Helaine Olen’s Washington Post column last week, “QR code menus are the death of civilization,” is spot-on. Olen writes:
The coronavirus pandemic saw a number of changes in how we live, in ways big and small. Some were welcome: flexibility about remote work, say, or cocktails to go. But here’s one adaptation that can’t fall by the wayside fast enough: the now-commonplace QR code menus offered in place of the paper version in millions of American restaurants. They are unnecessary, anti-social, discriminatory and unpopular. They fully degrade the experience of dining out.
If you don’t know what a restaurant QR code is, I envy you. It’s the black-and-white square code you find on a placard at the table when you are seated, asking you to scan it with your phone’s camera for a link to the establishment’s offerings. Offered up as a bit of hygiene when restaurants reopened after the shutdowns of the early pandemic period, online QR code menus are unnecessary, since the coronavirus is (we now know) an almost entirely airborne pathogen. But all too many dining establishments continue to use them.
A physical menu sets the stage. It highlights the fact that this is a special occasion, even if it’s simply a quick bite at a local diner. The menu signifies that it’s time to take a break in a busy day, that this meal is something separate from the normal course of events. It also pushes us to interact with others. We share menus. We point to things; we ask the wait staff questions about the meal and what they particularly like. It’s like opening a program at a theater, for a show you and your companions are about to experience together.
Whipping out a phone to check the menu, on the other hand, is hardly conducive to setting a mood, unless you want to dine in the metaverse. Smartphones are endlessly distracting, and it takes discipline to put them away after checking a menu, a bit of self-control many can’t always muster. (Guilty.) It’s all too easy to rationalize checking just one email, sending just one tweet, taking just one glance at Instagram. (Guilty again.) We already spend almost five hours a day staring at our smartphone screens. Do we really need a prompt to spend even more time in our electronic silos?
I should admit that I’ve been on the anti–QR code menu bandwagon for some time now:
https://twitter.com/njhochman/status/1525869579360247808
It’s all a little tongue-in-cheek, of course — QR-code menus are annoying, but not exactly the greatest civilizational threat of our time. But there’s a serious aspect of this, too: They not only represent a holdover from a pandemic era that we should be leaving in the rearview as expeditiously as possible — they also are another concession to the digitization of American life, replacing the world of the physical and material with an emaciated, online substitute. For that reason, and so many others, we should demand a return to the real thing. Nothing less than physical plastic menus will do.