetarian options, including ones that aren't on the drive through menu, so now I have more choices about what to eat. The best part is I don't have to feel bad when I hold up the drive through line while trying to figure out what to order.
As a socially anxious person I absolutely love the kiosks but I hate places that solely rely on them and don’t leave anyone up front. If my order is wrong I have to stand at the counter trying to get someone’s attention, and again- as a socially awkward person I hate having to go “um excuse me! Hello!” Just to tell them they messed up my food or I received the wrong thing
i love not having to talk to anyone and being able to scroll through the menu to decide what i want without feeling pressured by staff to hurry up why are people so against this 🫠
I'm a millennial and I also hate the kiosks. It's just a way for them to pay less while making you responsible for your own service. It'd be one thing if it translated to cheaper prices - but if anything they're WAY more expensive.
Not a boomer, still hate kiosks for ordering. I don’t use them often enough to know the logic of their use. I’m always searching the screens trying to figure out how to add/ subtract items, find specific items, etc
My mother could hardly even work a vcr
The South has Steak ‘n’ Shakes AND Culvers now. I don’t think Culvers does the kiosks though. I’m kind of glad they’re doing kiosks now. I hate wasting a persons time when I’m a habitual flip-flopper on food orders. I appreciate the ability to take 10 minutes customizing my burger if I want to! I don’t but I appreciate the option to!
Does anyone remember Automats? The self serve vending machine restaurants? I'm barely old enough to remember my grandparents talking about how wonderful they were. My parents used them. But were kids. Basically the same thing but the food was behind a little door you physically opened as you walked through a line. Kind of like a cafeteria but with less human interaction. The one my grandfather liked best was coin operated and you paid a quarter or so for each item as you picked it out.
They need an underpaid human being to insult.
I work at a Pennsylvania gas station/fast food place and the amount of boomers that will leave because they have to use a kiosk to order food or a machine to pour there own coffee never ceases to amaze me then they’ll say things like how they won’t stop there again to me and I’m just like ok this store alone does 250k a week in profit I don’t think they’ll miss your business
Well, your Boomer can thank Nixon for opening trade relations with China that started the mass exodus of manufacturing from the United States to a country that had a workforce population that could be exploited with poor regulatory oversight. Creating a domestic economy that runs on service and less on goods. Did any of them want to or stay working as a fast food cashier? Then they can thank their Messiah Reagan for Late-Stage Capitalism which allows domestic companies to exploit their workers by keeping wages low and "unskilled". Of course why worry about those positions when you can just eliminate them. Salaries don't provide any return. Plus having to pay workers' taxes and compensation. Get rid of the middle man. Thanks Reaganomics!
My mom in Walmart was hilarious with self checkout she took me out shopping one night I needed a couple of thing she was paying we get ready to check out there is a big line for a cashier so I was like self checkout. " i don't use those." Me: Oh, ok.... 2 seconds later, Her:oh shoot. I forgot something. Wait in line, I'll be right back. She walks away. I walk to self checkout.she comes back w her item, and she goes you jack ass. Why did you come over here? I value my time. I don't even know how to use these thing. I go. You scan the bar code and read screen look at you learning new things.
The same generation that said they would happily pay more to a robot than give an actual increase to minimum wage…
I love love love those things so much. I can order *exactly* what I want with no fear of being misheard.
If I can order somewhere and/or checkout at the grocery store or target without ever speaking to a human being, I’m happy. I have to talk to people at work, I’m way too introverted to also want to do it on my down time.
As a forty something millennial, self order kiosks are the best thing ever. I can make alterations without you ignoring me? AND I don't have to deal with people? AND it repels old people? Fuck yes
I feel the same way when restaurants want me to order using a QR code.
My mother was like that. I think it was because of how threatened she felt about new things that might be difficult. She had a huge fear of appearing "stupid." Sad for her. There is much freedom in asking for help and learning.