The Funneling Continues

Must order a meal through a computer

I planned to arrive in the area of my evening classes early enough to eat a higher quality meal than fast food and even left earlier than planned. Unfortunately, high winds held up the trains leaving me barely enough time to grab something to eat at McDonalds. I have detailed in earlier posts how this particular McDs has been gradually making it increasingly difficult to use cash. They have added yet another hurdle. ALL orders regardless how you wish to pay must now go through the self order kiosks. If paying with cash, it gives you a ticket which you then take to cash register to pay. Busy making my apartment ready for the delivery and installation of my heater/AC early tomorrow morning, I ate little today and was starving when I arrived near work. I wanted a double cheeseburger with fries, Chicken McNuggets and a drink. The touch screen operated kiosk is far from intuitive. Trying to add the McNuggets to my order replaced my fries with them. After several minutes of scrolling through different screens and clicking on several options that did not render the desired result, an employee came out to help.

Even those who are stubbornly sticking with cash are still being forced to interact with machines instead of people and relearn how to do so at each place we do business with as they each have their own systems and learning how one works may not offer any help in operating another business’s system. I hate this, I really do.

Though far far far from fluent, why did I bother to learn Japanese when the Japanese are forcing me to use a machine to order and that I can do so in English. I can easily see a time in the near future where I am not even allowed to opt to order in Japanese even at a self order kiosk or self checkout. The clerk that helped me switched the language to English without my request to do so. This did not help me find how to add to my order. I told him in Japanese what I wanted to do and he scrolled to the screen where I could do it. However, as he did it, I did not learn how to do it on my own.