Of Course Applebee's Is Going to Replace Waiters With Tablets

[TorchTheWitch]

92. I take it you've never waited tables before

Order taking is only a very small part of the job. Experienced waitstaff can also do it a hell of a lot faster than some customer fiddling with a machine, which makes the use of the machines in a sit down restaurant rather stupid.

I also don't think the self-serve checkouts in stores actually save the company from having to hire the same amount of employees. Every self-serve checkout station needs an attendant to deal with machine problems, customer ignorance of the machines, scanning large or heavy items, replacing bags, etc., and that one attendant with regular checkout line experience gets through the same or even less amount of customers for all the machines than they would for one single checkout line because a) customers are FAR FAR slower at checking out their own items than an experienced checkout employee, and b) they can't get attendant help immediately because the attendant has to help all of the customers using all of the machines all at the same time. Those attendants are also the same people that at other times work the regular checkout lines, so they aren't any cheaper for the company to pay either.

The only plus I can see for stores doing this is because the one thing everyone hates about shopping is waiting in the checkout line/doing the checkout process. Most people are willing to go through the self-checkout because even though it's a lot slower than a regular line due to the above, they'd rather be doing something than just standing in line waiting. In a restaurant though people go there for the purpose of being waited on. That's a whole lot of the point to a sit down restaurant - better and bigger variety of food than the average fast food restaurant that they can order specially (rice instead of potatoes, condiments on the side, cheddar instead of provolone, etc.) and because they WANT to be waited on. That's just the first reason why it's a stupid idea for a sit down restaurant.

A couple of other reasons why it's stupid... How is the machine secured? A group of people at a table are either going to have to assign one person to take everyone's order with the machine that's secured in one place at the table, or have to pass around a tablet that will have to be secured by a cord so it doesn't get stolen. How do the people at the table deal with a tablet attached to a security cord without the cord knocking over things on the table or the filthy dirty thing sliding across their silverware and whatever else is on the table already? Another thing is that everyone else that was at that table had their grubby hands on the machine, and who wants to be using it and then have to eat their finger foods without cleaning their hands first? This is also going to be a much more complicated process than using a store machine to checkout since all you do in a store is scan the bar code, put the items in a bag and pay. In a restaurant customers will have to learn how to use much the same sort of machine that restaurant employees use and that need to be trained to use because there is a HELL of a lot more one has to know.

The only thing that makes any sense about Applebee's using tablets for the ordering of food and drinks is if it's the WAITSTAFF that uses them instead of the paper pads they normally use to write orders on and then have to walk that paper to the kitchen to put in the order. And that's what I hope is Applebee's intention in using them.