Borderline germaphobe here. Get that disgusting, sticky menu as far away from my food or my fingers as possible. I fucking love the QR code menus.

That said, if it directs me to the app store, I’m not only leaving, but you’re getting a 1-star review. I’d take the germs over that bullshit any day.

Once, I was given a real menu and then told to use the QR code to place an order.

I said, “No.”

“But you have to.”

“Haha, no.”

I showed her what I wanted and put the menu back in her hands. She left dejected and returned wordlessly with my food.

Don’t be a technocrat when I’m hungry.

Fun with QR codes! Two things are on the top of my mind today.

My boss loves QR codes. He wants to put a QR code on every single publication we print, for any reason, or often for no reason. To this day, he does not understand that QR codes are not magic, and all they contain is a link. I can’t make the QR code “do” this, that, and the third thing he wants; I have to program our web site to do whatever it is. When he is explaining what he wants, he is inevitably tracing his fingers around in the air making a box shape, as if this means anything.

His latest brainwave was trying to make me put QR codes on internet banner ads. Which are displayed on the viewer’s screen. ~90% of which are viewing on their mobile device to begin with. I had to explain to him using small easily understandable words that you cannot make a phone take a picture of itself. (Yes, I left the topic of screenshots out of it.) The fact that the banner ad is not only inherently clickable but being clickable is really rather the entire point, and this click directs the user to anywhere we want – say, the same place as his mythical QR code – did not sink in for him.

He also doesn’t get that merely generating the pixels of the QR code does not automatically create the landing page and all of its content. He also doesn’t grok that, to the nearest decimal place, nobody scans the fucking things on our literature anyway. Like I don’t track that kind of thing.

But I have a theory as to why, now. Thing the second is that just today I had a customer tell me, “I won’t scan them QR code things because I saw on the news they’re all controlled by the Chinese government.” (Our quotes have a QR code at the top you can use to view the products therein on our web site without having to type anything. It’s practically the only genuinely useful thing we do with them.) I had to demonstrate to him right there and then that the QR code is literally just a block of text, and you can see every single damn fool character in it before you visit whatever link it is if you feel like it and/or don’t trust it. Our QR codes clearly just go to our web site, with a ?products=[list] tacked on to the end of the URL.

I am positive he didn’t get it.

I’m positive my boss still doesn’t get it, either.

Whatever, it all pays the same.

If it just takes me to a website with the menu, fine.

If it takes me to the app store, no.

Then the menu is a broken webpage with “old” prices and the restaurant tries to charge you more than the menu prices. I thought the point of these were to be easily updated.

I’m nowhere that old and I still make the same face when a restaurant doesn’t have paper menus.

Yeah, as soon as I saw that I’d be headed somewhere else to eat.

I can’t even read my phone without reading glasses and when I’m off of work I often purposely don’t bring them with me. I’d be asking about their accessibility accommodations.

I took my elderly aunt to eat and she couldn’t navigate the menu at all on a phone screen. I don’t like it either.

I’ve only been to one restaurant that had that and I was able to order online. It was a good experience for me.

Maybe I’m in the minority but I will often choose a restaurant that lets me order from the table over one which requires talking to a human…