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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.
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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.
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
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.
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?