Waffle House's Magic Marker System • Hacker News Board

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#161

Post by TheGRS » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 8:03 PM UTC

alexpotato wrote: post #130

TheGRS wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still would take a lot of training to get right. Its not intuitive. And I can certainly find a lot of humor in how its implemented.

If you have a system with low turnover of staff then intuitive is not the goal. The goal is to efficiently transfer information with additional steps in a common language. A similar example is the hand signals from the old trading exchange floors [1]. The point wasn't for it to be easy to learn. The point was to make it easy to transfer visual information across a very loud and boisterous place. Plus, you had to do i…

We're talking about Waffle House staff here so I'd be surprised if the turnover was low.

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#162

Post by thomaslord » Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 11:52 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #157

jiveturkey wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't you just be able to taste the difference, and then not drink it?

I've long wondered about this sort of thing. I have friends who drink no-sugar drinks, but I can't stand them. Even the ones everyone says are fantastic taste bad to me. I wonder if there's not some sort of genetic connection influencing how some non-sugar sweeteners taste, much like the genetic link with cilantro tasting terrible for some. Might the commenter really not be able to taste the difference? To me, it wou…

It might also have something to do with acquired taste - maybe people who can tolerate artificial sweeteners have simply gotten used to the weird flavors they add and don't taste them anymore?

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#163

Post by madcaptenor » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 2:44 PM UTC

notaustinpowers wrote: post #151

madcaptenor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds possible, but where is it?

They're on Chamblee Tucker Road right off of I-85 in NE Atlanta. Here's a screenshot from Google Maps: https://ibb.co/0tdBRR1

Now that I think about it I actually used to drive past them sometimes! Only one of them shows up on Waffle House's own map, though.

Here's an article talking about double Waffle Houses, from 2019, when the older of the two at Buford Highway / I-285 closed: https://www.tonetoatl.com/2019/07/Waffle-House-Closed-Buford... - they mention the pair on Chamblee-Tucker. Apparently one is catering-only, which probably explains why it doesn't show on the map. They also mention pairs that used to exist at Clairmont Road near I-85 and Lawrenceville Highway near I-285. Apparently WH is trying to reduce the number of these.

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#164

Post by madcaptenor » Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 2:45 PM UTC

ranger207 wrote: post #129

jrochkind1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you decide which one to enter?

IIRC one of them is for catering only

There's a pair off of I-85 just north of Atlanta like that (see other comments to that post), so yeah, it wouldn't surprise me. Do both of them show up on Waffle House's map? It looks like they don't put the catering-only locations there - I guess they don't want people showing up?

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#165

Post by jimbob45 » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 3:52 AM UTC

stets wrote: post #6

jimbob45 wrote: post #3

[flagged]

C'mon. Super pretentious viewpoint to think that employees at Waffle House are illiterate enough that they can't assemble orders without symbols.

It wasn’t my original thought. That’s been the popular justification on Reddit for the system. Makes sense considering WH is a southern-centric restaurant and many in the south would still have struggled with literacy circa 1955 when it was founded.

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#166

Post by ValentineC » Thu, Mar 21, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

jiveturkey wrote: post #147

ValentineC wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who tries to minimise my sugar intake, one of my nightmares is getting served a non-diet drink by accident, because one of the lids gets pressed wrongly along the way. I wonder if there's technology out there for cheap sugar testing sticks… huh, it looks like a company finally launched like that in 2021.

Wouldn't you just be able to taste the difference, and then not drink it?

I don't eat fast food or drink normal/diet soda enough to taste the difference, and the difference got even smaller when McDonald's in my country moved away from Coke Light/Diet Coke, and only sold Coke Zero as the no-sugar alternative.