Student Bob is hungry. Student Bob wants food, but cannot drive anywhere because he is on lockdown for finals week. Student Bob has an idea; he pulls out his phone and orders a pizza. He now can sit back, study, and wait for his delivery in ~20-30 minutes.
This is the reality of our world: the world that never stops. The direction of our society has involved a move towards haste and efficiency. It is this that has pioneered fast food restaurants, delivery, and now, mobile and online ordering.
Companies such as Starbucks, Papa Johns, and Subway are some of the first adopters of said program, with their intention being to help eliminate wait times, open up their brand to more customers, and to help entice people who would otherwise have time restrictions. These programs, as a result, have had an impact high school with those time restrictions.
Hungry and wanting Pizza, Drew Edelstein figured out a new way to quench his hunger through the prospect of online orders.
“It was ordering pizza like normal, except doing it on my phone,” sophomore Drew Edelstein says, pertaining to his Pizza Hut order. “The site was nice, the options I usually would get were there. It was well done.”
Although the order was good, the process is considered by some to be tedious and difficult over the pre-existing options.
Senior Niko Stamos says that he has ordered pizza using both mobile delivery, and mobile pickup. “If you give people an incentive to do it, they will,” Stamos says, adding that it’s a good idea, but notes there are several barriers to doing the ordering: making an account, and orders not successfully being made.
This is not a limited case of incidents and complaints either. Others report similar frustrations with the order process; in one such case, reported by sophomore Venkatesh Satheeskumar, a pizza order from Imos was entirely messed up.
“Since I’m a vegetarian and they put sausage on it, I couldn’t eat it,” Satheeskumar said. “I think mobile ordering is a good idea, but that order was really bad.”
Freed from negatives, most people concur: mobile and online orders are a good idea. It’s proved to be super efficient [when the actual product is delivered properly], requested and often admired by customers, and creates product accessibility. But it is also accepted that there are flaws.
Fundamentally, these types of problems should be expected, at least for now. It is not the fault of the customer, but a fault that falls on companies and the unreadiness to apply these new innovations in services. It does express their willingness to experiment and innovate and sure, there are flaws, and there will certainly be fixes. After all, we -as a society- have moved towards haste and efficiency, a plague that will doom us in some regards, and save us in regards . . like getting your five topping pizza correct, on-time, and/or early.