Ordering Kiosks at McDonald's

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in over 2 years. I went inside a McDonald's to eat. Oh, I've bought food at their drive-thru occasionally. That McRib I tried for the first time 12 months ago didn't just magically appear on a plate in my dining room, after all. And I've had drive-thru food at least twice more since then— though not McRibs. They just came back after dropping off the menu for 11 months but they aren't that good. Anyway, McRibs— or even any other McDonald's foods— aren't what I'm here to write about today. I'm writing about ordering at McDonald's.

McDonald's has shifted from having traditional cashiers take orders to having customers enter their own orders through self-service kiosks. I don't know how widely that's been rolled out everywhere, but started appearing at the McD's restaurants in my area 2 years ago, and I saw it in a few other areas a few years before that.

A lot of people might say, "Ooh, self service ordering. That's so much easier!" Except it's not. Self-service ordering took much longer than ordering from a cashier.

My order at McDonald's could have been about as short as this:

"Two McDoubles... no pickle... medium fries... and a medium Diet Coke. For here." Then I pay.

...That's with a traditional, human order-taker. With the self-serve kiosk it went like this:

I want 2 McDoubles. They're under "sandwiches". Okay, press for 1. Press again for 2. Save. Keep ordering. Hmm, I want no pickles. Okay, "Modify order". No, not that. Back. Okay, "Customize order." No pickles. Save. No, not "Light pickles". Customize order. Reduce pickles. Save. No, I want both without pickles. Customize order. Press "-" next to "Pickles" twice. Save. Order more. Fries. Medium Fries. Save. Order more. Drinks. Medium drink. Diet Coke. Save. Complete order. For here. Grab table tent. Enter number 17 from table tent. Pay now. Pay with credit card. Tap credit card. Didn't work; tap credit card again. Still didn't work. Put credit card away, pull out my other card, tap. No receipt. Okay, I'll go sit down.

It took me about 5 times as long as ordering used to. And that's supposed to be an improvement? ...Well, it kind of is because McDonald's ability to hire and train people capable of taking orders and getting them correct went markedly down hill several years ago. But still, using the kiosk took about twice as long as repeating my order 3x to a marginally employable cashier.

Of course, the point of these kiosks isn't improving thingst for me, the customer. It's an improvement for the store's operational cost. The kiosks allow them to employ fewer people. Even at minimum wage that adds up. Minimum wage in Mountain View is currently $16.30, rising to $17.10 January 1. The kiosks are an example of what we get when minimum wages rise and the cost of automation technology drops.

WoT S1E5: Blood Calls Blood

In S1E5 of the Wheel of Time streaming series, "Blood Calls Blood", the group begins to reunite in Tar Valon. This episode continues the weirdness of things being omitted, changed, or moved out of place from the story in the books. For example, though the storyline is about 2/3 of the way through book 1 right now, the group never went to Tar Valon in book 1!

Going on that theme, here are Five Things that are missing or misplaced— and whether that's good or not, and what it likely means:

1) The Whitecloaks are really evil

In S1E5 we see the Whitecloaks again. The detachment led by Eamon Valda, the mustache-twirling bad guy introduced in S1E2, ( episode spoiler )

What's out of place here? It's not that the Children of the Light are basically evil people acting supposedly in the name of good. That's book canon, too. The streaming series just puts a much sharper edge on that by changing the facts of the situation. In the books, ( book 1 spoiler )

The book scene paints the Whitecloaks, at this stage, as unsympathetic but not outright evil. Here, they're outright evil. And the show is spending a lot of screen time to make that point. For what? I wonder. In the books the Whitecloaks are frankly just nuisances; their own bullshit limits their effectiveness. (At least up through book 7, which is where I stopped reading years ago.) Giving them so much screen time signals a promotion to major antagonists. Maybe that's their new role in the story because so many other antagonists haven't been introduced yet and/or will never be?

2) Low-budget Loial

This isn't a thing that's missing or misplaced, but I've just got to say I am disappointed by the visual portrayal of Loial. In the books, Loial, an Ogier, is almost 10 feet tall. Here he's just an actor with platform shoes and a bunch of latex on his face.

Showrunner Rafe Judkins's standard reply on things like this is that CGI is too expensive to be applied in every video frame where a character is on-screen. Yeah, I get it, CGI is expensive, but movies operating with 10-years-ago and even 20-years-ago technology— which was way more expensive for what it was able to do— managed to do it well... and often without CGI. Harry Potter movies made Hagrid look 8 feet tall mostly through costuming and camera tricks. Lord of the Rings did the same to make the Hobbits look 3 feet tall. Here we've got Loial sporting the same level of cinematic technology as 1980s Star Trek: The Next Generation with Klingons with latex on their foreheads.

3) Rand knows nothing about swords

Rand's toting around the sword he took from his father in S1E1. Except he knows nothing about it and he's never practiced using it. In the books the sword is... let's just say, a weapon with its own backstory... and Lan starts drilling Rand on how to fight with it right away. Rand becoming an expert swordsman is important because his character arc has him having to fight lots of skilled warriors 1:1 to survive. Are the writers of the streaming series just going to leave all that out? I suppose they could. But if they keep it in by suddenly going, "Oh, yeah, one day Rand wakes up and is a master of the katana, because mAgIc!1!" I'm going to be disappointed at such a cheap device.

4) More time spent on Kerene and Stepin

Several minutes of screen time in this episode extend the story arc from S1E4 of Kerene Sedai and her warder, Stepin. Here, ( episode spoiler )

Again, the question is why is this here? Why spend so much time on this? This is barely even side-plot level stuff; it's flavor text, really. It's not relevant to the central plot of the story, which the streaming series is leaving out an increasingly alarming amount of stuff relevant to.

5) Skipped Caemlyn. Next place: Fal Dara?

I mentioned above the show is diverging from the books by bringing the group to Tar Valon and the White Tower. At this point in the books— i.e., about 2/3 of the way through book 1— they reunite in Caemlyn, the capital city of Andor, not the White Tower. Caemlyn is where they meet Loial. They also meet Elayne, the crown princess of Andor, her two half-brothers Gawyn and Galad, Queen Morgase of Andor, and the queen's major general, Gareth Byrne. They are all important characters later on in the story. That's a lot of characters not to introduce! Are some of them not appearing in this series now?

Caemlyn is also the place where, in the books, Moiraine says, "We've got to hurry this thing up." It's like she knows there's only 1/3 of the book left and it's time to start building toward the climax. 😂  "To the Borderlands!" she commands. (Okay, I'm paraphrasing these quotes. 🤣)

I figure the streaming series is tracking for the season 1 finale to align with the end of book 1, "The Eye of the World". At the breakneck pace they've been going they could do that. They'll have to get going from Tar Valon soon. Will Moiraine say, "To the Borderlands!" in S1E6? Will they go to Fal Dara? Or will they skip Fal Dara in the name of sets for minor locations being too expensive to build and go straight to the Blight?