Between that practice and the increasingly common outright refusal to accept cash, every time I visit friends in Santa Monica it's become an exceptional experience just to get a morning espresso using cash and no smartphone.
What??
> increasingly common outright refusal to accept cash
Well, those two things alone are excellent reasons for me to avoid going there.
But I'll definitely start giving the QR codes a closer look before scanning now
The same rationale was being used to push the QR codes and deprecating paper menus.
COVID-19 is a master class of "never let a good crisis go to waste".
BTW it wasn't strictly about keeping homeless out, it's also to prevent theft of the register by staff. This is definitely not a one-dimensional issue. But I do think the discrimination against the homeless facet is all the cities need to outright ban the practice for their licensed public-serving businesses.
Homeless people should just buy a prepaid debit card and top it up at supermarkets. Cash has no place in a modern society.
Cash is an anonymous form of payment, it is secure and untraceable. Anyone can get it and it is not associated with anyone in particular. It doesn't just have a place in modern society, as long as we live in a money system, to protect the privacy of citizens it is necessary that we use cash.
It's expensive to be poor and the vultures are even more on you ripping you off.
Obligatory addition: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
In my country your worthiness to get a homeloan goes down for even a few dollars worth of lotteries tickets on your bank statement. Same with alcohol or cigarettes.
A rather disgusting number of people on this site share these kinds of narrowly elitist ideas of how the world should work, based purely on their own privileged experiences and notions.
I'm not from the US so I'm a little bit hesitant to push back too strongly on this as I can't speak to the situation there, but from my experience homeless people don't really factor in.
I started to choose holiday destinations based on whether it's like, a normal business environment. This began during coronavirus, but now with the whole cashless thing becoming sticky it's become a seemingly permanent choice.
At least in one case I was referred to an illegible chalkboard which I guess is better than nothing, even if it was incomplete. But being near-sighted it's preferable to hold a paper menu... Even if it's just some low-brow unlaminated printout I'd be satisfied! But nope, welcome to the future.
Nowadays if I find myself in such a place and they at least will accept cash for payment, I'll just make them describe the menu verbally. Maybe if enough of us generate that amount of inconvenience for them they'll get a clue and learn how to use a printer.
It's like it's part of their trendy/hipster image to not have menus and do everything through a phone. Part of how they appeal to a younger demographic perhaps? I think that's the visible aspect, but the deeper motive is more about invading customers' privacy by getting hooks into their phones. Then on the cashless side it's discriminatory and rooted in mistrust of employees handling cash...
What is the vector for privacy invasion beyond the normal for visiting a website? Is there a company offering pay for access here or something?
To me, this is a coordination problem: how to get very technical privacy enthusiasts working together with older people who only wish to be allowed to keep getting around their normal worlds in a way they fully understand. We want what we want for very different reasons, but what we want ends up being effectively the same things.
You are obviously right when it comes to lack of steady hands, but diminishing near vision is no reason not to use a smartphone. In fact, speech synthesis is what kept blind people mostly functioning in this new world. IOW, if you no longer can see the screen, turn on your smartphones screen reader. Android and Apple both have them built in these days, so you dont even have to buy anything extra.
Trendy and hipster would be opposite of that
They just do it because it's easier. No menus to print and update every week or however often. Out of salmon today? Just take it off the menu with a few clicks. It's easier for the same reason that most of us would write a letter in Vim or Emacs or Word or whatever and not on a typewriter.
I dislike this trend as I almost never carry a phone and even if I did an A4 menu seems loads easier than a 6 inch screen, and any half-way decent restaurant should just print a menu because it's not that hard or costly, but there is no secret motive here beyond that it's just a bit easier for restaurants.