“Are you sure you don’t want to write that down?”
I’m in a local diner in New Rochelle with my family of five and a waitress has just taken our order for breakfast. It is not a particularly complicated order, but did I mention there are five of us? And that three of us are under the age of 8 with somewhat picky palates.
But our server will not put pen to paper. Inevitably, when she returns, we are missing the order of fruit, a side of toast and the extra napkins. And our request for cheese on the scrambled eggs has been ignored. First-world problems, I know.
It turns out that restaurants are increasingly replacing waiters with tablet computers and I, for one, couldn’t be happier. Family establishments like Chili’s, Applebee’s, and Panera have been making large investments in technology to allow customers to place their orders and settle their bills at their tables.
While some may lament the fact that jobs will be eliminated and that greater automation will only further reduce our contact with other real people, I am looking forward to this brave new world. At Uno’s the other day for my daughter’s second birthday, I asked our waitress to bring out the salads as soon as they were ready. When our pizzas arrived 25 minutes later, there were no salads at all. I have witnessed this same scenario in Chili’s, TGI Fridays and IHOP, as well. In each case, our waiter or waitress did not write down a blessed thing.
Ordering lunch at a local snackbar has become like playing telephone. I give one person my order. He shouts it to the guys at the grill. Then I go to pay, and the cashier asks me what I ordered.
Several minutes later a young woman will ask me what I ordered again so she can go “find it.” At the supermarket deli, I ask for a half-pound of turkey and a half-pound of cheese. When the supermarket worker is done slicing the turkey, she asks me what else I want again. Is it any wonder I’d rather just type the order into the computer next to the deli?
What is the deal here? I can barely remember whether my kids want cereal or yogurt for breakfast when I asked them five minutes earlier. So, why would I expect a waiter serving several other tables to be able to do that?
At high-end restaurants, I realize that the waitstaff is expected to remember everything. As a friend who worked as a busgirl in what she called “a fine-dining establishment” during summers in college tells me, “It was definitely considered better not to write things down.” But I’m not taking the kids to Le Bernardin, so what gives?
Dan Smith, a spokesman for Chili’s assures me that “Writing down the order of every party — especially ones with a large number of guests — is an industry best practice.” No kidding! But I have to assume that this refusal to write things down is coming from someone higher up. How could it be so common otherwise?
Another friend who has worked on cookbooks says that the idea behind not writing down an order is to “suggest that you are the only thing that matters to the waiter. When it’s quite clear that is not the case.”
No matter how expensive the restaurant, I care much more about whether the food on my plate bears some resemblance to the food I asked for than about whether you’re making eye contact with me.
Indeed, I am beginning to wonder whether restaurants and retail establishments are purposefully making workers less competent as an excuse to bring greater automation.
How else to explain the experience I have had at least a dozen times at movie theaters? I order a small bag of popcorn and a small drink. A cashier asks (no doubt as he’s been instructed by his manager) whether I’d like to add more popcorn and more soda for some additional amount of money. When I say no thank you, he asks me what I want to order again.
Here, let me write it down for you.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is the author of “Got Religion?: How Churches, Mosques and Synagogues Can Bring Young People Back” (Templeton Press), out now.