* * * * *

 This isn't at all about replacing waitrons. Not at all. Nope. Nothing to do
  with the bottom line or a naked grab at more money. Nope. It's all for the
                           customers' convenience.

One of the things my dad comments on these days is the preponderance of
restaurant patrons peering into their smart phones or tablets, ignoring
everyone else, which is okay, because everyone else at the table is peering
into their smart phones or tablets. Even though they're eating together, they
are still eating alone.

One of the things that still gets me is the preponderance of televisions in
restaurants. I find them terribly distracting and very hard not to watch. I
can somewhat understand a sports bar having them to show sporting games, but
McDonalds [1]?. The worse offender I've found is The Flashback Diner [2]
which has a television per booth!

Insane!

So what do Bunny and I find tonight at Olive Garden (WARNING: They want to
know where you are! Beware!) [3]?

[It's the bastard child of a television with the downside of excessive
advertising plus a tablet with the downside of pay-to-play click-games with
the hassle of a restaurant trying to run an IT department. That it has not
ended well, much less ended, is beyond me.] [4]


A Ziosk [5] on every table.

Apparently they've been around for a few years [6] and so far, Bunny and I
have managed to avoid the restaurants that have the darned devices.

In theory, it seems like a Good Thing™. You can place orders for drinks and
desserts through the device. And you can signal for the server (I presume
some sort of signal is sent to the kitchen or the server lounge or something
but all we noticed is a red light flashing on top of the unit when we did
this) and pay the check (the previous party at our table still owed 7¢—how I
do not know). But the incessant advertising for food, drinks and “pay-for-
play” games just got to be too much (even though the unit itself was
thankfully quiet).

We ended up turning the device to face away from us.

I don't know. It just bugs me on some level. Do we as a nation have the
attention span of a rabid ferret—oooooh! Shiny! [7]

[1] http://www.mcdonalds.com/
[2] http://flashbackdiner.com/
[3] http://www.olivegarden.com/
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2016/05/10/ziosk.jpg
[5] http://www.ziosk.com/
[6] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-17/that-tablet-on-the-restaurant-table-will-make-you-spend-more
[7] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AttentionDeficitOohShiny

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