Few weeks ago, I went to a pub with a friend after office hours, a nice hangout place, not very occupied, slow music and an extremely relaxed environment. The waiter came up to take our orders, I read his name tag, addressed him by his first name, chatted with him, learned a little bit about his life, got him to follow me on Instagram and left the pub with a promise and a desire to go there again.
Covid brought with itself a huge fear of social contact that paved the way for apps and technology to keep real human touch at bay. From ordering food, reserving a table to paying bills, we can do it all with just a few clicks on the phone, without requiring to speak to any human. You are sitting at your home, craving a burger, you don’t need to get up from your bed, just open the phone, select the restaurant, add food in the cart, make payment and don’t forget to add instructions for the delivery guy to ring bell and just keep the food at the doorstep, you would never know who cooked the meal and who delivered. Gone are the days when you would call a restaurant and ask them to make a reservation, you can just open an app, book a table and go to the restaurant without needing to speak to a real person on the phone. Ordering food in a restaurant is also pretty much contactless now, there is an app tied to the table where you sit, you select the food, order goes straight to the kitchen and a waiter comes and gives you the food. Lastly, you don’t need to see the waiter for even making payment, you can do that with an app too.
We have created apps to make our lives easier and faster, but is it worth it? Have we not really taken the fun out of eating out when you go to a restaurant, ask the waiter specials because it’s a special day, you explain to him/her that it’s your anniversary and he surprises you with a free cake and makes the chef add extra flavour to the food to make it memorable for you. You eat the food, enjoy the wine and feel so special that you want to meet the chef and give him a hi-fi for such a wonderful experience. Our dining out has become so mechanical that it gives me creeps, no matter how convenient it seems, if I’m going out to eat, it’s because I want to chat up with new people, have a wonderful time and not rush up my meal because there is an app that can help save time. I’m going out because I have free time, I’m not looking to save hours!
Near my office, there is a food stall, I have been eating breakfast there for a few years now, I know a lot about the stall owner and he knows what I order. We greet each other everyday, the moment he sees me walking toward the stall he starts to make my food without me asking for it because he knows what I would prefer. I know his name, where he stays, what he likes to do and he knows which spices I like in my sandwich. I like it this way and no app in the world can match it up to this feeling of being listened to and being cared for.
Most of the time I’m sitting in a restaurant and watching people who are there clicking pictures of the food so they can post it on their instagram. They don’t care how it tastes or who made it, all they care about is posting the picture and tagging the restaurant to show that they were there. I prefer to dine by myself a lot of time so that I can read a book in peace and observe things around me, and the more I observe, more I realize how self-contained our worlds have become, how we order food without even looking up to see the face of the person who is taking our order.
A server’s greeting when you enter, little smile to make you feel welcome, rehearsed jokes, out-of-nowhere raves for the chef’s special and so on may be subtle or not-so-subtle efforts to bump up the check and the tip, but they also make us feel important. Without them, the meal may be faster and cheaper, but it leaves us feeling a little empty.
