I’m not usually one to complain about people these days and their phones, but this was pretty interesting. A restaurant was receiving bad customer reviews, saying that its service had gotten slower over the years. They found old security footage from 2004 and compared it to footage from 2014 to see what, if anything, had changed. The results, while unscientific, are interesting. Maybe the restaurant business, much like our legal system, doesn’t change nearly as fast as our technology.

In 2004:

Customers walk in.

They gets seated and are given menus, out of 45 customers 3 request to be seated elsewhere.

Customers on average spend 8 minutes before closing the menu to show they are ready to order.

In 2014:

Customers walk in.

Customers get seated and is given menus, out of 45 customers 18 requested to be seated elsewhere.

Before even opening the menu they take their phones out, some are taking photos while others are simply doing something else on their phone (sorry we have no clue what they are doing and do not monitor customer WIFI activity).

7 out of the 45 customers had waiters come over right away, they showed them something on their phone and spent an average of 5 minutes of the waiter’s time. Given this is recent footage, we asked the waiters about this and they explained those customers had a problem connecting to the WIFI and demanded the waiters try to help them.

Finally the waiters are walking over to the table to see what the customers would like to order. The majority have not even opened the menu and ask the waiter to wait a bit.

Customer opens the menu, places their hands holding their phones on top of it and continue doing whatever on their phone.

Waiter returns to see if they are ready to order or have any questions. The customer asks for more time.

Finally they are ready to order.

Total average time from when the customer was seated until they placed their order 21 minutes.

First of all, I’m not sure what people are taking pictures of before their food arrives. Second, are people so protective of their data plans that they demand wifi everywhere they go? I guess I just always assumed that if an establishment is not the kind of place where people bring laptops and plan on staying at least half the day, there’s no need for free wifi. Maybe I’m no longer with the times, though.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that you should order your damn food, and don’t linger on Instagram.