Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Doorman's Fallacy in action

rozumem.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 326 posts

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#231

Post by wodenokoto »

leoedin wrote: post #221
wodenokoto wrote: post #105

I live in Dubai and in my experience the main reason why they want you to pay with QR is because the QR company pushes a service fee on guests and some times even a default tip (tipping is not common here, but I’m sure staff is underpaid because every service company that uses an app pushes you to leave a tip) that they can’t charge if you pay directly to the restaurant. Just ask the staff to bring the CC machine. As…

Is it a Dubai thing that everyone's parking expires unexpectedly in 2 minutes? I didn't really understand that - perhaps a lack of local knowledge.

I think the setting is that they are a group of people who paid for parking to go to yoga and now they are also having a meal, so everyone in the group stayed longer than planned.

Public parking is prepaid, usually via the official RTA app.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#233

Post by philipallstar »

Tarq0n wrote: post #159
benj111 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But doormen became a thing, so the value was understood. We have now lost that knowledge. I suppose it's like enshittification. It's presented as a progression to a new worse thing when it's more of a Dark Age of 'soft' knowledge.

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.

> That's the difficulty with automation making other sectors more efficient, wages get driven up while your productivity stays the same.

The root cause of that is minimum wage - if you raise it then automation becomes important, and where you can't automate it drives up prices of essential goods. So a doorman is either automated away or needs a raise to afford to live.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#234

Post by anticorporate »

khernandezrt wrote: post #232

This may be Doormans fallacy, but it is a bad example. It just sounds like you're not used to using QR code menus. Once people get used to QR code menus we will see its benefits over traditional menus.

I'm unclear how getting used to QR code menus will alleviate the author's primary complaint that he would rather not use his phone during the meal and instead be present with the people there.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#235

Post by jen20 »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #20
jen20 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unless they're rebuilt the post office (they haven't, unless they went with "70s retro" as the design aesthetic!), every counter is normally manned.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#236

Post by darth_avocado »

mhb wrote: post #210
darth_avocado wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh. Corporate profits are at all time highs. The idea that somehow if corporations replace workers or pay them less, will somehow ensure we see smaller price increases as consumers is the fallacy that’s brought us here in the first place. Trying to make this a political discussion is pointless. In-n-out hires a large staff and pays people well, and somehow their hamburger is still $3 and top quality. The same time w…

>In-n-out, Costco, Walmart Congratulations. You've identified different business models. > I still remember when all the fast food chains raised their prices together If this is true, what force are you imagining constrains all the fast food chains from not having n times their current prices? Adjust n to whatever value is lower than your hyperbole trigger.

> Congratulations. You've identified different business models.

So pointing out business models that don’t raise prices while not customer service, to counter the claim of “hiring more people will raise the prices for us”, is a problem how?

> If this is true, what force are you imagining constrains all the fast food chains from not having n times their current prices

It is true. https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation

You’re also responding to a partial statement of a sentence and not a complete argument. The argument being companies don’t necessarily lower prices to compete with one another even if they can.

And finally, why do companies don’t raise their prices infinitely? (A complete tangent to the discussion) Because well, business 101. Prices increases are a slow drip. And there is a limit after which price increases hurt the sales. And you always want an external excuse to point a finger at to make the prices palatable. Some companies can increase prices faster than the others. Apple made hundreds of billions in profits last year and they just increased the prices of MacBooks by hundreds of dollars. They could’ve easily not raised prices but why would you not when you have a loyal customer base that won’t mind paying a few hundred dollars extra?

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#237

Post by kjs3 »

phaser wrote: post #219

I've seen it worse: A team of employees have an entry level engineering job, and work as a bridge between support and the "core" engineering team. They just talk to customers when an issue is escalated, and maybe it will submit a hotfix PR but when the issue must be escalated further the instructions are to send it to the higher-ranked team who will make it part of the next sprint. At every all-hands meetings, core t…

Even more, when the concept of "AI agent" appeared on their radars, they were the first people who they thought they're gonna replace.

I worked on a project where they replaced virtually all tier-1 customer service reps with an AI chatbot, which worked ok, because 90% of those calls are things like "what's my balance" and "I need a replacement credit card", which an AI can competently navigate. Phase 2, I was informed, was to replace Tier-2 with a chatbot, so the only time a human has to get involved was the most complicated problems. SO MUCH MONEY SAVED AMIRIGHT?!?

So I asked, in the middle of this giant kickoff meeting, "if you get rid of tier 1 & 2 reps, how are you going to train up the tier 3 reps who know enough about how things work to handle these most-complicated problems?". After an extended silence we got "we have a plan for that but we can't go into it just now". Sure you do.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#238

Post by lkey »

gcanyon wrote: post #200

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'…

* the primary vector of contagion is unfiltered air circulation, not touching tables and menus (which are wiped down).

* I want you to go and tell another human being, in person, that paper menus cannot possibly 'scale'. Your brain has been deeply addled by SV culture.

* HUMAN TIME IS THE POINT AT A SIT DOWN PLACE, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

* YOU HAVE YOUR HUMAN EYES FOR 'SEARCH'

* QR CODE SCANNING IS NOT "GETTING BETTER" WHAT DO YOU EVEN MEAN BY THIS ASSERTION??

* OLDER PEOPLE AND PEOPLE WITHOUT SMARTPHONES WILL NOT "GET USED TO IT"

* "if demand is there" IT IS, HOW CAN YOU ACT LIKE IT IS NOT, DO YOU NOT HAVE DINNER WITH FRIENDS?? ARE YOU NEW TO THIS PLANET?

    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*?
Are you daft? I've entered hundreds of buildings in NYC with varieties of automated systems from the 70's to the 2020's and 95% of them are dogshit and there's no sign they are 'getting better'. Most are nigh impossible to use on bright sunny days because of the glare obscuring the addresses. Many are broken. Your 'contrarian' arguments are just counterfactual to anyone who has lived on this planet for a number of years.

    An automated system can add or remove people from the authorized list easily and remotely, and not make mistakes.
Deeply, hilariously fallacious. Tell someone you love that 'automated' systems 'never makes mistakes' and see how much traction that argument gets.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#239

Post by kjs3 »

consp wrote: post #149
superfrank wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also hadn't heard of it, but I feel like it's kind of a corollary of the whole, "what's measured is managed" idea or maybe the Streetlight effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect ). It's easy to measure a doorman's cost, but hard to measure their impact. Few, if any, guest are likely to mention the impact of a doorman on their stay except in the exceptional case. That means when budgets start to g…

Isn't the hard data the loss of the hotel a few years down the road due to being noncompetitive due to declining customers caused by the penny pinching?

1) Failing can be (mis)attributed to many things particularly if the cause and effect are separated significantly by time, and 2) most businesses want to stay way ahead of the realization they're noncompetitive as by that point often the barn door is open and the horse is gone.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#240

Post by godelski »

olsondv wrote: post #187
godelski wrote: post #52

To clarify, the Doorman Fallacy is about the Doorman doing more than their job actually seems. The Doorman isn't just a greeter, but they are checking that the right people are coming in, they are going to report issues that patrons pass onto them, they check that the UPS guy is actually from UPS, they're the first to notice damage to the property, they call the police if they see a crime happening in the area, and s…

Taking the restaurant ordering app, it’s certainly better than a server. Each individual picks what they want and pays for what they got on their own bill. It removes any chance of communication error between the customer and the kitchen. Appetizers to share easily split across who wanted them. No bill splitting discussions. OP just had to use a bad implementation.

  > it’s certainly better than a server.
I disagree, and so does the OP.

  > OP just had to use a bad implementation.
Then it isn't so certainly.

You act like machines are perfect. Machines glitch and have all sorts of problems. They're usually inflexible because programmed by the lowest bidder. You could argue about implementation but that is also true for human servers too

Post reply on HN