Comment by Barrin92
6 years ago
I honestly don't know if I'm living in a different world than everyone else but I've been ordering food and taking cabs all my life and I've never had to deal with any friction. Like, you call the pizzeria, tell them what you want and then some college student delivers your stuff, and if you order for more than 20 bucks it doesn't cost you anything. Not even being facetious, but what problem do these apps solve?
I also don't know how "not having to talk to someone" is a perk.
I bet you have the same accent as most of the people you deal with. I do not, having moved halfway around the world, and doing things over the phone is often surprisingly painful.
I dunno, even at physical restaurants or cafes I often have issues where they didn't hear my order correctly. Just today I had a guy repeat my order (thank you to people who do this, it's the only way) and he'd forgotten the cheese. Phone calls to ethnic restaurants (as with GP, no offense intended) are another layer of trouble. With my local noisy Indonesian restaurant we had a 50% miss rate on our orders so usually just go in person now.
Written text is just so much nicer. And I can send the link to family still in the office or whatever and co-ordinate.
I almost never have problems making custom food orders in the USA, even when the order taker is not a native English speaker.
"I'd like a cheeseburger, only lettuce and ketchup."
But when I visited Australia, I had a much harder time placing the same order. Most of the order takers there were not native English speakers, and I learned pretty quickly that the difference between American English and Australian English was bigger than I realized.
Language is interesting.
Growing up as a kid in a small town I thought I knew what Chinese people sounded like, but they were mostly Australian born (China wasn't really "open" at the time). Going to France and the USA and hearing their accents was confusing. It was close enough to be familiar yet very different at the same time since the same base accent got mixed up in different ways.
Anyway, yeah. I'm also a soft speaker which is my problem, but it doesn't mean that's not a valid reason to prefer text! I don't avoid speaking to people, I just prefer not to and I find it simpler and more certain I'll get what I need that way. Others want to pick up a phone.
DD, UberEats and the like screw up orders too. I've had a few errors even though "i didnt have to talk to anyone"
At least you get an audit trail ;)
I think it's only happened a couple of times in my few decades but dealing with "Where is the X?" "You didn't order that!" is annoying.
Also a fan of the Chinese restaurants like Din Tai Fung with the menu that you pass around and everyone ticks off what they want. It's so easy to coordinate a group of 10 that way.
> taking cabs
It all depends on where you're hailing and where you're going to. Also on what you look like. Drivers don't like some locations and appearances.
> I also don't know how "not having to talk to someone" is a perk.
For us introverts it is.
It is indeed a perk for an introvert like me, but having to chose between empathy for another human and my discomfort, I prefer the former.
Yes, it will cause me anxiety to talk to someone, and go pickup an order. But if I was to avoid that and use an app, I'd be dipping my hand into their pockets and stealing money for a middleman. So I end up calling my preferred restaurant and picking it up myself.
I also struggle with phone calls (or even ordering in house). Apart from the empathy side that you mention my reasoning is also that confronting the anxiety and getting used to it is the only way to manage it.
I rather face the discomfort from time to time and learn to handle it than being paralised in situations when there's no other way and you can't avoid it.
But are you stealing money for a middleman? From what I can tell, the delivery is paid from a mix of an extra fee for the customer and some cash from investors, not from the restaurants.
I'm an introvert and please don't include me in the tiny subset of introverts who consider this a perk.
There's a spectrum within introversion, and this sounds more on the edge of that spectrum.
Full disclaimer: I too originally had trouble with calling to order pizza. But in retrospect it wasn't introversion: I just wasn't used to initiating conversations with strangers on the phone. The solution was trivial: Script the "opening lines" before calling. After a few of these, it all became natural.
If the vendor can just get it right with minimal interaction on my part, I usually prefer not to interact.
In my experience, though, this is rarely true of restaurants, especially the less expensive ones. I usually won't even do drive-through, under the experience-informed observation that they're less likely to mess it up if they know I'll be standing at the counter checking their work.
This is a misunderstanding of what it means to be an introvert. Introverts are capable of talking to people. The inability or disinclination to place an order for food delivery is a sign that you are disabled, not introverted.
Yeah, it seems like you didn't grow up in a big city?
"Not having to talk to someone" is generally a perk for introverts.
Being able to get food delivered from places that don't deliver.
I don't think the apps really add anything substantial for restaurants that have their own delivery network.
Not even being able to talk to somebody is a negative feature if you have dietary restrictions. A friend is vegan, and she often skips over items which could be vegan with a slight substitution which is not offered via the app, but which would be easy to ask for if she could just talk to a human.