Hey.  Y'know what really grinds my gears?  Self-ordering kiosks.  F*ck these things.  F*ck them to oblivion.

Okay, what pisses me off isn't so much that ordering kiosks exist; it's when a restaurant forces you to use them and gives you no other option.  In other words, they have no human employees that will help you or take your order, and they literally refuse to give you face to face customer service.  Given my social anxiety and aversion to talking to people, you'd think I'd absolutely love these things, but you'd be wrong.  I despise these kiosks for two reasons.  One: I'd rather not touch a screen that countless other customers have been rubbing their grubby mitts on.    Unsanitary.

And two: I have severe social anxiety as it is, and using something like this when other people are waiting for me makes me extremely flustered.  I just can't do something like this when I know others are standing behind me waiting.  I won't even use a self-service gas station if there are other people there.  I only get gas in the middle of the night when it's deserted.  I'd rather risk an armed robbery than try to pump gas when someone else is impatiently waiting in line.  If I'm using one of these kiosks, then the onus is entirely on me--if I'm having a hard time and taking awhile, then it's entirely on me, and I can feel the impatience and annoyance building in the people waiting, and that makes me collapse into a black hole of self-deprecating anxiety.  If I'm ordering from a human being, then the onus isn't on me.  I know how my mouth works, so I know I can say, "one burrito, hold the onions," without any trouble, and if the employee is new or something and is taking a long time to figure out the computer, then that's not my fault.  I feel no anxiety or pressure because I'm not the one who has to do anything.

These ordering kiosks are bullsh*t.  They're basically just making customers do the employees' jobs for them.  They're just turning customers into unpaid employees so they can hire less people and save a buck.  If some people like 'em, that's fine, but they shouldn't be the only option, and that's the case at many places.  A lot of fast food restaurants are going this way these days, including lifelong favorites of mine, and I cannot describe how much I hate it.  You should always be able to order from a human if you so choose.  I usually like any new technology that allows me to avoid talking to a person, but at the same time, I think it's a dark and dangerous path to keep removing humanity from everything.  I hate the direction the world is going.  We all know that technology is isolating us and making us more lonely and disconnected than ever before, but all we do is just keep making it worse.  I'm not some old fogey; I love new tech, but I've also seen enough sci-fi to know how this ends.  We're just racing towards a cyberpunk dystopia where human beings are obsolete with the pedal to the metal.