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.

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.

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.

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.

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

If it takes me to the app store, no.

Me: "Oh I'm fine with scanning QR codes for menus, actually."
[QR code goes to Facebook]
Me: "Guess I'll starve after all."

"Are you using the app today?"

"No."

I've worked in Tech for 30 years, done software development in enough areas and at a sufficient senior level to be able to implement the whole QR code support, both coding and systems design, all the way from an App in a smartphone taking a picture and translating into a URL, to the webserver and if needed database on the other side including if needed an ordering system integrated with some internal order request system.

If I was faced with this I would ask for them to bring me or show me a menu. If they said "no" I would literally get up and leave.

I'm not going to be spending time mucking about with my phone to read in it's comparativelly small screen something they could have available on an A4 piece of paper or an even larger format hanging from somewhere in the restaurant just to, at best, save them a few cents or, at worst, satisfying somebody's totally misplaced idea that any Tech is cool just for being Tech. I'm even less going to enshittify my smartphone experience with some app that demands access to my Contacts and wants to pester me with notifications entirelly for the benefit of somebody else.

If there is one thing 3 decades in the Industry, often at the bleeding edge, have taught me is that Tech isn't necessarilly the best solution for everything and that being newer doesn't make something better and I'm not interested in being the beta tester for some half-arsed solution which serves most customers' requirements worse than the older solution and I'm even less interest in installing a software agent doing the will of somebody else on my phone.

It's exactly because I know Tech so well that I just judge Tech tools as I would any other tools and, damn, so much of it out there are just horrible ill-adjusted unstable tools worse than the old-Tech or non-Tech versions.

There are only three ways to get me to leave a 1-star review.

1. This shit

2. A screen on the card machine begging for tips. Fuck right off

3. Brioche does not a burger bun make, Oli or Tom or whatever your wanky hipster name is

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

I just "love" how scammers and the such have started plastering their own QR codes over legit ones. You scan a public QR code and go to a fake website.

Whenever QR code accessible site that asks your information should NOT be used as there is a legit chance that some scammer will be receiving your info instead of the actual site

"I only have a work phone. I'm not supposed to do those."

I will not. I refuse to get a smartphone.

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

I have a couple restaurant apps on my phone. These are for takeout or delivery type places like Domino's Pizza or Sheetz. In that context, it's a genuine upgrade. Like, i can either drive to Sheetz, type my order into the kiosk there, and wait the whole time they're preparing it, OR I can place the order from home on my phone, and they'll prepare it as I'm driving there.

At a sit-down restuarant, what are you trying to do? Trying to use that instead of the waitstaff for ordering or paying...some customers are going to and some aren't. There's a procedure people understand about eating at a restaurant, and now you're throwing a wrench in it for...what? The ability to update the menu without printing a whole bunch of them, somewhere to write down the specials so the waitstaff doesn't have to remember them, or "because technology?"

And at something with counter service like a deli? Fuck off.

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.

You can print out QR codes to Rick Astley videos.

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.

If I'm going out to eat somewhere, it's mostly because I'm out to socialize or get away from screens. The last thing I want when I sit down at a restaurant is for everyone at the table to get out their phones. I can't think of a dumber way to undermine restaurant socializing. Just charge me the $0.03 it cost to print the menu.