Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

There's a meme that when you were a kid, getting to eat at McDonald's was a treat; but now, as an adult, it's a fail. I was reminded of that last night when I ate at a McDonald's. It was my first time eating at one in over a year, I think. And it reminded me why I eat there less than once a year now.

First, a brief stroll down memory lane. When I was a kid, a family visit to McDonald's once every week or two was a treat. There were actually other fast food restaurants I liked better, but while I grumbled I never said "No" to the golden arches.

When I turned 17 and was more able to choose where to dine— as I was more often doing it on my own and not on my parents' dime— I steered away from McDonald's because of their racist advertising and their ability to rot the brains of my friends and all my younger sisters. Just mention the word "McDonald's" in a conversation, and they'd break out in song with one of the advertising jingles. It was like kids had been turned into  kids those dolls with a string on their back you could pull to make them say a recorded line. Or Pavlov's dogs slobbering at the chime of a bell.

But it wasn't all fast food I was frustrated about, just McDonald's. My last two years of college, for example, there was a Wendy's near my house that I ate at a few times a week. So the meme of then-vs-now still holds when read as "Going to a fast food restaurant" vs. specifically "Going to McDonald's."

But there's also an aspect to the then-vs-now comparison in which McDonald's, specifically, is a fail. I experienced that when I ate at one last night.

Put simply, McDonald's in nowhere near as enjoyable as it used to be. The food just isn't as good. The meat patties in the burgers look and taste like what school lunch cafeteria burgers used to be. Their look and texture both scream "filler", and the texture and taste both say "Cooked somewhere else, then reheated here."

The ordering experience is a fail, too. McDonald's steers customers heavily to ordering via computerized kiosks instead of from a human. I wrote a few years ago about how frustrating using McDonald's ordering kiosks is. Four years later it hasn't improved any. In fact it's gotten subjectively worse because now there's the concern the company is applying AI to manipulate the choices and prices presented to us in the menu to get us to spend more.

Finally, the whole customer experience at McDonald's is irritating— if you're savvy to the signs of cost-cutting. The ordering kiosks are one element of it. McDonald's wants to be able to staff fewer people relative to the number of orders, and eliminate the need for training humans to handle the complexity of taking orders from customers.

Then there's the recent removal of the self-serve soda fountains. Years ago they became commonplace as fast food restaurants sought to eliminate one of the tasks that took up employees' time. Now corporate has decided that self-serve refills let people drink too much, so they've moved it back behind the counter— where, BTW, drink filling is now completely automated. An employee just presses one button and everything— new cup, ice, filled with soda— is done by a robot.

The final insult is the signs in the dining room informing customers that there's a 20 minute limit to eat our food and get out. I know, this is a case of we-can't-have-nice-things because a small number of bad actors wrecked it for the rest of us. Like, I imagine corporate felt there were too many people buying a $1 cup of coffee and camping out at a table for 4 hours slurping up unlimited self-serve refills. But, gosh, what if I have an hour for my lunch break and would like to spend 40 minutes not just eating my food slowly but also relaxing while I read news and social media for a bit before returning to work. Lingering just a bit over lunch, when my schedule permits, has always been one of my little pleasures. Now the Man is warning me, "Don't make me tap the sign!"

Enshittification is coming to fast food restaurants. The term coined to describe an unfortunate trend in online services and social media platforms certainly applies to other businesses as well. Anytime a business worsens its customer experience and also harms employee conditions or advertisers' value in pursuit of greater profits, it's enshittification.

I was reminded of the latest front in restaurant enshittification when I visited a local fast food restaurant yesterday. It had been closed for renovations for a few weeks. The way the windows were all papered over with only a vague "CLOSED" banner displayed, I was concerned it had gone out of business. But it reopened... and the only renovation I could spot, other than a fresh, more garish coat of paint on the outside, was the replacement of traditional cash registers with ordering kiosks.



In fact now there is no line to order from a human at this restaurant. But that didn't stop the majority of the customers from calling one of the employees over— the one whom I recognize from past visits as the primary cashier— to enter their orders because they couldn't figure out how to use the kiosks.

Replacing human cashiers with ordering kiosks is not new. I first saw it in a US fast food restaurant about 10 years ago. It's only in recent years, perhaps spurred on by pandemic-driven changes, that I've seen it become widespread. Yesterday's encounter was just the latest example... and the crummy experience I saw most customers— plus a few of the staff— having reminded me why it's enshittification.

I've been using self-serve kiosks in some places for a while now without much trouble. For example, I've accepted self-checkout at Safeway for years already. I can scan my groceries quickly there, and I like the fact that I can see the cost for each item appear clearly on the screen as I go. That's important because I'm a discount shopper, and Safeway has moved to a pricing model where regular prices are inflated and things are often only worth buying when they're on sale. Oh, but you have to be a member, enter your membership number, and have selected the digital coupon in the app before checkout to get the best price. So, in a sense what happened is that Safeway enshittified their pricing, and self-checkout helps mitigate the frustration with that. 😡

This restaurant's use of kiosks enshittifies the customer experience for many because the kiosks are just too hard to navigate. To order food you have to understand where what you want might appear in a hierarchical menu. At the top level there are too many choices: "Meals", "Chicken", "Burritos", "Specials", etc. What if you want a chicken burrito meal; which sub-menu is that in? What if you don't know what you want?  I was successful with my order because I did know exactly what I want. Though as I noted with a McDonald's ordering kiosk a few years ago, punching tons of on-screen prompts takes at least 5x as long as ordering from an even modestly trained human employee. And more than half of the customers around me yesterday gave up and demanded human help.

BTW, don't assume that customers who give up and demand human help equates to "Boomers can't handle technology". Yeah, the two Boomers in the restaurant refused to use the kiosks... loudly. 😅 But also refusing to use them were a variety of Gen X and Millennial aged adults. I think one issue might be that even though the kiosks can display options in both English and Spanish at this restaurant, many of the clientele are construction laborers (obvious because they drive up in work trucks and wear work clothes) who might be functionally illiterate. Asking adults to use computers is tough when they may have a 4th grade education or less.

Tipping is getting ridiculous.

If you follow news media at all that's probably not a new sentiment. In my newsfeed, at least, I've seen a handful of articles with that headlines like that over the past few months.

Tipping, which is already an archaic practice sadly enshrined in employment law in much of the US, grew during the Coronavirus pandemic. People were thankful for restaurants, bars, hair salons, etc. that reopened early, and for the generally poorly paid employees who risked their health to work there. Norms for tipping increased, both in size of tip given and which jobs were considered tippable.

As the pandemic has faded into the rearview mirror changes in tipping have not. Arguably they've accelerated. Things the articles talk about, and which many people have noticed when buying food at restaurants, is that point-of-sale (POS) terminals prompt for tips in more places now— and the prompted amounts are larger, too. What was once 10%-15%-18% became 15%-18%-20%, and now even prompts like 18%-20%-25% are not uncommon.

More frustratingly, these inflated tipping rates are for order at the counter service. Once upon a time— by which I mean, like, four years ago— tipping in restaurants was understood as being for table service. Now it's built into the payment process even for restaurants where you wait in line, order from the cashier, and then wait for your own food... oh, and clean your own table when you're done.

The most outrageous example of tipping prompts I've heard of is grocery stores adding them at self checkout machines. The staff is literally doing nothing to assist you. You've serving yourself... and you're supposed to tip someone else 25%?!

I haven't seen that self checkout tipping nonsense in person, but I did see encounter a tipping prompt a few days ago that was more annoying than usual. I was at a restaurant that has chosen to do away with even having staff take your order. The cash register is kind of blocked off, with a self-service kiosk in front of it. Signs instruct customers to order from the kiosks. The staff in the cooking area didn't even acknowledge my presence as a customer. I greeted them and they ignored me. Then, when the tipping prompt came in the POS system, "skip" or "no tip" wasn't even an option! I had to press the button for "custom tip" then enter zero. All for zero service! And of course the prompts were 18-20-25%. For a restaurant where the employees don't even stop chatting amongst themselves or reading their phones to say, "Hi! Thanks for coming in."