Sometimes We Have to Admit that Technology Isn’t Always the Answer

Two celiacs and a person with a dairy allergy walk into a bar. 

It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s not. 

Last fall, my husband, toddler, and I were back in the Boston area, where I grew up. One afternoon, we went into the city for a museum and lunch nearby. When the hostess seated us at the restaurant, she explained that they work with an app—you order through the app, start a tab, and pay as you go. 

We hesitated. All three of us have dietary restrictions (see above), so besides being part of the experience of eating out, we usually rely on a conversation with the waitstaff to figure out what’s safe, what can be swapped out, and so on. I signed into the app (with my local phone number and credit card number) and looked through the menu. It looked OK—on most dishes, it noted what you could change, and you could request gluten-free, dairy-free, and more by ticking the right box. 

While our toddler doodled in a coloring book, each of us scrolled through the long menu on our respective phones, opening each dish card to see what it contained and whether it could fit our restrictions. My husband’s phone was on roaming, so the internet kept going in and out, making for slow navigation. 

We ordered a couple of dishes (everything gluten-free, almost everything dairy-free), and as they were ready, busboys would bring them by and drop them off at our table, shooting off the name of the dish. Before they could zoom back to the kitchen, I would catch them, “This is gluten-free, right?” And they would nod, “Yes, yes, gluten-free.” 

Then the kiddie tray came out: a taco, corn on the cob, a watermelon-and-pineapple skewer, and a small quesadilla. We had ticked the “gluten-free” box on the app and the busboy who dropped it off repeated the “Yes, gluten-free,” but suddenly I wasn’t so sure. The quesadilla looked like a flour tortilla, not corn. 

We flagged down one server after another. No one really seemed to be able to answer whether or not it was gluten-free by looking at it, but they kept saying, “Oh, but if you checked it off on the app, then it is.” 

Kiddo dug into some of the other dishes in the meantime. Then she reached for the quesadilla and went at it. I took a bite, too. Yum. But now I was almost certain it was wheat flour... 

We put the quesadilla out of toddler reach and hailed yet another server, who brought out the manager: “I’m sorry, our kiddie trays aren’t gluten-free. That’s a flour tortilla.” 

That’s right—$h!t, $h!t, $h!t. 

Then the manager above her, over and over: “I’m so sorry. We’re known for being really good with allergies. We made a mistake.” Lots of apologies, a comped meal, a gift certificate to come back (ha, right), and a corn tortilla quesadilla for the road… but the damage was done (a child who spent the evening vomiting).  

Mistakes can happen anywhere, but, having eaten safely in thousands of restaurants over nearly 15 years as a celiac, I am confident this wouldn’t have happened—or would have been identified much faster—if we had ordered from a person, not an app. A person can answer questions, check for you, and advocate for you. An app can’t. 

I was reminded of this last week when I read Jessica Grose’s New York Times newsletter about how technology sometimes makes things worse. 

(Sidebar: If restaurants are part of the hospitality industry, let me tell you that sitting at a table in a beautiful decorated restaurant with each person hunched over their phone scrolling through a super long menu and tapping their choices instead of having a conversation with a server is about as far from hospitality as I can imagine. And as Jessica Grose’s piece notes, it’s not a solution for diners who don’t have smartphones or even people visiting from out of the country without a local data plan, which isn’t all that unusual in a city like Boston.)  

In my family, we have a running joke. When a website or app doesn’t work or is super frustrating to use, my dad says, “So sorry, it’s our fault.” He and my mom are both computer science professors, and in the past nearly four decades, they’ve seen, and played a significant part in, the rise of digital platforms, user interfaces, and anything on a computer. And they’ll be the first ones to tell you that it’s not always a good thing. Sometimes the old, clunky, analog way is better.

I feel that way, too. As a UX writer, it’s my job to work on these interfaces and user experiences. But sometimes it’s also my job to say, The world doesn’t need that. You’re pushing people apart or away. You may be making the world more efficient, but you’re definitely not making it better.