Comment by hnick
6 years ago
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.