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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.
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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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 big problem with any numeric survey is that we don't give the same rating for the same performance. My default rating is 3 out of 5 for "average". Your default is a perfect 5 for "I hope you don't lose your job". The next guy might default to 4, or even 1 for "you have to earn it".
Surveys that are tied to wages or job retention should be binary and allow for comments. "Were you satisfied with your server?" "If no, please explain." That's enough.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
But this is really unfair to the motivational challenged, and those with effort and attitude disabilities.