I went to lunch with my two daughters on Sunday last – the eldest is back from France for two weeks – which was pleasant. Mostly. They brought me to that chicken restaurant with all the chicken, Nandos.
Most loyal readers know that I love a ‘restaurant experience’ even McDonald’s as it means I am not doing the cooking or cleaning. This experience was interesting.
Once we were shown to our table by the lovely, real human person, said human asked us ‘if we had ever been to Nandos before.’ Reader, I have been. My eldest loves it. So, yes we have been here before. This felt like the wrong answer as our human waitress just disappeared and we were left to our own devices. Quite literally.
I like to think I am a dab hand when it comes to ordering, politely. First, you must catch the eye of the waiter or waitress and then they saunter over to you and ask you, are you ready to order?
You must always be ready to order, even if you are not ready to order. If you say you are not ready this means you will not see that waiter for another 15 minutes. They will proceed to seat that table of 6 beside the table of 4 and your order then goes in after those two large tables. If you have a toddler, which for the last 10 years I have, that’s your lunch ruined. The toddler will not be able to sit still for the required amount of time it takes to give you order, have your food served and then eaten. So yes, I am ready to order.
In fact, I am ready to order both drinks and food. You never order drinks and food separately, that’s just more time. Or starters – that’s a fatal mistake. You see, I have this ordering business down to a fine art. I am never rude, I never, ever send food back, I’m just pleasant. I waited tables before so I know how rude customers can be.
It seems in 2025 though you cannot give your order to a real human person. Nor do you even order to a machine like at McDonald’s which I just about tolerate. No, in 2025 you have to order with your phone. Well this was news to me. Eldest daughter whips out her phone and starts ‘taking our order.’ I sat there, baffled. Where is the waiter or waitress?
Eldest daughter just keeps punching things into her phone and explaining the difference between this chicken dish and the other chicken dish. Can’t I just give my order to a real human person I asked? No, you cannot said my 16 year – old. But what if you don’t have a phone, I asked. I’d just turned my phone off. She just kept swiping and then asked me for my card. A regular occurrence.
I was told the ‘order went through’ which is progress, that’s what they will tell me. This is “progress” in the same way women playing rugby or football is progress. In other words, it is a bad idea and thoroughly uncivilised.
So just like Dunnes makes me check out my own food shop, Nandos has been turned into a waitress. What’s next? Will I be asked to cook my own food? Will they wheel me into the kitchen and put my pinny on me and start ordering me to season the chicken? Maybe they will ask me to serve the food and clean up after. Who knows. I can’t be doing with this, I thought. Good chicken though.
When I was growing up, the big fear was Judgment Day. The nightmare was that one day the machines would be smarter than us, trigger a nuclear war and take us over. Only the resistance would survive. This Nandos non–waitress fandango however seemed like a soft take over if you ask me. It is a subtle Judgment Day but terrifying in its own way. I sat there, pondering, which was worse – the T–800 or the tiny machine in our pocket that has eliminated the need for a waiter or waitress.
Now it turns out a real living person did actually bring us our food but there was no chatting. I couldn’t even tell if they were foreign so I cannot write about how all the wait staff ‘are foreign.’ I bet they don’t have this nonsense in France. It will be a cold day in hell before I give up my rude French waiter, I can tell you that now. You can take that to the bank.
I do wonder how the old folks would survive this. My elderly parents for instance wouldn’t be able for it, not that they would ever find themselves in Nandos to begin with. My father calls pizzas ‘those roundy things with cheese’. Still it’s not right.
This stealth take over by the machines is very sophisticated. It is difficult to know which is worse, the total annihilation as depicted in James Cameron’s masterpiece Terminator 2: Judgment Day or our utter dependency and capitulation to our Machine Overlords, especially the tiny machine in our pockets.
Finally, it is telling that when the Terminator is hunting Sarah Connor in the first movie she is a waitress. We may have survived Judgment Day but the machines took out the waitresses in the end.
Sarah Connor survived the Terminator. None of us survived the smartphone.