#food app delivery

[teachanarchy]

Food Delivery Apps: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

[gummybearstastelikesadness]

Through the shenanigans of GZ/IR portals Danny ends up in a completely different dimension (DC’s my preference) that has heroes. There’s no ghosts to fight and he doesn’t want to step on any toes with this dimensions hero population, meaning Danny Phantom gets a vacation.

( I like to think Danny fought the ghosts in Amity because he opened the portal and felt responsible for it and originally there wasn’t anyone else that really could fight them. If he still has to satisfy an obsession while there he now has time and an entire new star system to learn about. )

Danny somehow ends up at a job interview as a food delivery boy accidentally, it’s definitely not 100% above the table because he doesn’t legally exist there but still gets the job.

Things are going well, he’s doing a good job and making his delivery’s on time via the use of ghost powers on occasion. Eventually he gets a delivery for a completely different city, over two hours away, they’re willing to pay a ton to get it delivered to them. Danny decides to see if he can finish the delivery while the foods still hot.

He gets there in under 10 minutes.

The person that made the order is definitely a hero, and when they got their food two hours early freak out. Asking Danny how he did it. Danny looks them dead in the eyes and says “We have a delivered hot guaranty.” They try to question Danny, but Danny already got paid, he gave them their food, he can leave, so he just walks away and tells them to enjoy their meal.

The hero tells other ones and they decided to order from there as well and get told that when ever Danny’s on shift the delivery range doesn’t have a limit. Obviously they test it. He delivers to a random rooftop in Bloodhaven at 2am. The top of the Dailyplanet. Hong Kong, via a Blackbat/Orphan order. The Titan’s Tower some how.

Eventually someone orderers to one of the places that’s almost impossible to get to, but he does it, he delivers to the watchtower, in space. Just shows up in the middle of the room in front of the person that ordered, and goes “I don’t miss deliveries.” And walks away into space.

[croftersforlife]

*eating takeout*

Sara: What does your fortune cookie say?

Wanderlust, with the whole cookie in his mouth: My what?

[pivsketch]

"i cant believe my Long Lost Rival is driving around as some sort of FOOD COURIER instead of FIGHTING ME TO THE DEATH IN THE WRESTLING RING!!!" <- light novel title

this is (probably) not canon but the set up for a meetcute amused me enough to fumble through drawing a comic on my phone. help ive forgotten how to draw my guys!!!

[stellaralignment]

After reading @kira-serialfaggot 's post about inaccessible menus and @butterfly-sapphire post about non-customizable menus figured I now had sufficient excuse to rant about how I hate how every big restaurant's ""solution"" to these two problems is somehow always the worst fucking app I've ever had to use in my life.

So, to clarify real quick. I agree with both previous posts. Places that serve food should have their menu easily accessible somewhere if they have an online presence, and places that let you customize your order need to have that as a feature of any digital ordering solution they implement. Good? Good.

So, a lot of places I've seen (Wendys, Taco Bell, and McDonald to name a few) Have tried to get around how fucking horrible the DD app itself is by making their own apps with DD integration for the actual ordering/serving of delivery orders. Great, this lets them provide their own menu customization options, serve discounts/coupons, and generally have more control over the user experience. Fantastic. As a bonus, this usually also allows you to just look at the menu whenever you want.

Small issue. All of these apps were written by the worst fucking programmers I have ever witnessed in my life. I havn't gotten angry enough to de-compile or try to reverse engineer one yet, but my user experience has been so consistently bad and I've encountered issues that, as a software engineer, I honestly could not tell you how fucked their system has to be in order to allow that to happen.

Allow me to tell you the worst of these. I'm trying to order delivery from a store. It's late, like 7pm, but I know the place is open till 10. I can confirm this on their website (I do later for reasons that will become apparent) and google maps. So I punch in my address, make my order, and go to checkout. Unfortunately, the app tells me "Your payment method failed. Please select a new method and try again". Which was odd, but not unimaginable. I've had issues with my bank in the past. So I swap cards and try again, thinking nothing of it.

Except, my other card doesn't work either. Nor does using PayPal, or Google Pay, or any of the other payment options I tried. I'm getting desperate. I buy some games on steam just to make sure some of these are working, which they are. I was worried, but now that I've confirmed all my money hasn't been siphoned away somehow, I'm just confused and getting annoyed.

So I start going insane. I buy digital gift cards from several different sites and try using them. No dice, payment failed. I try using the website instead of the app, on my phone and PC. Payment failed. I boot up an android studio instance with a brand new virtual phone, install the app on it, and try to order. Again. Payment failed.

I'm starting to wonder if their servers are just completely down. A friend in a different state can order with no problems. A friend in the same town can order with no fanfare.

But my roommates can't. They have the same issue

Payment failed.

So. I'm going insane. I've now spent almost 3 hours attempting to order food, and I'm starving. It is at this point that my anger finally overcomes my social anxiety, and I do the one thing I never thought I'd do.

I call the store in question.

Now, in all of this there was one crucial mistake I made. See, that friend in the same town? Lived on the other side of town. And there's 2 different stores of this franchise in town. We didn't control for this, because the app doesn't let you pick a store anyways when doing delivery. It's hard locked to whatever one is closest, which isn't a terrible thing to do. You need to get the delivery address anyways, and you know where all your store are, so it cuts out a step for me. But having to choose a store might've clued us in to what was going wrong.

Because the store? Was closed. Not just closed, like mega closed. It was being shut down. It hadn't been open for two weeks, and would never be open again. The order was failing because they'd already taken all the computer systems out, and it couldn't confirm to have received the order.

So there was nothing wrong with the payment. Literally nothing I could have done about this. I am just barred completely from ordering because the app defaults to the nearest location for orders, and my nearest location didn't exist anymore.

And you'd think that there would be some way to communicate this to the user when making the app. But for reasons I can only assume are profit motivated (Though I have no idea how the fuck this is more efficient/profitable), the app just defaults to saying the payment failed.

Now, I wouldn't be this mad if this was just "oops edge case lol" where I suffered the unfortunate consequences of some procrastinator forgetting to do the thing that removes stores from the database. Unfortunate but not really anyone I can blame for it. But no. This is just the most extreme example, and it's not even confined to the one app.

Almost every single app like this I've used defaults to saying the payment failed and to try a new payment method when anything goes wrong. No drivers out on DoorDash to actually move the order? Payment failed. You're trying to order a seasonal item that got dropped today? Payment failed. The companies servers actually are down? Payment failed. You're not connected to wi-fi like an idiot and there's actually something you can do to fix the issue that's not related to payment whatsoever? Payment failed.

What the fuck is up with this lazy ass programming? I seriously doubt there's enough technical debt from these apps to justify not having a robust error catching system that communicates with the user what the issue is. By the fucking stars these people love collecting intrusive data, I'm surprised they havn't used this as an excuse to harvest everyone's fucking location at all times and send "error data" back to central.

But just don't tell me my debit card was declined when I'm trying to order a burger and you closed that store two weeks ago.

[mossdeep]

i ordered doordash to the motel and the dasher called me and i was like "oh yeah you can just bring it to the door, its room number blah blah" and she said "i can't bring it to the door, because of the kidnappings" and i was like "ooohkay, my fiance will meet you downstairs" which like weird like i understand not coming up to a hotel room but this is like. a motel. the door is right there. but alright.

so then the dasher shows up. my fiance is in the parking lot. she pulls up, and asks my fiance "did you call for an uber?" and they were like... "no. i'm here for the pizza?" and so she calls me to verify and i'm like "yeah, thats my fiance-" and she promptly hung up, handed off the pizza, and drove off with my drink.

so i'm like. fuck. also my pizza is ice cold and there's no microwave at this motel, so i eat my cold pizza and call doordash to get a refund for the drink and maybe even a partial for the cold pizza. i call them, am placed on hold, and the lady comes back like "ok your refund will be on the card you used" so i say "ok thank you! is there a dollar amount i should be looking for-?" and she hangs up.

what the fuck i just wanted a pizza and a drink

[princehendir]

I'm gonna be honest with you guys, I don't think it's useful to conflate "available for other reasons, but also inadvertently ends up benefiting some disabled people" with "is an accessibility feature". I think that intention actually ends up being kinda relevant here.

[writhe]

things are hard i feel i’m barely buying anything & i cannot save any money this sucks

[robertdowneyjjr]

Tony as a PHD student/young man working on his own start up and Steve as his usual Uber Eats delivery driver. Steve eventually getting concerned about his health considering the sheer amount of caffeine and junk he orders and how late he does, Tony ordering healthier things to make him feel better while also scolding STEVE for driving so late, Steve canceling/refusing orders to get Tony’s food to him faster and fresher (really it’s good business considering how good Tony tips, really that’s it), Tony getting extra dishes he gives to Steve to enjoy while he does other deliveries once he finds out Steve misses meals sometimes.

If Tony is rich, Tony finding out the app thinks Tony’s steadily higher tips are an error and aren’t getting the full amount to Steve (Tony not realizing he’s getting partial refunds lol rich boy) so he starts giving him cash even tho Tony hates touching (shudders) physical money. It ends with Tony hiring Steve as his own delivery man and then Tony starts ordering all his meals for 2 and them enjoying them together. Maybe this prolongs the dance they are doing cuz Tony doesn’t wanna date his employee (again, Pepper showed it was a bad idea).

Or if Tony isn’t rich, he does the 2 meals thing while Steve is still with Uber, who is losing out on orders by spending more time with Tony to eat together. And once Tony realizes this he starts going with Steve in his deliveries, man can work from anywhere and/or he needs a break. Maybe Tony makes an algorithm to find Steve the most profitable and efficient route. Them just spending all night talking while they drive around town delivering food dreaming of a future where they can do midnight drives together for pleasure rather then business

steve only ever works the late late late hours when he's driving for uber eats because he's got so much going on during the day. he has his own classes to attend part time and he still has his day job at staples, which unfortunately has cut his hours by quite a bit hence his need for another source of income. he didn't deliberately set out to work such late hours when he signed up as a driver for uber eats, but it just so happened that the first day he finally found some time to start taking orders, it was late at night after he'd finished all his assignments and he had bills to pay within the next week so he was a bit desperate.

there are really only a limited number of restaurants that are still open and taking orders past 10pm on a weeknight, and luckily steve actually lives pretty close to a few of them. when an order comes through he taps the accept button without really bothering to look at the details and grabs his keys to head out to the restaurant. it's only when he's sitting at the takeout corner waiting for the order to be packed that he notices the outrageous tip left by the customer. steve knows that this kind of a tip has to be an anomaly but he also thinks that if this is the kind of beginner's luck he's got for his first order, then maybe being an uber eats driver a few nights a week might actually help more than he originally thought.

so he grabs the bag of chinese food and heads over to the address for this "Tony S", making extra sure the food is secured in his car and the drink wouldn't spill as he drives. tony's tip alone can pay for his entire phone bill this month, and steve can't do much to thank him but at least he could do this.

when he rings the doorbell to tony's home, the last thing he's expecting is how handsome this generous customer is. not only that, but tony actually takes the time to say what seemed like a very heartfelt thank you for making a delivery this late. tony speaks to steve like he's his personal savior for bringing him food at such an ungodly hour, and his smile is so dazzling that steve is still stunned as he makes his way back to his car. that night steve dreams are filled with sparkling brown eyes and he almost wakes up late for class.

a few nights later, as steve finishes up his dinner he turns on the app again and so he can start to take orders. just as he's drying his hands after doing his dishes, four orders pop up on his screen and he rushes to take the order that's the first one on the list. he pauses just as he does, though, when he notices an order for Tony S. two rows down. he thinks of the tip he had received that first night, which was nice. then he thinks about the smile that greeted him when tony opened the door, which was even nicer.

he opens the order page for Tony S. and taps accept.

[twinkskeletons]

twitter is once again doing doordash discourse and i need to ask do restaurants in america just not have their own delivery guys

[heart-forge]

if I'm sick I like ramen noodles because the broth is good

Spicy or not spicy? I usually go for spicy I'm of the very strong belief that like cold medicine the stronger the better sdflkjhdj

[kittydeliverycomic]

Yes they asked this in a mall food court with a big flashing sign right behind me.

[lastweeksshirttonight]

This week, John tackles issues within the food delivery app space, from the Mafia-like racketeering that signa restaurants up for these apps, the money they take for their services, and... bottom diet discourse in their advertisements (I am not joking).

This is an extremely blue segment of LWT and I love it. There's one line I haven't stopped thinking about all week because it's so strikingly gross.

[binch-i-might-be]

cool. it's after ten and I'm sitting here half asleep and starving. time to cook something I guess because the most incompetent restaurant of all time couldn't manage to get a pizza and some pasta here within four and a half hours

[nexus-nebulae]

omg i placed a jimmy johns order for the first time using their app and i got a "do you love our app" type popup and i like to be honest, i liked how the app worked compared to others so i clicked "yes" so it would prompt me to leave a review and instead the popup window just said "we love you too!" sobbing

[writerobscura]