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The Doorman's Fallacy in action

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Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#191

Post by kj4211cash »

recursivecaveat wrote: post #130

If you remember that hotel chain Sonder which went bankrupt last year, they had a zero-local-employees model: no front-desk, outsourced maintenance and housekeeping. I think they made the same mistake. Your typical interaction with the hotel receptionist is extremely formulaic. Many other hotels have replaced the sign-in process at least with a machine. That's most prominent in your mind, so its easy to assume that's…

I had a particularly bad experience with a hotel in Silicon Valley that had outsourced the front desk duties to remote workers. I was stuck outside in the rain, fighting a bad internet connection, trying to check-in. Probably saved them the space taken up by a front desk inside the hotel but I made a mental note never to use that hotel chain again.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#192

Post by mrweasel »

devindotcom wrote: post #12
rwmj wrote: post #5

What 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.

I actively refuse to use self checkout. A number of stores have reported customers to the police for incorrect scanning. These are honest mistakes and you're now "a know shoplifter". I primarily work with companies that require a clean record, that includes "No shoplifting".

Self checkout is taking away cashier jobs, annoying to use and comes with an uacceptable risk to me as the customer.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#193

Post by Telaneo »

irjustin wrote: post #68

I am on the other end of the spectrum. I enjoy QR ordering. I dislike talking to people. Upselling me is not a thing. I can take as long as I want. I don't have to flag/bother someone. No one screws it up except me. I see exactly what's on my bill.

I agree, but that's mostly just a reason to have the option, while also having the option of using paper menus.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#194

Post by trumpdong »

sublinear wrote: post #109
darth_avocado wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re equating ocasional inconveniences to what the entire experience was. I could also point to the current setup and say the same. The times I scan in self checkout and the machine malfunctions, needing a manager. The times I added the medical history myself but the nurse/doctor missed it because they themselves weren’t taking it. Every single time I have to walk back and forth during a meal because I now serve my…

> equating ocasional inconveniences to what the entire experience was This was highly dependent on the neighborhood you lived in. It still is to some extent. Full service is still around, but I wouldn't expect that in "the bad parts of town". You do not want those people doing those jobs, but now we're really heading somewhere politically incorrect and touching on systemic inequality.

Which people shouldn't do which jobs?

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#195

Post by EliRivers »

devindotcom wrote: post #12
rwmj wrote: post #5

What 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.

(I find ways to make it worth my while..)

I understand that somewhere is Australia is a supermarket which appears to be generating its own carrots in that it sells far more carrots than ever arrive, but is a black hole for parsnips; the store should be exploding with parsnips given the difference between amount delivered and amount sold, yet mysteriously there's just the one bin of parsnips visible.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#196

Post by mrweasel »

satvikpendem wrote: post #42
cactacea wrote: post #24

> But when 6 people simultaneously tried to pay their share of the bill, chaos ensued. I'm guessing the author has never worked as a server themselves... Is there any part of the world you can have a six top with individual checks when you didn't tell them up front to split the bill? As an American this just seems obvious to me but maybe the expectation is different in Dubai.

It's because we are Americans yes. When I was in Europe the server would give us the handheld payment device and we select which items we ordered and then they'd charge us. The author seems to not have this, the waiter should've gone through themselves. It was simply the wrong technology, not that technology was at fault.

The place where I seen splitting the bill for a large table work the absolute best has been in the US, but it seems restaurant dependent.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#197

Post by Telaneo »

Gravityloss wrote: post #182
Tarq0n wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labour was cheaper back then. Even valuable jobs can stop making sense if the costs outweigh them. That's the difficulty with automation making other sectors more efficient, wages get driven up while your productivity stays the same.

It still seems to me designing applications or web services is so hard that it's just easier to hire thousands of people to do customer service and having people to come physically to do things. The average corporation's business application or web page is absolutely terrible and a lot of non-technical users simply can not do business with it. Ie it is a hindrance for the businesses core reason of existence. Do the Q…

> It still seems to me designing applications or web services is so hard that it's just easier to hire thousands of people to do customer service and having people to come physically to do things.

I'd love for this to be true, but every business nowadays sees employees (except maybe whatever group is core to their business) as a giant cost centre. Every employee cut is money saved. Hence customer service consistently being shit, since it's an easy place to skimp on. Now, the doorman's fallacy could be applicable here; good customer service will create repeat buyers and good word of mouth, but I doubt you need to put that many people into it to make it good. Thousands has to be well past diminishing returns. Even if only 20% of people find the happy path in some stupid web app, that's potentially thousands of man-hours that customer service didn't have to provide, and thus a lot less employees you don't really need.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#198

Post by Telaneo »

makeitdouble wrote: post #128

> But when 6 people simultaneously tried to pay their share of the bill, chaos ensued. Hasn't that been a fact of life ? If anything, apps made it barely made easier through splitting either the whole bill equally or offer a bit by bit checking interface. Otherwise on the role of QR codes and online menu, it actually helps a lot for allergies as everyone can check their for each individual item and adjust accordingly…

The only times I've had splitting bills become a problem are with unreasonably large tables (10+), and at that point, you should be upfront about it before you place any orders, since that fixes the problem.

I assume it's a hard problem to solve if you don't have POS system keeping track though. If all you've got is pen and paper, it's probably better to just split the bill equally, assuming nobody had 6 40 USD cocktails. Or just have someone pay for the whole thing and settle it all in post.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#199

Post by Telaneo »

mrweasel wrote: post #192
devindotcom wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I actively refuse to use self checkout. A number of stores have reported customers to the police for incorrect scanning. These are honest mistakes and you're now "a know shoplifter". I primarily work with companies that require a clean record, that includes "No shoplifting". Self checkout is taking away cashier jobs, annoying to use and comes with an uacceptable risk to me as the customer.

> A number of stores have reported customers to the police for incorrect scanning. These are honest mistakes and you're now "a know shoplifter". I primarily work with companies that require a clean record, that includes "No shoplifting".

This sounds more like a 'horrible store' and 'authoritarian police' problem than a self-checkout problem.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#200

Post by gcanyon »

I'll be the contrarian and take the opposing position: this story -- the doorman fallacy itself, ignores the obvious counter-narrative:

   - physical menus are hard to update
   - physical menus are often too simple, requiring asking the server questions they've answered a dozen times before already, hurting their efficiency, or they are book-sized and hard to navigate.
   - physical menus aren't cleaned between uses, so you're touching everything the server touched, and the three people before you.
   - physical menus don't scale: if the restaurant is busy, you might have to share.
   - physical menus require more human time for the host/server to provide them to you.
   - physical menus aren't searchable.
   - Difficulty scanning the QR code *will* get better over time, obviously. 
   - Having to take turns is a user issue: it ignores how QR codes work (you don't have to be that close) and people will get used to it.
   - (edit to add) issues with divvying up the bill are software issues that will get better over time if demand is there. Does the author really think getting the server to split the bill is easier?
The Doorman Fallacy in general presents only one side of the issue, which is perfectly reasonable for the creator of the fallacy to do, but puts on us the requirement of considering the other side:

   - Having "a doorman" means having someone less than 1/4th of the time, or staffing 5 people (more like 6 since with 5 someone has to schedule/supervise).
   - When the doorman takes a break, no one gets in?
   - Some doormen go above and beyond, and are truly a joy to have around. Others are less so. Counting on the doorman being awesome is unfair to doormen in general.
   - An automated system is on 24/7 -- maybe not in the early days, technology isn't perfect, but how many people here remember the early days of cell phones, when you *called support to get refunds for dropped calls*?
   - An automated system can add or remove people from the authorized list easily and remotely, and not make mistakes.
That's enough contrarianism for this morning...
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