To be fair, you’ll be disappointed either way. At least with the menu, they can feel like they’re selling decent food (their pictures do look decent) and you can make sure your order is correct.

I used the Mcdonalds app a few times and the drivethru was always faster, lmao.

They require location services and don’t start cooking until you’re inside their geofence, but IME they seem to still prioritize drivethru customers.

I checked, just for you. You can pick the hamburger happy meal and add cheese.

For me it's the exact opposite, most of them have the possibility to change the language to English, even though it's only partially translated I still can see the pictures of what I'm trying to order. If I need to look at the Korean menu and then speak Korean to the person to order, then I would just go away, especially if they don't have pictures on the menu.

For me it's use 10/10 (even the crappy ones)

Can I get a McCrapwich? That’s it, no drink. <tap>. It’s like 10 seconds.

They’re designed for people of average (male) height, like everything else from default seatbelt position to doorways. Sounds like yet another tall person complaint to add to the pile.

In any case, I find them comfortable (probably because I’m average height lmao) and I like to take my time ordering to combine the best deals possible without having a cashier staring waiting on me so they can go take care of all the other things that McDs overworks their employees with.

IME (I’ve worked FF before) you “Fuck these machines” people generally trend towards annoying karen-type and take FOREVER ordering.

I like customizations on the touchscreen. I’ve had several experiences where I tell the cashier what I want including customizations only to get my order and realize that the order wasn’t entered in properly. The touchscreen ensures that the order is at least entered properly.

I prefer just saying “can I get a medium #2 combo, please.” And being done with it.

It’s one of those mysteries. Maybe we should ask an educated person.

Eh…AI messes my order. Some dumbass teenager messes up my order. Whats the difference?

I mean, I can think of a couple.

For similar reasons, I stopped ordering with any alterations at all. I used to customize order a little and they always messed it up. It’s pretty rare that I go at all, but I figure that way it’s the standard meal and they can just go in autopilot making it. Less disappointment when things go wrong

The only time I would rather not talk to a person is if the accent causes a language barrier. Otherwise 9 times out of 10 a person is going to understand what you want better especially if it’s a customization issue

just use your knuckle

Because I’m at a fast food place in the first place because my time is important and I don’t want to waste it ordering.

That and the guy taking orders does it 1000x a day and i can easily order that way instead of me navigating ten different menus just to order a simple meal for my family.

I’m OK with my old man status at this point. Tech is good when it improves things for the consumer. The kiosks seem to just improve the company bottom line IMO.

This is why I tend to just use the mobile apps for places to order. Not laggy and gives the benefits you mentioned of using a touch screen kiosk. A lot of them you don’t even need an account to use the app which is nice if that’s something that bothers you.

I find this a bit odd as you make it seem as if ordering is a complicated process that takes some thought and planning. The whole draw of McDonalds is that you get the exact same food wherever you may be and their options are fairly limited. Ham/cheeseburger, chicken burger, fish sandwich, or nuggets is pretty much your array of options.

I personally dislike the ordering screens as they make the process way to drawn out. Let me just pick a #1, the size, and the drink and be done with it in 3 taps. Last time I used one, it wanted me to basically build my own meal as if I was ordering Dominoes online and building my own pizza.

Also, explicit confirmation of your customizations and of your order. You can double check yourself to make sure it’s all correct before submitting the order while the distracted and overworked employee at the counter could hit the wrong button or skip a customization and you often wouldn’t know until you receive the wrong item. Then you have to create more work for the workers to get your order remade.

They just display a tiny bit of text and images, they should switch between screens at 60fps, not 2s per click.

I think this is intentional. They want you to take time looking at the pictures so you might think “you know what, actually I’d like some of those fries as well” by making it hard to just quickly select what you want and leave.

I wouldn’t even be surprised if there’s a psychological effect where you feel like ordering more makes this tedious ordering process more worthy. I mean why go through 2 minutes of clicking and waiting just for one stupid cheeseburger.

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What if there are physical buttons, like with ATMs?

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Maybe voice interfaces are simply a fundamentally flawed idea. If one can extend a hand to take the package with the food, they can also push a few buttons. If those buttons are with hercons or such, they’ll even last longer than consumer-grade touchscreens.

Of course it’s easier when a human takes the order. But then if the cost of N screens with physical buttons is equal to that, one can make their order, say, N/2 times slower without any hurry and, well, the throughput should be higher still.

For drive thrus - that’d be M lanes with such terminals and a bit slower than M lanes with people. So - depends on how the cost of asphalt and space and people and terminals work economically.

What’s definitely idiotic is to think one can replace a human with an “AI” without losing in efficiency. But then again, maybe it’s worth it.

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

They could advertise actually usable physical buttons …

Media has hyped up hatred for progress. Makes a good john henry story

Got stopped a few times after leaving the self checkout. Very rudely. Extremely rudely. The excuse every time was that I did it too fast and they suspected theft. Refuse to use self checkout. They can shove it.

Touch screens for ordering are ok. Except when you have tech illiterate people in front of you.

The kinds of places that get touchscreen kiosks often have teenagers taking your order who are not paid or trained enough to give any shits about any of it. The touchscreen saves both of you from doing the worst part of the whole process.

You don’t like a stoned teenager going, “Uh what?” And mumbling every few seconds?

(Joking of course)

It’s fine when what you want is on the menu. But as soon as you have a question or need something a little bit off menu (hold the tomatoes, does that have nuts in it? I’m allergic, this food came out cold can I get another?) the glorified vending machine doesn’t work.

I like touchscreens because I can spend more time getting my order right without wasting the cashier’s time.

I don’t want to talk to a cashier and have them explain the difference between a bacon sandwich supreme, and a bacon burger deluxe.

I don’t want to confuse them by asking for extra veggies and watch them put it on the side.

I don’t want to argue that I asked for two packs of ketchup and they gave me BBQ.

Sounds like a closeted robosexual to me. You don’t need to deny it! I’d fuck a robot too. Maybe just the chick from Tron Legacy

You won’t know.

Amazons Mechanical turk in a nutshell

I think McDs always planned to roll out remote customer service to really maximize capitalism. And wrapping it under AI because that’s a trendy buzzword!

This reminds me of a post I saw once were someone said AI stood for Actually Indian

They will still be short staffed and overworked. The company isn’t outsourcing the drive through out of the kindness of their hearts in order to lighten the workload on the employees.

Maybe it’s an issue of weatherproofing, or maybe vandalism?

This would also be nice. Usually, I only order fast food if I can place a call first (Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Pizza, etc). Grubhub fees are ridiculous or and apps are always taking your data.

Or a mobile app that doesn’t force people to waive their rights to sue on October 23rd, 2023

Yes, 👍 apps.

The issue with touchscreen kiosks is that some have short arms.

On another note, I get the benefits of computer-voice-operated drive-thrus. No need to use your phone. If your phone’s 🔋 is 3%, you can still buy food.

100% this. The base algorithms used in LLMs have been around for at least 15 years. What we have now is only slightly different than it was then. The latest advancement was training a model on stupid amounts of scraped data off the Internet. And it took all that data to make something that gave you half decent results. There isn’t much juice left to squeeze here, but so many people are assuming exponential growth and “just wait until the AI trains other AI.”

It’s really like 10% new tech and 90% hype/marketing. The worst is that it’s got so many people fooled you hear many of these dumb takes from respectable journalists interviewing “tech” journalists. It’s just perpetuating the hype. Now your boss/manager is buying in =]