I don’t often agree with boomer takes, but I agree with this one.
I don’t think wanting a physical menu to look at is unreasonable for any generation.
or spend like 30 minutes making a decent website i swear online menus are the most asinine thing at every restaurant.
i don’t even require a menu just give me a list with name, price, and ingredients im good. maybe a touch of heirarchy but like then im good.
I went on a date and both of our phones were dead lol
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I don’t want to have my device tracked by your cookies in order to eat
Disagree, this is one of those changes that not only is very hyginic but also has a juge impact on reducing the amount of work for staff.
I won’t disagree however that they could still have menus available for the instances people don’t have a smartphone or are having problems with their smartphone. However, overall the impacts are mostly positive aside from incoviniencing the customer slightly to look at the menu on their phone.
The entire point of going out to eat is customer service. If I didn’t want things like this handled for me I would eat at home. “Slightly inconveniencing the customer” is not acceptable.
What’s worse is I’m now expected to tip 20% to a person that basically runs my food and fucks off. Id be fine with it if I picked up my food at a window. Why am I tipping someone so much money when all they do is deliver food? No talking, no taking an order, no checking in, not even bringing a bill. I was at a brewery recently with one of those order online and bring it to your table setups. I asked for some ketchup when they brought the food and they told me I had to order it through the website. Not going back.
Yeah sorry, if I can view the menu from my phone instead of touching a menu that 6000 other people have touched, without having to deal with either the server taking it away or it being in the way on my table, I don’t see why I would want or need an actual physical menu
I don’t see why I should need to pull up my phone to order food at a restaurant.
I don’t think you should “have to”. I think physical menus should always be available. But if both are available, I certainly think the digital is superior in every way
Fair enough. Both is better
The option still seems pretty nice to have.
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Even a restaurant’s legit web site may require cookies or some other thing that not everyone is comfortable with
I see your point, but that seems highly improbable. That a bad actor would be willing and able to successfully create a QR Code that looks enough like the restaurant’s QR and that neither the patrons nor the establishment itself would notice. Not only improbable, but the roi for the scammer seems very poor.
No one working at the restaurant is analyzing the pixels in a QR code to see if they are in the right spot. A QR looks like a QR code. Show someone 10 QR codes and ask them to pick the one from their restaurant, no way anyone is getting that right based on anything more than dumb luck.
The fake one could even forward on to the normal menu after it does the nasty bits, assuming it’s just installing something that will run in the background. This seems like a great way to get some malware out into the wild, especially if it can’t self-replicate.
They might not be analyzing, but its not like restaurant’s qr codes are just plain generic qr codes. They are branded, so effort would have to be put into making them appear to be authentic. And I think it’s improbable that staff wouldn’t notice. And again, the roi for the bad actor seems incredibly poor.
Alright, what if it’s a restaurant that’s popular within a certain discriminated demographic? The risks for such attack would instantly skyrocket
They are branded, so effort would have to be put into making them appear to be authentic.
Not really. Branded QR codes are just regular, unbranded QR codes but messed up— You basically just stick the the branding right on top, and then let the built-in error correction take care of the rest. Should take all of 5 minutes to set up, or maybe 20-30 if you wanna be a stickler for detail.
And I think it’s improbable that staff wouldn’t notice.
If I were working at the restaurant— I think I’d notice after a couple weeks— They’d have impunity up to then— But even then, I’d just assume the management switched it out or patched it up because they wanted to change the link for metrics or messed up something backend or something like that.
The staff is paid to wait tables, not to audit cybersec from the perspective of the customers.
And again, the roi for the bad actor seems incredibly poor.
Probably highly variable.
If the restaurant has a lot of patrons that are wealthy and technologically illiterate, with banking apps on unupdated phones with known exploits, then you’d think “ROI” is basically everything in the bank accounts of the patrons.
Same if the online menu includes online payment options for whatever reason.
I’ve seen places with generic QR codes, and at best most would just have a logo in the middle the sticker could easily go around, if that particular target would lead to a big enough pay off. I don’t know what the ROI would be. I don’t know how these hackers make money, but they seem to make enough to make it worth their time.
I’m with you on this, I live in a country where a digital menu is not a given and I hate it more than people who prefer physical menus seem to hate digital menus. I do agree that both should be available as an option
Your phone is 10x dirty as a toilet seat
You’ve never seen my phone. And I don’t use it as a toilet seat.
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Having free WiFi might also be nice. But the physical copy is more versatile.
Or, just get a cheapo used tablet and keep that in reserve for people to view the menu if needed.
Oh yeah, right. Even better.
I’ve actually been to a restaurant in Prague that only handed out iPads as menus. 🤷♂️
Waiter stares at you waiting for you to return the tablet the entire time you all decide to order
CTRL-P
It’s been so long since i had to print something, it took me a minute to remember what CTRL-P does lmao
Thanks for explaining that for me, I didn’t get it.
Well for certain restaurants it makes some sense. Like if your a nicer seafood place all that shit changes by the week in price, sometimes daily. You don’t want to have to print out menus on nice card stock everyday and you also don’t want shitty looking paper menus.
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Surprised they didn’t have free wifi, but at least they had a solution. Upside is less waste, faster menu updates, and not touching dirty menus… downside is convenience.
That’s exactly why I prefer qr. I don’t need to touch dirty menus and before anyone says that they clean them every night. Doesn’t matter, they use the same watery rag on all the menus, they may not be sticky but they sure as shit are still dirty. I’ve worked at plenty of restaurants, including ‘high end’ ones. The only way to guarantee they’re clean is to just print out a new one for each guest.
Your phone is definitely not sanitary, unless you sanitize it.
Your phone only contains your own dirt.
It’s like saying you’re okay with sleeping in someone else’s unwashed bed just because you’re okay with doing that with your own.
Your phone contains germs and bacteria from everything you’ve touched throughout the day, and every surface you have placed it on. You touch things and then touch your phone all day long. You wash your hands before you eat to get rid of all those germs, but if you handle your phone after that, then you might as well not wash your hands.
Remember kids: Every time you touch something, you get your germs on it. That also means that portion of your germs is no longer on your hands. So in lieu of washing your hands, consider touching every single surface you come across.
It’s possible to have a qr code menu while still having print menus avaliable, get the best of both worlds.
If the QR code was just encoded text or an image as apposed to a weblink, then this could have been avoided. Although, I’m not sure how many QR readers support images, and if your phone doesn’t have a built-in QR app nor you have a third-party one, then you’d be SOL anyways.
Wouldn’t it be easier to show the image than encode it in a QR?
Yes, but that’d be the same as just having a physical menu in the first place. And that’s just far too logical for these quirky little restaraunts.
I don’t get how people go abroad and don’t just get a local sim. In most countries, a travel sim is something between 20 and 40 bucks. In my opinion, that’s pretty essential.
Extended layover. Not going to buy a SIM for a day in Lisbon.
Eh, guess so. I just never go for this extended layover kind of deal.
And, because I’m European, I do not even need a different sim for the whole of Europe. Unlimited data.
As a non European, prepaid sims in Europe are complicated. Some companies won’t sell sims to foreigners, some have little to no roaming. Some have activation fees that double the price.
Some examples: in Germany you need to do a video call to activate your sim, in Italy most providers require you to have an Italian tax number to buy a sim. In Romanian most of the plans have a paltry 1 GB of roaming.
Also most of the SIMs geared toward tourists don’t allow roaming.
I’m Canadian now but kept my Hungarian SIM, still paying it to this day after seven years. It’s 9EUR/mo for some paltry amount of data, but mostly just using it for online services that require a Hungarian or European phone number for MFA. I just bought extra data that counted as EU wide roaming data when I last visited.
However the options for my wife were very limited as a non-EU traveller. I think it was €30 or something for ~5GB of data usable in Hungary only and limited to ten days (we stayed for 14) and added as an eSIM with the help of an app/website. It was not transferable to other EU member states, and this was one of the best deals we could find that did not require us to go to a physical store location. This included us checking offers for prepaid SIMs from the major providers (Vodafone / -Mobil / Yettel)
I’m with boomers on this. It’s even worse if it redirects you to their FB page
If I have to log into fucking facebook to see a goddamn menu I’m leaving.
Agree. And it is an unnecessary wall to go through for most people. Printing a Menu is really simple.
Boomer is a state of mind.
That’s not a menu! That’s a QR code!
So I threw it on the ground
and then said, That’s no QR code, that’s my wife!
Sorry wait, I’m getting it mixed up with an old boomer joke my neighbor used to tell.
So then the bartender says “Sorry, we don’t serve QR codes here.”
The moral of the story is
You can’t trust the system!
Man!
(Very Lemmy take, there)
My dads not a menu.
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Restaurants have notoriously low profit margins. Not every restaurant of course, but there’s a reason that restaurants regularly fail, especially in cities, and I don’t think it’s because the owners are spending it all on yachts.
Not every restaurant of course, but there’s a reason that restaurants regularly fail, especially in cities, and I don’t think it’s because the owners are spending it all on yachts.
I think a lot of them are in debt up to their eyeballs and that’s why they fail. They also usually make up for the lower margins on food with better margins on drinks, but there’s a margin on every item regardless.
Rent is also a factor. Commercial real estate is not cheap.
And some just plain suck. The food sucks, the prices suck, the service sucks, or the location sucks.
There are myriad reasons why restaurants fail, and I doubt it’s all because of low margins.
I’m not an economist, but whlouldnt manipulated prices drive things more toward fair market value? A crusty menu meant to last a year is more likely to overshoot prices to cover market fluctuations that occur during that year. At least this is how I think of it.
Other than gasoline and expensive fish, we don’t really pay true market price for anything. That would be chaos and I’m not sure why any consumer would want prices to fluctuate that often.
If anything they will use corrections to drive the price up, not down. The only way prices would come down is pressure from competition, without that a reduction in business costs would just mean more margin for the owner.
This makes me wonder whether there’s ever price discrimination going on. A system like this could give different prices based on what kind of phone you’re using if they wanted it to, and you wouldn’t necessarily know it.
How would this work though? You’re not ordering your food via the QR code link, you’re telling the waitstaff. Unless they ask you what price your saw, how are they going to correlate their variable price to a particular customer?
However, this would make it a lot easier to implement “peak pricing”. Their menu could automatically update based on time of day, or day of week, and certainly holidays.
In some places, the QR link redirects you to a page where you can order items without interacting with the staff.
Wh… why would they do that?
I guess maybe if a phone company is secretly paying them to, but why would a phone company go to restaurants to give their customers lower prices? And even if they did, what do they gain from that if they don’t want anyone to know?
And even if they did, the waiter would also have to take note of what kind of phone the customers use, and give them the respective price on the bill. One slip-up could reveal the scheme.
The idea behind price discrimination is that some customers will still buy the same product if it is offered at a higher price, while others will not. By figuring out which is which and offering them different prices, you can make more profit. For instance Uber is known to charge higher rates to customers with low phone battery, because they are probably more desperate and would be more willing to pay.
If a restaurant knows you have an expensive phone, they know you can probably afford more expensive meals and won’t walk out if the prices are high. If you have a cheap phone, they might want to tone it down a little to avoid driving you away. They might be able to make more money by doing this.
Also you wouldn’t need the waiter involved you can just check the user agent if all ordering has to be done through phones, the whole process would be automatic.
Wh… why would they do that?
If you’ve got a more expensive phone they’ll charge more because they assume you have more money.
Alternatively, if you’ve got a cheaper phone they’ll charge more so that they don’t have to cater to the “wrong type of people.”
I saw an article on lemmy about this yesterday, though not sure whether I’ll find it again.
Hotels, flights, retailers already have an abundance of price discrimination. Target shows higher prices when your device is physically closer to a store and lower prices when you are further away. IPhone users tend to pay higher prices because they assume that since you had the extra money to pay for an expensive phone, you’ll be open to spending more at other stores.
Likewise, if they see your device or other devices on your network/near you making several searches for hotels/flights the price will increase.
It’s just another way to build greed into the system
That Target one sounds definitely illegal.
Just use a browser that hides useragent
While a valid point, it misses the possibility of people who may not know what useragent even means; it misses people who may not know that a website can identify what browser or device you are using.
This would be noticed and called out the literal second two people go together and have different devices. We don’t all just travel in packs according to our mobile device brand or OS lol
If they notice the difference. They might be too busy socializing and not caring about the pricing that much.
That’s really reaching hard to try and make this valid. We have real examples of businesses taking advantage there’s plenty to worry about without making up more
Just spoke from real life experience. /shrug
I think that’s a huge reason places have kept the QR codes. It’s not entirely their fault. Their costs have unstable and constantly increasing lately. Reprinting new menus with pricing adjustments on a regular basis isn’t free in a industry that’s already slim margins.
Related pet peeve: restaurants that have a million items for a million prices, all of them basically the same. Example: sandwich shop not far from me. Every sandwich is +|- a dollar, same with every item. Takes forever for them to ring it up and the variance is pennies. Just charge $X per sandwich and maybe markup a few premium items (roast beef, avocado, bacon whatever).
When in doubt: simplify
Presumably you can place your order via the qr code to so less risk of human error transcribing it wrong or God forbid you get one of those annoying waiters that think they have a super memory and can hold more than 8 items in short term memory and don’t even write things down.
QR code menus and ordering systems are terrible IMO.
The tech often sucks, but more than that they make the entire restaurant experience worse.
I tried to keep an open mind when encountering them at first, but they often nullify any and all interactions you have with the waiters, and turn the restaurant from full service into something like a fast casual restaurant…yet they still prompt you for tips at the end of the meal and add additional percentage overcharge fees for “inflation” or whatever.
I don’t want a waiter to be over at my table every twenty seconds, but waiters shouldn’t be made pointless by a maître d’, a runner, and a busboy.
They’re anti-social shit dreamt up by the same kind of minds that gave us the horror that is self-checkout.
I think I understand your viewpoint, but personally have a different opinion. I’m not going to a restaurant to socialize with the waiter; although some of those interactions can be pleasant it’s still just a functional transaction to me that can go wrong and could be be optimized. My main focus is the people I’m going to the restaurant with and the food/drinks.
QR for the win for me, but I agree fully that most of those apps kinda suck. I hope time will fix that.
Eh, you sound like a bit of an extravert. I understand where you are coming from. I disagree and would rather have a good interface backed by an available and knowledgeable human only if trouble shooting or questions arise. I also love self check out😉. To each their own. Either of our preferred modalities can of course be implemented crappilly.
I’m just a person who likes to sit at a table and order like a person that paid to eat at a full service restaurant.
Neither you nor I should expect there to be “troubleshooting” in a full service restaurant. We’re not setting up a new iPad; we’re paying to be served.
Self-checkout is rife with not only anti-social vibes, but also involves possible legal trouble…and all so that the store didn’t have to hire a few extra checkout personnel.
Both of these “innovations” are largely for the benefit of the owners and largely at the cost of the people patronizing these establishments.
I don’t have a choice of stores, but I’m spoiled for choice in restaurants living in the city. I’ll vote with my feet.
I absolutely love self checkouts in shops, makes it more fast-in-fast-out kinda thing. But the very rare moments I have nowadays to go to a restaurant with my wife, I absolutely want to have a proper service and enjoy the evening as whole.
I can order McDonald’s with home delivery, don’t want that shit in a restaurant
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What drives me up the wall is when it just links to a scanned image of the menu they used to have, so instead of a full sized menu, you have to pinch and zoom and swipe around on your phone. What’s the fucking point? I went to one and the menu was FOUR PAGES LONG like that! If I hadn’t been promising my daughter I’d take her, I would have walked out.
Folding phone works well for this. Kinda sucks that you need an $1800 device to have a decent menu viewing experience. I’m more miffed that they expect my reception to be a given. Towers go down, congestion happens, give me a physical menu!
I am fine with it but I feel they should have alternatives. Some people don 't have a device, connection. Or have issues with using technology for whatever reason, being old, incapacitated, etc.
Shit cell service, and an inability to easily take in the menu online are my biggest gripes
If they don’t have a good internet connection available for free for customers with a good mobile website, why would anyone visit and actually struggle through the ordering process?
It’s a niche probably imaginary scenario they want to strawman. If a place has shit cell service or no Wi-Fi then they clearly aren’t using QR codes and just shrugging their shoulders confused at every customer.
There’s a waiter, so I assume you could just tell them you don’t have a phone for it
Exactly lol, everyone crying about this is just inventing a problem
Then they don’t eat there. I don’t see the problem. Might be the owners problem. But hopefully it was taken into cinsideration. If not, though luck again.
That’s not quite how accessibility regulations are structured. Wouldn’t surprise me if there are requirements on this in any given jurisdiction. Perhaps not a ‘thou shalt have printed menus’ but some kind of reasonable accommodation I think isn’t absurd.
I think it’s pretty reasonable to require restaurants to spend a little money to print menus, and even a little more to get braille ones. There’s millions of people who might have some difficulty or another using a browser based menu, certainly we can do better than saying “sorry, tough luck.”
It shouldn’t be on the customer to have the tech to view a menu. If you’re gonna run a restaurant, have a paper menu available to customers somewhere, even if your primary menu is behind a QR-code.
I went to a restaurant that had the barcode menu. I prefer a physical menu, but fine whatever. The problem was, there was no reception inside the restaurant, and you couldn’t connect to their wifi for whatever reason.
This happened to me recently as well, but while traveling when I was low on data. Like ok, I will use your stupid QR code menu, but then you better provide free functional wifi.
I don’t know why but the QR menus just piss me off in a service restaurant. I won’t use em (been bailed out by a date more than once).
For a counter place where they are just slinging me the food? Ok I guess. But if we’re out paying for a dinner that’ll hopefully lead to nookie, phones should be the last thing on the table.
It’s because there is no need to involve your personal pocket computer in their food transaction, but everybody wants to get a piece of your data with their fucking apps and customer “rewards” programs. Of course just pulling up a URL may not give them much, but it’s like they are working towards getting the tip of their data-raping dick in your pants.
And also, it’s an extra step that’s a bit of a hassle. I don’t want to have to use my phone’s browser and internet connection to read little words on a phone screen and scroll around and zoom in etc.
I went to a restaurant once that wanted me to install their app to see the menu. I just laughed at them, left, and never went back. The sad part about that is that the kids working there don’t understand why that would bother anyone and view me as a crotchety old man who yells at clouds. .
The forced apps these days are just absurd. Every fucking store has their own app and wants you to shop with it. They don’t put any effort into making their websites functional and just force you into the app as hard as they can. I don’t want your fucking app.
One semi-nice restaurant I went to wanted me to give them my cell number so I could be notified when our table was ready, and I declined. The host-greeter seemed to have a brain malfunction about that temporarily but he eventually figured out that he could just call my name when it was ready and my ears could receive his message. Of course I looked like a weirdo causing “problems” to the rest of the crowd who were complacent enough to hand out their digits to the restaurant computer.
Yeah it’s weird how complacent about data everyone is. I was buying a book a couple of weeks ago and they asked for my email address. I said “no thanks” and the cashier started typing “nothanks” and then blinked and was like “wa… what?”. I told them I’m not interested in sharing my email address to buy a book, and their brain melted. They were like “but you have to!” to which I replied “no, I really don’t”. They had to call a manager over because they didn’t even know how to complete a transaction without an email address.
I don’t want to have to use my phone’s browser and internet connection to read little words on a phone screen and scroll around and zoom in etc.
The last place I went with a QR menu linked to a fucking PDF. It was absolutely abysmal trying to look through a phone PDF reader at a menu. Unsurprisingly, the restaurant had some of the worst service I have ever encountered in decades of eating at restaurants.
I love and seek out restaurants that use online ordering and payment. I don’t need someone waiting on me. I’m in the US and they are not paid a living wage, the work is difficult with little reward. Now there is a place in my neighborhood where you sit down the QR code is table based, interaction is simple, clear and designed to work (uses Toast as the backend iirc). You order, the order stays open till you pay it’s a restaurant/bar so if you need another you don’t have to do anything but tap on your phone. They have amazing helpful servers that are paid well. You pay on your phone and leave when you are done. It’s amazing.
I think this is more about power dynamics than currency and menus. I think many people just want or more accurately demand that others (with less power) to serve them. I’ve even heard people say “it’s not my job to check me out or take my order.” Those same people treat their waitress like shit, when those waitresses are paid basically nothing to take the abuse. Then they try to weasel out of the bill. Seen it time and time again.
Now, some restaurants do poor a poor implementation of modern menus and it’s frustrating. However… long term those that do it well will win. It reduces friction and costs leading to lower prices higher margins and quicker more accurate service.
I hate them. Will never go to a place that uses them.
Nobody will win. The waitress stays or will return and still get paid shit. The menu will get digitised because it’s cheaper. You know what less costs mean?
Higher profits.
The end.
Wake up.
You might want to reevaluate who needs to “wake up”. Right now the only difference I see between you and Jeff Bezos is who has the money.
There are many other successful ways to run a business. Co-ops are one example… The legal and regulatory framework of our society should encourage and reward making and encouraging pro-social ethical decisions not discourage them. I think our problem is how we treat each other - not how we order food. Ordering food is just the symptom of the greater ill.
As long as you think like Bezos, nothing will change and more of your money will flow to the rich.
Thus, why I suggest the “waking up” that needs to happen is to realize we are in an increasingly unstable dream/nightmare (depending on whether you have money or not) that we collectively need to choose a different way that truly does benefit everyone.
I am serious. And don’t call me surly.
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You can call me Shirley!
I can call you Betty, and Betty when you call me you can call me Al.
Well, duh. I know. But the original joke works because it exchanges “surely” for the homophone “Shirley.” With “Shirley” already in the title I can’t do that, so swapping it for the not-quite-homophone “surly” seemed like the next best choice.
You didn’t get it.deleted by creator
You must be hilarious in conversations
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What’s meshurley’s phone number?
You’re supposed to enjoy your meal, then tape a QR code to the table and say that’s your payment as you walk out.
Yeah I’d just walk out if the restaurant can’t afford menus
What if the restaurant can afford it, but don’t have it anyway?
Then I’d walk out, come back, and walk out again!
The supply the tablet/phone with the digital menu. Sushi places here do it, I’m ok with that. Making me use my own device, ehhh no thanks. I might as welp provide and make my own food too.
Well, your own device is relatively more hygienic to you, in comparison with shared device. You may hope a restaurant will disinfect device after each guest, but it’s safe to assume they’re not.
Debatable…whens the last time you sanitized your phone. (Never…).
It is also possible to be too hygienic and actually making things worse for you and developing allergies, skin conditions, etc…
If you’re really afraid of menus, then don’t touch the door knob at the restaurant, or the seats, or the bottles of sauce, salt pepper shakers, etc…
Debatable…whens the last time you sanitized your phone. (Never…).
But it’s bacteria your body already familiar with and probably already have some immunity for.
So you’re saying the introduction to bacteria can help your immune system?
No, I’m not saying that. Please, read again.
I use a LightPhone II which has no camera. It gets me out of this bullshit all the time.
Wait staff: “oh god, here’s the dude with the cameraless phone again 🙄”
“How insufferable and low tipping do you think he’ll be today?”
I was visiting family and we went to a restaurant in NC that did this and the waitress just shrugged and said “We are environmentally friendly, we don’t have paper menus. Borrow someone’s phone” and then walked away.
Questions I didnt get to ask… Like how much environmental impact does a dozen menus have? Also before you walk away… can I borrow your phone? I am not asking some stranger for the phone.
My sister ended up having a smartphone with her. We wanted to leave, but my mom wasn’t having none of it because “it would be impolite, they have already served us water”.
You know who else serves water mom? Prison, prison serves water. Is it impolite to leave prison!?
You gotta leave before your first cup of water. It’s one cool trick the prison industry doesn’t want people to know about.
If I was forced to stay in a place that said that by family, I’d start getting really petty judging all the things they’re doing which have a bigger environmental impact than some menus.
Like how about the data center running the website to host the menu? Are they using paper napkins? Is anything disposable on the plate I get with my food? How does the bill arrive, is it paper? Is there food waste in the kitchen, what happens to it?
I seriously doubt that a webserver running 24/7 has less environmental impact than printing 50 pieces of paper one time.
Could be running on a service multiple restaurants can subscribe to. Also, paper menus could have to be replaced, whether by updates or damage.
Florida Man Asks For Paper Menu Without Mentioning That He In Fact Has A Phone With A Camera - “These idiots don’t even check!” He Says
The onion has entered chat
Florida Man Crosses Crosswalk Without Waiting For The Light - Claims There Were No Cars
