- First of all, you don't have to sit around waiting for a bill to arrive before you can go and pay, putting control in the customer's hands.
- You don't have to entrust your credit card with someone you shouldn't trust - a great deal of credit card duplication crimes occur because of the way we handle paying at a restaurant.
- There's also less legwork for service staff to do, meaning better service overall.
In all honesty, the crime aspect is not such a problem in Japan anyway, but the only time we've ever had problems with credit card duplication is in restaurants in Europe, where you are (socially) unable to watch over what is being done with your card.
This also reminds me of the way things are done in coffee shops over in Japan. Once you had finished with your drinks, snacks and anything else, you'd take your own tray to a clean-up area, rather than leaving it rather selfishly for shop staff to clean up for you. It's no wonder shop staff in Japan manage to remain so polite when they are offered such courtesies. This is just another example of how a little extra courtesy from everyone can make life better in the end.
3 comments:
I understand where you are coming from with the whole credit card in a restaurant thing, and I completely agree with you. We are putting our finances at risk by giving someone who is employed by the company our credit cards, and whatever. However, in an English coffee shop, if I'm going to pay close to £3 for a coffee, I'm not going to clean it up for them as well. Unless it was worth £3, which it rarely is.
Pete and I had this idea "the restaurant revolution", which could happen in the future. Basically, you order your food online, and pay by card online. Each person is given an order number so, for example (T01O138). You then head to the restaurant. When you are seated you just have to enter your order number on a panel at your table and the food is delivered to you by some complex conveyor machine. When you are finished, you are able to clear the food away by putting it back on to the conveyor machine, which would send/receive food from the middle of the table, or something.
Sounds like the sushi conveyor restaurants, but the total price is determined by the colour of the plates your are left with at the end. I have even been to such restaurants where you insert the empty plates into a slot next to the table and it knows what kind of dish that was, adding up your total cost on-the-fly.
While sushi lends itself to this kind of set-up, minus the pre-booking, it seems like the kind of thing you're talking about - practical technology actually making lives easier, not more complex.
Well yeah, that's the point. I don't see why so many research teams should focus intelligence in one particular area of technology when there are so many untouched areas that need improvement.
Fail!
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