Will nobody rid me of these troublesome ordering screens?
It used to be so simple.
Ten minutes out the office. A trip to Leon, or Coco di Mama. Seven quid for something hot. I told the person behind the counter what I wanted. It arrived.
Not so anymore. The proliferation of food ordering screens has turned a Square Mile lunch into a rage-inducing exercise that leaves me just one more failed button-press from going full Michael Douglas in Falling Down.
Because they never work.
Ever.
This morning I found myself jamming one of these infernal screens, forced to ‘customise’ my porridge. I don’t want to customise my porridge. I want porridge. I have even less desire to remix my porridge on a screen that unless pressed *just right* refuses to acknowledge that I just want some hot oats and milk in a bowl.
After gradually progressing up the scale from a gentle prod to a borderline punch, none of which seem to get me to the point I can confirm that, yes, I would like the porridge that I can see under the hot lamp not more than ten yards from me, I give up, sore-thumbed and hungry. I ended up with a vegan vanilla danish from a coffee shop, which I didn’t want, but did at least avoid pushing my blood pressure up past 140.
This is a daily occurrence. I have given up on buying sushi at Itsu because I just want some raw fish and rice not the chance to play a convoluted food version of candy crush (“Do you want miso soup?” No! I would have ordered some!). Leon’s avocado and halloumi muffin is now a thing of my past, refusing as I now am to deal with a screen which – as one staff member once told me – is “very sensitive to temperature.”
Even when the damned things work, the endurance required brings me close to desperation. “Your name please,” it asks, as if this system is simpler than telling my order to a real living and breathing human who might have the mental dexterity to remember my face or – in the case of Leon – just hand me what I’ve ordered.
Flustered, angry, I type in ‘A’ – civil disobedience, you see – but that only leads to more confusion at the counter, because every other consumer in the shop has done a similar thing, beaten down by the endless impossibility of ordering a regular sized bolognese. Witness some poor staff member shouting ‘Qwerty? Qwerty?’ and tell me that this is progress.
Staff, no doubt frustrated themselves by being turned from hospitality workers into the food equivalent of Argos elves, occasionally offer to help. Sometimes they have the knack for the screens, pressing at just the right sensitivity and presumably with fingers warmed to the optimum temperature. Sometimes they give up, and just ask me what tired take-out option I need to get through the day.
This seems, rather, to defeat the point of these labour-saving devices, but does at least let me feel as if life hasn’t completely abandoned human contact. I understand that touch screens don’t require being paid the living wage, but I refuse to believe it’s just me that’s so fed up with the whole operation they wouldn’t rather just buy a sandwich from Waitrose.
I’m no boomer. I have an iPhone. I understand how to turn captions on and off on Netflix. I make a point of downloading airline apps rather than just zooming in on a PDF of a bar code.
But if these hateful, £2,000-a-pop screens are a sign of the technological future, count me out.