That's NOT THE TOPIC, Paul.

Except for drive-thru service most (non-server) restaurants have gone to self-service soda machines. Customers give themselves the exact amount of soda and ice, and any combinations of multiple drinks or added flavors. Cuts way down on the number of complaints and it's one less job the employees have to do.

Hm now those Freestyle soda machines I kinda dig for reasons like Pinback mentions.

However, the thing I HATE about them is how long other people take to just use the damn thing and get the fuck out of my way.

Yes, but only in the Freestyle machine can you make Grape Mello-Yello Zero, the greatest beverage known to mankind.

(Patent pending.)

I don't like the digital interfaced soda fountains because they're more difficult than traditional mechanical ones in getting the absolute maximum amount of soda in your glass without overfilling it and causing some to spill out.

Slippery Jim was hiding out with The Bishop in the fully automated McSwineys

SSR series are one of my favorites

Anyone here ever read The Stainless Steel Rat series? In a segment of 1985's A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born Jim DiGriz is hiding with a master criminal in the maintenance control center in the back room of a fast food restaurant sounding suspiciously like a renamed McDonalds. The place is totally automated and has no employees except a maintenance tech who comes by once a week to reload the food. I mentioned the story in Risks Digest to point out that someone could conceive of a fully automated fast food restaurant 30 years ago. I also point out the explanation why the guy is paying for his food instead of stealing it - but not because he's honest. http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/30/18#subj29

Haha beets headphones are a dead giveaway.

Also, now that I'm on a keyboard, I wanted to add that the two people in front of me were ordering on one of the two screens but standing in front of both of them, thereby forcing me to either wait patiently or become DICKMAN and ask them to move over so I could use the other screen. Since the young woman looked slightly retarded and was wearing those beets headphones, I decided to wait.
The manager man was wearing a McDonald's tie at me while he made change. I sure hope he gets fifteen bucks an hour to have to wear a tie like that.
With all this technology it's a wonder the foods not any better than it was twenty, thirty years ago. Actually the food is kinda worse, with the meat holding tanks and 'healthy' fry oil and shake mixes. All this machinery making modern fast food can still be open sandwiched (sorry Neil!)

THE
HAD COFFEE
AARDVARK

I don't use those things. I did once and found the experience so incredibly stupid that from now on if I walk into a McDonalds with one I just like I'm too stupid to even begin to know how to operate it.

god dammit.

The first one I ever saw was at a McDonald's in GYNA. I was kind of disappointed to see them here, I liked thinking GYNA was some super-high tech sci-fi place from space.

People can argue that everyone working at McDonald's deserves $15/hour, and hey, that's great, but this is the result of that. The only way the fast food industry can support these new proposed pay hikes is to either raise their prices or cut back on staffing, and since nobody's going to pay $10 for a Big Mac, this is the result.

We have them at a few places. The first one I saw was at (trigger warning) Jack in the Box. Like you, I had to search a little to find what I wanted, but in the end, at least I knew my order was right. I can't tell if these kiosks are here to stay or simply a warning shot fired over the bow.

Also, there's this: Poo Found on Every McDonalds Touchscreen Tested

And ill also be posting with a real keyboard stead of my phone

Interact*

Well I'm new to this. They upgraded all the McDonald's restaurants to the touch screen ordering system. While I understood the process, there was a short interval while deciphering the menu choices. It made me feel old. Also, I had green folding cash and not some form of future pay. Everything took longer than the old, intract-with-other-humans system. I'm also not the target demographic.
In the future, my future, I'll be going to my favorite greasy spoon instead of the McNewspeak food unit.