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McDonald’s, Meet McPathogens

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Re: McDonald’s, Meet McPathogens

#3

Post by deft »

McDonald's outsourced the work traditionally done by their staff to the customer. Their staff is forced to wash their hands at common intervals, the general public isn't. Interesting article :)

Re: McDonald’s, Meet McPathogens

#4

Post by vortico »

There's a probability for picking up infections for every object you touch, which is proportional to the number of hands that touched it prior to your operation. If this is a significant problem compared to human cashiers, there's an easy fix that is the same with bathrooms and tables: require that janitors on duty sanitize them every X hours.

Also, I've used automatic ordering touch screens before and didn't have any difficulty. I feel that the employee's response "She sighed, looked me in the eye, and confessed “Everybody does.”" is exaggerated. What she meant was probably "It's super easy but some customers still can't get it, so I will sympathize with you because saying 'no, it's easy' would be rude."

Re: McDonald’s, Meet McPathogens

#5

Post by zck »

> It’s so much easier to order my Egg McMuffin and black coffee from a human behind the counter than to poke my index finger through a decision tree on the self-order kiosk.

I disagree. When I've been to McDonald's (a few times a year), I find the kiosks easier.

1. There's rarely a line, even when there's a line to order at the counter.

2. Things are more discoverable. If you already know exactly what you want, it is probably faster to order with a human. But if you're not sure, the overhead menu boards are not so easy to work with; they are now screens that move and don't show all the menu at one time. It also isn't always obvious what prices are.

3. Things are easier to customize. The kiosk says exactly what you can add or remove. For example, recently I found out through a Shake Shack kiosk that you can add lettuce to a spicy chicken sandwich, or make it extra spicy and remove pickles. A human cashier might suggest one of those things, but not all of them.

4. There's no pressure to move along. You're not bothering anyone by looking through the options in the kiosk. However, if you stop for ten seconds while ordering at the counter to try to figure out if you're in a quarter pounder or a crispy chicken sandwich mood, it feels like you're bothering the cashier.

Re: McDonald’s, Meet McPathogens

#7

Post by fhbdukfrh »

This is not about making your experience "more enjoyable" it is a direct response to wage increases that directly target these workers and the company responding. Same with the grocery store. Or mobile ordering from Starbucks, or using an ATM. The experience ranges from much better (ATMs) to much, much worse (grocery stores) , but the only way they will "fail" is if everyone forgoes their big mac to go somewhere else and pay more for human cashiers. That is not going to happen.

Re: McDonald’s, Meet McPathogens

#10

Post by fhbdukfrh »

Tihiy wrote: post #2

Bullshit. Nobody ever wants to talk with another human being and line up to touch kiosks. You contact far more pathogens by touching public handrails and doorknobs.

If this is a real problem (of which I'm doubtful) McDonalds, being one of the most responsive large companies in the world, will fix it first by adding to human janitorial duties and soon after have the kiosk self clean, or remove it and push everyone to the my McD app on their own, filthy phone
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