Recently, all the major news networks repeated the story of an anonymous New York City restaurant owner whining about how wireless internet access was causing food to get cold and waiters to perform their jobs less efficiently, leading to more customer complaints and costing the restaurant owner money. To read more than I have room to quote here, just point your browser to any internet search engine and search for “Restaurant Figures Out Surprising Reason for Customer Complaints.”
This “anonymous” restaurateur claims to have compared surveillance tapes from 2004 and 2014 to determine that in 2004 his patrons spent an average of eight minutes deciding what to order and in 2014 they spend 21 minutes playing with their smart phones before ordering; and that nine out of 45 customers sent their food back to reheat after it got cold because they were preoccupied fooling around on the internet. While I have my doubts about the veracity of “anonymous’s” exact figures, I have no doubt whatsoever about him/her being spot-on in nailing the problem. Everyone who has been held up in line at the coffee shop or kept waiting for service in a restaurant while the establishment’s employees are tied up helping some clueless patron get a smartphone connected to the Wi-fi knows this problem is real.
Please login or subscribe to view the complete article.