Why are Singaporean food courts and coffee shops starting to look like a high-tech server room?
Wah lau, I need to say this because it’s getting ridiculous. I went to a newly renovated food court in the heartlands yesterday just to buy a simple bowl of minced meat noodles (bak chor mee). By the time I actually got my food, I felt like I just completed an entire IT infrastructure deployment project.
What happened to the days where you just walk up to the auntie, say “ah mee, hiam (spicy), mai po liao (no lard),” hand over your physical two-dollar note, and get your food in two minutes?
Now, the moment you step into the place, it is an absolute tech gauntlet:
- The Self-Ordering Kiosk Overlord: You cannot talk to the human being standing right in front of you. You must stand in front of a giant touchscreen that has a UI designed by someone who clearly hates humanity. The screen is lagging, the brightness is at 200%, and you have to click through five different pop-ups asking if you want to upgrade to a set meal, add a fried egg, or donate your points to charity.
- The Cashless Dilemma: Once you finally customize your noodles, you reach the payment screen. There are about fifteen different QR codes plastered on the machine. You open your banking app, the mobile data in the basement food court drops to 3G, and you are just standing there awkwardly holding up the queue while the uncle behind you is sighing loudly (“Tsk, slow lah!”).
- The Return-Your-Tray Robot: After you eat, you have to hunt down those autonomous tray-return robots moving at 0.5 km/h. They just blast some annoying, repetitive nursery rhyme music while navigating around human legs. Half the time, the robot’s shelves are already completely full of unreturned plates, so it just roams around like a lost soul while people stare at it.
Don’t get me wrong, I love technology and efficiency. But when a trip to the local coffee shop requires a digital authentication, a stable network connection, and navigating a touch interface just to get a caffeine fix, we might have gone a bit too far.
Is it just me, or is the simple joy of ordering local food becoming an administrative chore? Are we upgrading our eating places, or are we just outsourcing the cashier’s job to the customer while charging the same price?