When a restaurant pushes me to a QR code I now outright say that I find them "insulting."
Granted, where I live e-menus generally haven't taken off in sit-down restaurants, so it's very easy to push back on nonsense like this.
The Doorman's Fallacy in action
11–20 of 326 posts
Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action
#12What the article misses is that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user. It's the same thing with sending parcels, where I must now sit on my computer at home filling in a complicated online form and printing out my own labels. This takes me like 30 minutes, but saves time and money for the Post Office (not for me!) There's no downside for the company here, especially when they ar…
Don't forget self check out at the grocery store. I don't mind personally (I find ways to make it worth my while..) but it's a version of the same thing. Shifting labor under the guise of convenience. Like all the other versions of this, the savings are absorbed by the company, not passed on to the consumer. It's rare that the opposite happens.
Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action
#13I agree, but multiple people can scan a QR code simultaneously.
> multiple people can scan a QR code simultaneously
If it's large enough, and posted in a place where people sitting around a table can all see it clearly.
Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action
#14What the article misses is that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user. It's the same thing with sending parcels, where I must now sit on my computer at home filling in a complicated online form and printing out my own labels. This takes me like 30 minutes, but saves time and money for the Post Office (not for me!) There's no downside for the company here, especially when they ar…
I don’t know which country you’re in (and don’t disagree with you) but even if the estimate of 30 minutes to shipping labels were accurate, that would still be a net win where I am in Texas - the line at the post office is regularly longer than that.
Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action
#15People have now clung on to doorman's fallacy as a way to justify keeping outdated jobs around.
There should be a new fallacy named for this phenomenon otherwise we would have people justifying having travel agents jobs and translator jobs being protected.
Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action
#16What the article misses is that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user. It's the same thing with sending parcels, where I must now sit on my computer at home filling in a complicated online form and printing out my own labels. This takes me like 30 minutes, but saves time and money for the Post Office (not for me!) There's no downside for the company here, especially when they ar…
> that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user.
And somehow things are more expensive than ever. Self checkouts, order at the counter, bussing your own table, assembling your own furniture, filling out your or your pet’s medical history at a hospital, shipping labels (you mentioned this) and so much more. It’s a form of free labor that somehow society is okay with.
Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action
#17I agree, but multiple people can scan a QR code simultaneously.
> multiple people can scan a QR code simultaneously If it's large enough, and posted in a place where people sitting around a table can all see it clearly.
I'm just always surprised when people place their entire phone over the code, thinking it needs to fill the screen, when they scan pretty well from a couple feet away.
Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action
#18To me this sounds more like the Icarus Fallacy: "The lesson of isn't don't fly close to the sun, it's make better fucking wings."
Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action
#19What the article misses is that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user. It's the same thing with sending parcels, where I must now sit on my computer at home filling in a complicated online form and printing out my own labels. This takes me like 30 minutes, but saves time and money for the Post Office (not for me!) There's no downside for the company here, especially when they ar…
Don't forget self check out at the grocery store. I don't mind personally (I find ways to make it worth my while..) but it's a version of the same thing. Shifting labor under the guise of convenience. Like all the other versions of this, the savings are absorbed by the company, not passed on to the consumer. It's rare that the opposite happens.
My supermarket has the handheld scanners and they are a game changer. They fit handily into the trolley if you want and you just scan stuff as you go. If you want 8 of something, you can just tap the item and increase the quantity, none of the having to scan each one and add it carefully to the bagging area, etc... And best of all, at the end you just scan a self checkout screen (and they have special ones as well with no bagging area and no queue, but you can use the normal ones if the queue is shorter), so you scan the screen, click pay, click pay by card and hold your card on the machine. Done. Takes about 15 seconds all in, and the queues on those machines are basically non-existant as a result.
Best of all is that you put your stuff directly into your bags as you're shopping so there's no frantic packing stage.
Oh, and maybe Decathlon deserve a special mention here for their self-service checkouts. Every item has an RFID price tag usually sown into the care labels of their own-brand products. They don't have a self-scan machine, handheld or otherwise, you just drop everything you picked up into the box, it scans all the RFID tags and makes sure the weight is correct, and it's all done.
Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action
#20What the article misses is that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user. It's the same thing with sending parcels, where I must now sit on my computer at home filling in a complicated online form and printing out my own labels. This takes me like 30 minutes, but saves time and money for the Post Office (not for me!) There's no downside for the company here, especially when they ar…
I don’t know which country you’re in (and don’t disagree with you) but even if the estimate of 30 minutes to shipping labels were accurate, that would still be a net win where I am in Texas - the line at the post office is regularly longer than that.
Because staffing can/has be/been reduced since they made it possible for people to print their own labels. They aren't interested in making the queues faster.