There is an app for that

I will start this out with a disclaimer that I dislike using an app on my phone to place fast food orders. Perhaps dislike is too mild a term.

I despise using ordering apps with the passion of a thousand suns. Intellectually I recognize their value in speeding up the ordering process and reducing the risk of errors. I get that they are able to reduce the overall staffing by transferring the work previously done by paid employees onto the customers with a cost savings that in an ideal world would translate into additional profits for investors and owners.

It doesn’t mean that I have to like them. I promise you that this rant has some relevance beyond serving as a release for my bottled up emotions in regard to the creeping displacement of actual human beings and their seemingly inevitable replacement with screens and automation.

It was cold Friday night. My wife and I had spent a large chunk of the evening helping out at the Curling for Kids event that was being held at the Medford Curling Club. Thanks to the generosity of Nestle Pizza the kiddos attending the event had plenty of Tombstone Pizza to eat. Since I am not in danger of fading away if I miss a meal, I held off from eating to make sure there was enough for the youth who the event was for. My wife, Kim, who had been cooking pizzas all night, informed me that they had gone through all the pizzas and she was free from cooking them and didn’t want to see another pizza for a long time.

Within minutes of the youth clearing out of the curling club, groups came in wanting to get practice ice time before the upcoming Alumni Bonspiel in a few weeks. We are volunteers at the club so figured we would be there for a while. Kim was hungry so I volunteered to run to pick up food. My loving wife is a huge fan of ordering apps and has amassed a prodigious amount of reward points which she claims could be used for “something.” I am unclear for what other than serving to make people feel good about having placed an excessive number of fast food orders over a period of time.

Kim placed the order and I volunteered to go get it. She gave me the order code, even writing it down so that I wouldn’t forget it.

The car I drive is on the older side and doesn’t much like the cold, especially when it is damp. As happens, my drivers side window chose to decide not to go down. I realized this as I was pulling into the long line of vehicles in the drive through lane. Having functional windows is a necessity when it comes to drive throughs.

In retrospect I could have also timed my fast food trek better. I realized it was right as the dance at the middle school was letting out and following a game at the high school. Sane people avoid fast food establishments at those times.

I decided to park my car and armed solely with the slip of paper with the order code and having left my cellphone sitting on the bar at the curling club, I tried to wave down a human being in order to give them the code and ideally get my food.

This was easier said than done, but I persisted and finally gave someone my code. I was waiting as the staff was getting slammed with orders and a busload of girls from the Auburndale team came in and placed their orders.

Despite the long hours I spend at events and listening to people talk at government meetings and banquets, I am not a particularly patient person. At least not when I am hungry and have been standing waiting for food.

I truly felt sorry for the shift manager when he came over to me and said there had been some difficulty and asked me if I remembered what had been in the order. Since it was my wife who placed the order, I had no clue what it was all supposed to be. And by this time there were about two dozen hungry teenagers who had moved ahead of me in line as far as food preparation.

I ended up telling him to cancel the order and went back to tell Kim why I returned empty-handed more than an hour after I left.

My ever thoughtful daughter pointed out that the issue was that I used a drive up order code inside the store which apparently is like throwing a chair into a plane engine.

My ever helpful wife suggested I should have just opened my door to place the order and to get the food handed to me. She explained that she has had to do that in the past when using my car on cold, damp days.

While I recognize in hindsight that this would have been a viable option and would have likely saved me a great deal of aggravation, it was not something I considered at the time choosing instead to unfairly blame the app-based ordering system that makes it impossible to connect with a real human being.

Correction In last week’s paper I screwed up and switched the champion and runner up teams for the fourth event in the Running Tree Maple Syrup Bonspiel in the coverage of the event.

Correctly, the fourth event was won by the Zenner rink which defeated the Amundson rink.

I apologize for the error.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.