McDonalds and dependance on computers

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A friend of mine went into McDonalds yesterday and tried to order a quarterpounder (with cheese) The button for "quarterpounder" on the register was broken though. No matter how hard the cashier pressed the button, the order wouldn't appear on the screen. She informed my friend, "I'm sorry, the button's broken, you'll have to order something else."

Inquiry on my friends part revealed that they did in fact have quarterpounders in stock, but they couldn't sell them unless it was rung up on the register. It required the assistance of a manager before my friend could get his quarterpounder.

Ridiculous.

-- John Ainsworth (ainsje00@wfu.edu), December 09, 1999

Answers

ROTFLMAO

-- Duke 1983 (Duke1983@AOL.com), December 09, 1999.

I need a color pallette. That last post didn't look like magenta to me. At least not how I remember it in the Crayola Box!

Practicing my HTML commands...hope y'all can bear with me!

-- Duke 1983 (Duke1983@AOL.com), December 09, 1999.


Check out the earlier post today on Pizza Hut. Seems fast food is slowing down.

-- Fred Remington (ira@texfiles.com), December 09, 1999.

That, and the person probably didn't want to exert the effort to manually figure out the total and the change.

Alot of these systems are icon-based. Has anyone seen the new systems that display the number of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, dollars, fivers and ten spots owed back to the customer?

IT BLEW MY MIND when I first saw this. The person in front of me had three dollars coming back to her plus change, and I witnessed the attendant actually pointing to the dollar icons on screen, counting quietly to himself: "1...2...3".... then he looked down at the tender, then back up, then back down again...that really convinced me to start supporting local cafes and small restaurants more, LOL.

We make these programs user-friendly, but I sense that by doing this, we're helping to dumb down the population. However, to make things more user-friendly requires more complexity on the back-end and the coding itself, which requires in-depth analytical thinking.

Being a programmer, I'm finding more demand for icon-based apps...guess fewer people want to think or type these days. Point and click yer way to success, at least for now. When voice recognition becomes ubiquitous, it'll really get interesting...

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), December 09, 1999.


Do you know what they call a QuarterPounder with cheese in France?

-- dw (y2k@outhere.com), December 09, 1999.


No, dw, what do they call a QuarterPounder with cheese in France? (I love playing straight man...)

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), December 09, 1999.

I worked in a (corporation owned) pizza restaurant (not Pizza Hut) when they went to a new computerized ordering system. We were testing it before it was distributed to all of the other stores. It crashed more than it stayed up. I was the only person on duty at times who knew how to hand write orders and make change in my head. I don't remember how I got the register open, but I kept it jammed open and continued to drop $20's and checks into the safe as I received them. It was ridiculous and it went on for months. I don't know if the system is y2k compliant or not. None of the functions seemed to be date-dependent other than the date of sale in the Z-readings.

-- helen (sstaten@fullnet.net), December 09, 1999.

Time, will that voice recognition require standard English, or will the systems have to recognize ebonics, spanglish, asian Indian, Korean, Iranian ... etc. accents? Until systems can recognize all those and more, rotsaruck! :-)

-- A (A@AisA.com), December 09, 1999.

you've furthered my point, A :-)

If they reach the ability to make it a cost-effective solution for, setting up such a system to work under such loose parameters regarding background noise, diction and voice inflection will be "very interesting".

It sounds daunting, but they are striving towards it...how fast they progress depends a lot on what happens in the coming months.

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), December 09, 1999.


testing (bold)asdfsdaf(bold)

-- so (so@so.so), December 09, 1999.


>What do they call a QuarterPounder with cheese in France?

A Royale with cheese; because of the metric system.

It was a good movie, wasn't it?

-- John Ainsworth (ainsje00@wfu.edu), December 09, 1999.


About 8 years ago I did some programming work for McDonalds. They basically hire people who cannot get work ANYWHERE else. The little dollar bill icons on the screen (and the 'burger' buttons) are there to keep the lines moving. If you make it too complicated the cashiers get confused and have to call the manager over, slowing everything and everyone down.

Personally I'd rather have these folks collecting a paycheck than sitting at home collecting unemployment or welfare...

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), December 09, 1999.


TECH32 -

I agree with you completely about people who work in McDonalds. God bless 'em for doing hard, honest work for very little pay. I suppose my point was that there is in many places an unhealthy reliance on computers. If the computer can't do something then it can't be done. Y2K is going to cause some problems with computers, and people with that kind of attitude will exacerbate any problems caused by y2k. Just my 2 cents.

-- John Ainsworth (ainsje00@wfu.edu), December 10, 1999.


John;

Thank you. "A Royale with cheese" DOES make Chez McDonald's sound almost good. (Is it true that you can also get wine with your Royale in France? And yes, I did like the movie.)

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), December 10, 1999.


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