I have a terrible secret. I work in technology; I'm a geek of the worst order. I'm obsessed with gizmos and gadgets. Aside from telephones (which terrify me) and copy machines (which simply refuse to cooperate with me), I love to fiddle with stuff. I'm obsessed with the Web. But there's one thing that, up until yesterday, I'd never done.
I'd never ordered a pizza online.
Shocking perhaps, in this day and age, but no, I'd never done it before. I'd tried, and the online ordering site told me the service "wasn't available in my area", which is like telling me I live in the 21st century equivalent of a cave. I can even see the store from my window, perhaps I should try a carrier pigeon or something instead. Or - perish the thought - use the blessed telephone and deal with my associated phobia.
OK, perhaps that's being a little melodramatic, but the experience of ordering anything over the telephone has taught me to avoid it at all costs. Before I even start, I have to wrestle the device out of the clammy hands of one or other of the teenage daughters, who spend the rest of the evening staring daggers at me and gasping as if I've cut them off life support. Following that I have to deal with the inevitable language barrier where neither of us on the call seems capable of translating English to English. It takes at least six attempts to communicate my address and 'phone number, after which they look me up in their little computer and tell me that no, I'm not who I said I am because that's not what's in the machine. Then the ordering process begins, a frustrating exercise in offers and counter-offers where somehow I have to convince the person on the other end that no, I know that's on special, but that's not what I want, nor do I want to know about any of the other offers written on that Post-It note attached to their 'phone. Once the special offers script has ran out, things go rapidly downhill. The chances of getting exactly what I ordered are pretty much zero - I don't think I've ever got what I ordered. I'm convinced it's a conspiracy; no sooner do they hear my voice on the 'phone, they pile together and say "hey, it's the weird-voice guy, your turn tonight Janet" and go out of their way to make things impossible for me.
I didn't have the energy last night to set up an ambush on the 'phone, so I thought it was worth another try. A few years had passed, after all; surely my state is quite comfortable with the horseless carriage and electric light by now. I connected and entered my zip code, and suddenly, a whole new world of radio buttons and javascript gizmos opened up in front of me; selections aplenty, options to select individual toppings, even on one half of the pizza of the other. I was in geek heaven and must admit I had a bit of trouble containing myself - the kids even dragged themselves away from the 'phone to find out what all the cooing was about. Had to play coupon bingo of course; had to go back and correct a few things, tweak a topping here. But this was it - I was in control, I was getting exactly what I wanted, and I was loving it. Email confirmation messages, signup for a returning customer login, all sorts. I was stunned; most of my computer work is with stuff that doesn't work properly, and this seemed great. From start to finish, the whole process only took me about six or seven times longer than it would do over the 'phone.
Nevertheless, it's a brilliant system. Just like those pesky u-scan devices at the grocery store, one human interface is removed out of the system. If you mess up your order, there's only one person to blame - yourself. The buttons you're clicking on the web page look remarkably like the job order that the pizza cook uses anyway - it probably is precisely that, they probably just print that page out, as-is, at the local outlet. What you get is what you want. It doens't matter if there one, or 100 people, filling out their orders online; it takes just the same number of employees to do the order processing. It scales. By each client taking on some of the workload and becoming a temporary, unpaid, pizza parlor employee for the duration of their order, you've significantly streamlined the system. No need for any verbal wrestling while you try to explain what you want to someone on the other end who is trying to find the right options on a bubble sheet. And I no longer have to deal with the insatiable Janet, who always puts her sultriest voice on every time I call to tell me "Yummy. That's my favorite. I wish I was having some of that tonight."
Maybe technology's not all good, after all.
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