I doubt if I could ever eat McDonald’s again. I can be hungry and pass by and the smell of the cheap seed oil alone instantly suppresses my appetite. And knowing there’s not a single ounce of nutrition in any item on the menu and a long list of unnecessary additives just confirms what my nose has already told me.
Your points are valid, but recall that I spent 6 years in the service. While I enjoy great meals with real food, I do not mind the times when fuel is all that I can get. Disappointing, as my title states, but livable.
Macca's (as it is called in Australia) intimidates me.
Macca's has the BEST handicapped restrooms. Don't ask me why I need them when I can walk into them - but I do need them at times. And Australia is piss poor at providing public facilities that are less than 10k away (public parks, and they are - scary).
Ergo, I sometimes find myself in a Macca's. I found myself there these past 2 Saturdays.
Sometimes, I'm even hungry when I walk in, and think - something like a cheeseburger or fries or hot apple pie, or cappuccino - or plastic shake (there is no dairy in them) might be nice.
But then I look at the order kiosks (there are at least a dozen, even in the smaller stores), with people huddled around, scrolling through menu items, phones in hand to pay. Or, for the old-fashioned, wallets & credit cards.
Old people (like me) can STILL walk up to the counter and HARASS the young people working there to get them to take my order and accept cash. But this is the EXCEPTION rather than the rule. And it is considered an assault to their "system." The kids are poorly equipped to handle it.
So I walk out. Every time. Fuck their kiosks.
I wonder how many people are like me? I know that most of us wouldn't even consider the fake food on offer at Macca's - so it's the robots, the zombies who are likely obeying the system.
“…can STILL walk up to the counter and HARASS the young people working there to get them to take my order and accept cash. But this is the EXCEPTION rather than the rule. And it is considered an assault to their "system." The kids are poorly equipped to handle it.”
They often do act as if we are harassing them, don’t they? Strangest thing, people getting upset because you want to give them money for what they are selling. TPTB certainly do consider individuals using cash as an attack against their plans for us. And you are correct, the kids are simply not equipped to handle anything that doesn’t come at them through a screen.
Yes, that is another part of this, which places are the first to go cashless and self check out? Fast food and convenience stores, places that are for me anyway, sales outlets of the last resort.
Perhaps I am crossing streams as in Ghostbusters with this, but I am taken aback by all the gaijin tourists who go goo goo Gaga over Japanese convenience stores. Just cannot not understand it. To me, one goes to a convenience store because one has failed and are trying to minimize it. “Fauci! I forgot to restock the fridge with beer!” So I stop by the combini, as we say in Japan, to pick up cold beer on the way home. Making these cashless drives me away and worse, the unmanned conbini do not sell alcohol nor tobacco products.
Drive throughs in Japan are uncommon, perhaps even rare. We have one, one that I am aware of my my city of half a million souls, not souls but persons may be better. None where I work in Tokyo and I am on foot in those areas anyway.
There are reasons why change is not accepted at restaurants like McDonalds, and it's because a lot of the employees can't handle making change.
You will hear anecdotal evidence that is ubiquitous so it sounds more clinical than "hyperbole" that if you give someone extra change in order to get a whole dollar amount back, you will get a reply of "we can't do that."
When I order delivery, I usually give out tips in whole dollar amounts, but I bet most employees don't even handle cash anymore so doing it for the convenience of not giving them 4.87 but 5.00 is probably lost on them.
You're assessment of their bathroom facilities is a good one. They probably have one of the best public bathrooms consistently. On trips, my goto for bathrooms is McDonalds, or if I can find one, a Chic-Fil-A. I don't think this is an accident as it is clear...you go to the bathroom for the favorable experience and think "something smells good" and you will buy. Mcdonalds knows that if you go into a bathroom that has the ode to a bad #2 smell, this will have a less than favorable chance of an impulse buying experience of an Apple Pie.
There is the (in)convenience of kiosks and ordering on the app, but there is also an upside/downside. BTW, you want fresh fries...order them without salt. I did this and even delivered, they are far better than I used to get which are the mushy, heat lamp nuked version of the same.
As inconvenient as ordering via app or kiosk is, this removes one possible route of human error. You can also have more choices, add in condiments, or other customizations that are not thought of until after a purchase.
You can also be confronted at times with computer errors. I received drinks once via delivery that were supposed to be Diet Coke, but were clear, and yes, it tasted like Seltzer water. Anyone familiar with McDonald's knows that the drink machine is mainly automated, and so there is no direct filling, which would have clued in the employee easily that there was a discrepancy unless there was a new "Clear Diet Coke" being marketed in an unsolicited manner.
Much of what you describe here, Jimmy, is dystopia made real to me. Cashiers can’t handle making change. Cashiers can’t handle making change? Cashiers can’t handle making change!
Cashiers can’t handle making change!!!!!!!
Can there be any stronger statement of the damage done and the hell that awaits us in the future than this?
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
We have this to some degree here in Japan, lesser than what you describe but that is to be expected as Japan held on to being a cash based society longer than other lands. At one time, 100 yen equaled one Yankee greenback. Though that is not the case now, more like ¥150 = $1.00, but let’s use the 100 to one for this talk. The smallest bill is ¥1000. That’s like a ten dollar bill being the smallest “folding money of the land. Coins here come in 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 and 500 yen denominations. We have $5.00 coins! I save these, and am forever adding extra coinage to my payments so that I get a 500 yen coin instead of say 367 yen back in change. This drives many cashiers, but by no means the majority, nuts, until I explain that I want a 500 yen coin. Then, it’s like a switch has been thrown and they quickly accommodate me. I find this rather odd as the 100 yen stores sell ¥500 coin banks with the amount they hold when full printed upon them. I and the gaijin community are not unique in our savings of these coins. However deer in the headlights they may be at first, stating why I gave extra jingle turns off the lights and they can perform the necessary computation to return the sought after fiver.
That was until covid. I cannot say that covid is connected, but nor can I say it is not, but during the panic and continuing through the present, whether the shopper or the cashier does so, more and more points of sale are ATM or vending machine like where the cash is inserted and the change is computed and returned without a single human being involved in the change making process. When I first arrived in Japan in the early 90s, soraban (Japanese abacus) were still often used at checkout. It was interesting to experience these at the Navy base’s exchange, the Japanese cashiers using soraban were much faster than the other nationalities using regular cash registers. It’s been many a year since I have seen a soraban in use.
The following statements you make hit me in an awkward way.
“As inconvenient as ordering via app or kiosk is, this removes one possible route of human error. You can also have more choices, add in condiments, or other customizations that are not thought of until after a purchase.” First, there is the age old adage that to err is human but it takes a computer to really fauci things up. I may have shared this before, but I was complaining to a coworker several years my senior about the problems I was having on campus due the school’s computer systems. He told me I was lucky, for in his day, the printed schedule they gave out was the only proof one had that there were registered in a class. He lost his and it took two full weeks to sort it out. I cried out, “TWO WEEKS. TWO WEEKS!. I would give my left arm if my issue could be resolved in two weeks. It’s been 2 and a half YEARS thus far with no resolution in sight!” Human error can be resolved by humans, computer error? Those who operate automated systems follow a two law system. Law number one: computers do not make errors. Law number two: if a computer does err, refer to law number 1.
Another point is that here in Japan anyway, it is the opposite from what you observe in the States; choices are far fewer with automated systems. Before Sukiya went with touch screen menus, long before the panic, I used to order their pork atop of a bowl of rice with 3 types of cheese with a double serving of cheese. Ummmm ummm good! Can no longer do so, such an option and a pricing was not programmed into the system. When two humans interact, the possibilities are, while not infinite, far closer to it than when done so through a computer system programmed based upon the knowledge of a small number of people with limited experience in the desires of their potential customers. I see this everywhere automated systems have replaced humans or worse, direct them.
But the absolute most terrifying thing is that I believe your opening statement, “Sadly, the world has moved on.”, is spot on.
Yep, cashiers can't handle making change. I wonder if even in the first grade they have those school lessons that deal with change. I remember them well, the quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies and you had to determine the amount of each for the change listed.
Those of us who went to arcades in the eighties know what 5-10 dollars in quarters feels like. Also, we know the incentive/downside of getting tokens in lieu of actual change. There is nothing more sad than a kid in America trying to buy a Coke with an arcade token aside from that moment someone floated Canadian money into your change.
The English conversation school that hired me required all applicants to give a sample lesson. I did mine on telling time. I was hired. Years later, I applied to an outsourcing firm and did my sample lesson on telephone talking. Throughout my ESL career, I have given numerous lessons on making change with US currency and brought back quantities of US coinages to use in class.
No one bothers to learn how to read an analog clock anymore. Why should they, their idiot phone or fruity watch lists it out. Attempting to elicit from a class of nursing students reasons for making a phone call, one responded that they do not use their idiot phones to make actual phone calls. They use them to net surf and text message, but rarely to make an actual phone call. And now it is too with money. I long for the day when humans did not need a computer to handle mundane tasks.
The act of writing is the act of thinking, so one of my reasons for writing is that it involves thinking. because thinking is good, sometimes uncomfortable, but good. And it's better than the alternative. I see the effects of not thinking on a daily basis.
Throughout the act of writing, I find myself searching for words. For instance, "distribution" was one of the words that calcified my skull for about a minute today.
I wonder if pilots even now know how to look for things "at nine o'clock." or if they use some other form of what quadrant to look for something in the sky.
My main phone use besides ordering food online occasionally is I use it to open X, scroll down my feed to a post about masking, and then appropriately write "and yet, masks do not work." or "it's good that the CDC was fired," or "what is "severe disease" when the default was..no one suffered "severe disease" to begin with.
Remember folks to always pay in cash if you're at the 'food' court at Costco. Just walk up to the register and they'll ask, "Are you paying cash?" "Yep." Sometimes you can even get ahead of the kiosk-credit zombies and get your food sooner, especially if it's just a slice of pizza or the buck-fifty dog (admit it- it's a good deal, if not very healthy).
I doubt if I could ever eat McDonald’s again. I can be hungry and pass by and the smell of the cheap seed oil alone instantly suppresses my appetite. And knowing there’s not a single ounce of nutrition in any item on the menu and a long list of unnecessary additives just confirms what my nose has already told me.
Your points are valid, but recall that I spent 6 years in the service. While I enjoy great meals with real food, I do not mind the times when fuel is all that I can get. Disappointing, as my title states, but livable.
I don't know, the cheese could have some nutritional value.
There was a couple of times I ordered a cheeseburger in the drive thru and was treated to a "burger" without the beef.
It might well have some nutritional value if it was actually cheese rather than some kind of plastic masquerading as cheese!
Macca's (as it is called in Australia) intimidates me.
Macca's has the BEST handicapped restrooms. Don't ask me why I need them when I can walk into them - but I do need them at times. And Australia is piss poor at providing public facilities that are less than 10k away (public parks, and they are - scary).
Ergo, I sometimes find myself in a Macca's. I found myself there these past 2 Saturdays.
Sometimes, I'm even hungry when I walk in, and think - something like a cheeseburger or fries or hot apple pie, or cappuccino - or plastic shake (there is no dairy in them) might be nice.
But then I look at the order kiosks (there are at least a dozen, even in the smaller stores), with people huddled around, scrolling through menu items, phones in hand to pay. Or, for the old-fashioned, wallets & credit cards.
Old people (like me) can STILL walk up to the counter and HARASS the young people working there to get them to take my order and accept cash. But this is the EXCEPTION rather than the rule. And it is considered an assault to their "system." The kids are poorly equipped to handle it.
So I walk out. Every time. Fuck their kiosks.
I wonder how many people are like me? I know that most of us wouldn't even consider the fake food on offer at Macca's - so it's the robots, the zombies who are likely obeying the system.
“…can STILL walk up to the counter and HARASS the young people working there to get them to take my order and accept cash. But this is the EXCEPTION rather than the rule. And it is considered an assault to their "system." The kids are poorly equipped to handle it.”
They often do act as if we are harassing them, don’t they? Strangest thing, people getting upset because you want to give them money for what they are selling. TPTB certainly do consider individuals using cash as an attack against their plans for us. And you are correct, the kids are simply not equipped to handle anything that doesn’t come at them through a screen.
....and I don't want their products THAT badly!!!
A friend sent me this 24 min vid - excellent - about Digital Yuan (affects us all):
https://youtu.be/N4tyqNV63KE?si=cUXNOrN_keZZ6Zx6
I tell you, if China is any example of anything, it is a "mask driven dystopia." But it is great to hear pushback to the digital currency.
Yes, that is another part of this, which places are the first to go cashless and self check out? Fast food and convenience stores, places that are for me anyway, sales outlets of the last resort.
Perhaps I am crossing streams as in Ghostbusters with this, but I am taken aback by all the gaijin tourists who go goo goo Gaga over Japanese convenience stores. Just cannot not understand it. To me, one goes to a convenience store because one has failed and are trying to minimize it. “Fauci! I forgot to restock the fridge with beer!” So I stop by the combini, as we say in Japan, to pick up cold beer on the way home. Making these cashless drives me away and worse, the unmanned conbini do not sell alcohol nor tobacco products.
To be fair, I can still go through the drive thru and pay with cash, no hassles. But inside the shop is intimidating.
Drive throughs in Japan are uncommon, perhaps even rare. We have one, one that I am aware of my my city of half a million souls, not souls but persons may be better. None where I work in Tokyo and I am on foot in those areas anyway.
Sadly, the world has moved on.
There are reasons why change is not accepted at restaurants like McDonalds, and it's because a lot of the employees can't handle making change.
You will hear anecdotal evidence that is ubiquitous so it sounds more clinical than "hyperbole" that if you give someone extra change in order to get a whole dollar amount back, you will get a reply of "we can't do that."
When I order delivery, I usually give out tips in whole dollar amounts, but I bet most employees don't even handle cash anymore so doing it for the convenience of not giving them 4.87 but 5.00 is probably lost on them.
You're assessment of their bathroom facilities is a good one. They probably have one of the best public bathrooms consistently. On trips, my goto for bathrooms is McDonalds, or if I can find one, a Chic-Fil-A. I don't think this is an accident as it is clear...you go to the bathroom for the favorable experience and think "something smells good" and you will buy. Mcdonalds knows that if you go into a bathroom that has the ode to a bad #2 smell, this will have a less than favorable chance of an impulse buying experience of an Apple Pie.
There is the (in)convenience of kiosks and ordering on the app, but there is also an upside/downside. BTW, you want fresh fries...order them without salt. I did this and even delivered, they are far better than I used to get which are the mushy, heat lamp nuked version of the same.
As inconvenient as ordering via app or kiosk is, this removes one possible route of human error. You can also have more choices, add in condiments, or other customizations that are not thought of until after a purchase.
You can also be confronted at times with computer errors. I received drinks once via delivery that were supposed to be Diet Coke, but were clear, and yes, it tasted like Seltzer water. Anyone familiar with McDonald's knows that the drink machine is mainly automated, and so there is no direct filling, which would have clued in the employee easily that there was a discrepancy unless there was a new "Clear Diet Coke" being marketed in an unsolicited manner.
Much of what you describe here, Jimmy, is dystopia made real to me. Cashiers can’t handle making change. Cashiers can’t handle making change? Cashiers can’t handle making change!
Cashiers can’t handle making change!!!!!!!
Can there be any stronger statement of the damage done and the hell that awaits us in the future than this?
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
We have this to some degree here in Japan, lesser than what you describe but that is to be expected as Japan held on to being a cash based society longer than other lands. At one time, 100 yen equaled one Yankee greenback. Though that is not the case now, more like ¥150 = $1.00, but let’s use the 100 to one for this talk. The smallest bill is ¥1000. That’s like a ten dollar bill being the smallest “folding money of the land. Coins here come in 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 and 500 yen denominations. We have $5.00 coins! I save these, and am forever adding extra coinage to my payments so that I get a 500 yen coin instead of say 367 yen back in change. This drives many cashiers, but by no means the majority, nuts, until I explain that I want a 500 yen coin. Then, it’s like a switch has been thrown and they quickly accommodate me. I find this rather odd as the 100 yen stores sell ¥500 coin banks with the amount they hold when full printed upon them. I and the gaijin community are not unique in our savings of these coins. However deer in the headlights they may be at first, stating why I gave extra jingle turns off the lights and they can perform the necessary computation to return the sought after fiver.
That was until covid. I cannot say that covid is connected, but nor can I say it is not, but during the panic and continuing through the present, whether the shopper or the cashier does so, more and more points of sale are ATM or vending machine like where the cash is inserted and the change is computed and returned without a single human being involved in the change making process. When I first arrived in Japan in the early 90s, soraban (Japanese abacus) were still often used at checkout. It was interesting to experience these at the Navy base’s exchange, the Japanese cashiers using soraban were much faster than the other nationalities using regular cash registers. It’s been many a year since I have seen a soraban in use.
The following statements you make hit me in an awkward way.
“As inconvenient as ordering via app or kiosk is, this removes one possible route of human error. You can also have more choices, add in condiments, or other customizations that are not thought of until after a purchase.” First, there is the age old adage that to err is human but it takes a computer to really fauci things up. I may have shared this before, but I was complaining to a coworker several years my senior about the problems I was having on campus due the school’s computer systems. He told me I was lucky, for in his day, the printed schedule they gave out was the only proof one had that there were registered in a class. He lost his and it took two full weeks to sort it out. I cried out, “TWO WEEKS. TWO WEEKS!. I would give my left arm if my issue could be resolved in two weeks. It’s been 2 and a half YEARS thus far with no resolution in sight!” Human error can be resolved by humans, computer error? Those who operate automated systems follow a two law system. Law number one: computers do not make errors. Law number two: if a computer does err, refer to law number 1.
Another point is that here in Japan anyway, it is the opposite from what you observe in the States; choices are far fewer with automated systems. Before Sukiya went with touch screen menus, long before the panic, I used to order their pork atop of a bowl of rice with 3 types of cheese with a double serving of cheese. Ummmm ummm good! Can no longer do so, such an option and a pricing was not programmed into the system. When two humans interact, the possibilities are, while not infinite, far closer to it than when done so through a computer system programmed based upon the knowledge of a small number of people with limited experience in the desires of their potential customers. I see this everywhere automated systems have replaced humans or worse, direct them.
But the absolute most terrifying thing is that I believe your opening statement, “Sadly, the world has moved on.”, is spot on.
Yep, cashiers can't handle making change. I wonder if even in the first grade they have those school lessons that deal with change. I remember them well, the quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies and you had to determine the amount of each for the change listed.
Those of us who went to arcades in the eighties know what 5-10 dollars in quarters feels like. Also, we know the incentive/downside of getting tokens in lieu of actual change. There is nothing more sad than a kid in America trying to buy a Coke with an arcade token aside from that moment someone floated Canadian money into your change.
The English conversation school that hired me required all applicants to give a sample lesson. I did mine on telling time. I was hired. Years later, I applied to an outsourcing firm and did my sample lesson on telephone talking. Throughout my ESL career, I have given numerous lessons on making change with US currency and brought back quantities of US coinages to use in class.
No one bothers to learn how to read an analog clock anymore. Why should they, their idiot phone or fruity watch lists it out. Attempting to elicit from a class of nursing students reasons for making a phone call, one responded that they do not use their idiot phones to make actual phone calls. They use them to net surf and text message, but rarely to make an actual phone call. And now it is too with money. I long for the day when humans did not need a computer to handle mundane tasks.
At times I find myself sliding into idiot-dom.
The act of writing is the act of thinking, so one of my reasons for writing is that it involves thinking. because thinking is good, sometimes uncomfortable, but good. And it's better than the alternative. I see the effects of not thinking on a daily basis.
Throughout the act of writing, I find myself searching for words. For instance, "distribution" was one of the words that calcified my skull for about a minute today.
I wonder if pilots even now know how to look for things "at nine o'clock." or if they use some other form of what quadrant to look for something in the sky.
My main phone use besides ordering food online occasionally is I use it to open X, scroll down my feed to a post about masking, and then appropriately write "and yet, masks do not work." or "it's good that the CDC was fired," or "what is "severe disease" when the default was..no one suffered "severe disease" to begin with.
Remember folks to always pay in cash if you're at the 'food' court at Costco. Just walk up to the register and they'll ask, "Are you paying cash?" "Yep." Sometimes you can even get ahead of the kiosk-credit zombies and get your food sooner, especially if it's just a slice of pizza or the buck-fifty dog (admit it- it's a good deal, if not very healthy).
The last time I was in Costco, they accepted cash only.