Slashdot Mirror
That Tablet On The Table At Your Favorite Restaurant Is Hurting Your Waiter (buzzfeed.com)
In data-hungry, tech-happy chain restaurants, customers are rating their servers using tabletop tablets, not realizing those ratings can put jobs at risk, an investigation by BuzzFeed News has found. From the report: When the Smokey Bones restaurant in Dayton, Ohio, where Nicole Bishop waits tables introduced Ziosk tabletop tablets, she wasn't too worried about them. Ziosks are designed to increase restaurant efficiency by allowing customers to order drinks, appetizers, and desserts, and pay their bill from the table without talking to a server. But, as Bishop soon discovered, they also prompt customers to take a satisfaction survey at the end of every meal, the results of which are turned into a score that's used to evaluate the server's performance. One day not long after the Ziosks appeared, Bishop found that her work schedules had been cut short in half, a change she estimated would cost her between $200 and $400 a week. The report documents stories of several other waiters, all of whom have been affected by the tablet. It adds: Ziosk tablets sit atop dining tables at more than 4,500 restaurants across the United States -- including most Chili's and Olive Gardens, and many TGI Friday's and Red Robins. Competitor E La Carte's PrestoPrime tablets are in more than 1,800 restaurants, including most Applebee's. Tens of thousands of servers are being evaluated based on a tech-driven, data-oriented customer feedback system many say is both inaccurate and unfair. And few of the customers holding the reins are even aware their responses have any impact on how much servers earn.
... that the ratings will be used to evaluate their wait person?
I really hate those things, personally. And I don't like to be forced to provide survey information before I am allowed to pay my bill. Especially knowing that the impact of that rating is potentially going to be a lot more significant than a small or large tip. As a result, you'd just about have to curse me out and throw my food at me to get anything less than a perfect rating.
A bad day for a wait person might result in a poor tip. It should not result in loss of hours or job. Unless it is truly chronic. In which case, even the proverbial Chotchkie's manager ought to be able to diagnose and correct the problem...
Check your premises.
In theory, not a bad idea. But the devil is in the details. I get satisfaction surveys for tech support encounters all the time. They are carefully constructed to only deal with the specific support engineer, not the whole experience. Most of the time there is no option for 'the tech was fine but the organization has its head up its ass.' I will bet a lot of these restaurant surveys are the same, where the customer is trying to complain about something the server has no control over.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Well, you can debate this automation controversy from every angle and every perspective. But what it dances around is the fundamental unavoidable fact that (a la Rumsfeld) "demography is destiny".
When the cost of labor gets too high, people will find a way to replace it. You're not going to find these ipads in places where it costs only $1 an hour to have a waiter.
With higher standards of living and wages (and people's unwillingness to work for less) comes the pressure to replace the people. Countries get old and rich, and want higher pay. Technology provides a way to get around that. It happens. Whether you have the iPad or not, they're going to find a way to reduce the number of waiters needed. The iPad is just a messenger.
are either too high end or too low end.
I have never seen a tablet in a restaurant, diner, dive, or food truck.
Chili's = fake bland Tex-Mex food.
Olive Garden = fake greasy Italian food.
TGIF = diner food without the charm.
Red Robin = cookie-cutter burger chain.
Are those tablets used in any restaurant that's actually worth going to? Can you even use them if you're paying good, old-fashioned, cold, hard cash? I feel sorry for anyone who lives in places where "casual dining" is the only option.
Since when is slashdot against meritocracy and user/client/customer feedback. Is there any monitoring of what kind of tripe can be posted?
I travel to the UK occasionally and have to remind myself that gratuities are not a thing (and in some cases seen as a rude gesture) the theory being that the people who tend bar or serve food are paid adequately enough that they don't need any extra.
Here in Canada its generally accepted that you tip your server (most Interac machines even have built in tip percentiles) this is factored into the system, I read the other day that many systems also only let servers keep a portion of the tip they get and the rest goes into a pool for all servers. At this point I don't understand the system at all, pay people to work a difficult job that absolutely requires you to be "nice" to every asshole that walks off the street to ensure you get a gratuity so you can make a halfway decent wage. This is almost like haggling the bill (which I have seen in Europe oddly enough) the expectation is that my service was satisfactory enough for me to allow this person to work at a livable wage.
I think the problem compounds for chain restaurants that may be off the beaten trail, so if you happen to work at a heavily trafficked location you are gonna do pretty well but if you work at a low traffic location you might barely be scraping by despite getting an hourly wage - that's management sticking it to the servers for something they have little control over.
I dunno, to me the whole system sucks and should just go away. Pay servers a decent wage and throw tipping out the window.
crazy dynamite monkey
Well then this isn't a tablet issue, it's a customer feedback issue. Now my questions, if the person interviewed is noticing less hours, then who's getting the hours? Obviously someone is scoring higher on these reviews and benefiting from it. That being said with that and customer feedback in general. It favors attractive people, over good service. That could be shrugged off and said "well duh but we give customers what they want, if they want an attractive bonehead that will mess up their order over an average or ugly server that will make sure everything comes out right, why not give it to them. The problem is in the dying american dream that often implies if you work harder you will be better off. When the reality is the things that you can't change about yourself can often outweigh the ones you can.
When I take my family out to eat I expect everybody to interact. That's part of why I'm taking them all out to begin with, that shit aint cheap.
I always move the stupid thing to another table before we sit down. Sometimes, the waitstaff will switch it back to my table after accepting our orders, like they are doing me a favor. It's funny, they always point it at the youngest person at my table, who is automatically going to search it for games, find them, and beg for the 2 bucks or whatever to play them instead of spend time with us on this expensive outing.
I get that some people like them. They appeal to young people. yadda yadda.
I wish they would ask if I wanted one. "OK! Table for 6, tablet or non?"
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Apparently you have never worked in a survey-based environment. On surveys, when rating someone 1 through 10, only 10 is acceptable to management. 1 through 9 is failure.
Aye. At the car dealership where I work, 9 is the same as zero on customer satisfaction surveys. Further, less than an 85% average score cuts your commission for all further sales until the average goes up. With an average of 10-12 new car sales per month (less than half of which fill out the surveys) one middling score can cut my income for several months.
The company has the system well rigged.
I really hate those things, personally.
So do I, but for a completely different reason than you. Those little fucking devices are an absolute scam. At many restaurants they are programmed to add a $1.99 charge onto your bill for playing games if you interact with them in any way at all.
We don't go to the restaurants chains that uses those things very often, but the first time I saw one a few years back we ended up with a charge on our bill. I was 99% sure our kids had not actually played any games on them, but I couldn't be certain. I complained to the waitress and she removed the charge. Then last year we saw them in a restaurant on vacation. This time I was 100% positive...I never let the kids lay a finger on it. However, I did interact with it myself...I simply browsed through the menus on it, but absolutely did not launch a single app. End result....$1.99 charge on my bill. Again I asked and the waitress happily had the charge removed from the bill.
Then I went home and read up on it, wondering if something weird had just happened to me (maybe someone interacted with it after the last customer and it simply attributed it to me as the next customer in the booth). It turns out countless people have this happen continuously, and it's simply a scam they're running. Any interaction with the screen results in a charge on your bill. Not all locations are programmed to operate this way, but many are. And of course, the waitresses understand this and are always happy to remove the charge when you ask. But how many people simply pay their bill without checking it over, or figure "oh, I guess the kids used that game...I'll just pay for it then", or even people who realize the charge isn't right but are too embarrassed to bring it up for fear of looking cheap in front of their date/friends/coworkers. I really wonder how much money ziosk and the associated restaurants have scammed from those people.
So now if I ever find one at my table, the hostess takes it before I sit down.
If a server doesn't bring me my bill and run my credit card, or if they don't actually take my full order (I order some / all of my meal on the tablet), should I tip the amount that I would normally tip at a full service place? Personally I tip less when I have to run my own credit card. Also be aware that many of the tablets calculate the tip on the total bill (including the tax), where historically you don't tip on tax.
Tip culture is out of control. There are places they seem to expect tips now for picking food up at a counter. For pete's sake, I don't tip at the deli or grocery store. Why should I tip you?