> Is there any part of the world you can have a six top with individual checks when you didn't tell them up front to split the bill?

Most restaurant point of sales systems in the US handle that pretty well. They put down what seat an item was ordered from, and it covers everything except shared items like appetizers. That's been pretty common for a couple decades, and not just at chains, also at local places (if they had a POS system and weren't doing it with paper still, but good servers know how to notate that well, too).

I’ve seen rare places where the server has a handheld and every single item is always individually charged. Then they can keep things separate or combine it however you want.

But, I’ve seen that maybe twice in my entire life. Once might have been in Vegas. Everywhere else is as you say; it’s just not a reasonable post-meal request.

It's because we are Americans yes. When I was in Europe the server would give us the handheld payment device and we select which items we ordered and then they'd charge us. The author seems to not have this, the waiter should've gone through themselves. It was simply the wrong technology, not that technology was at fault.

Yes, this is quite standard outside the US. In Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia etc. this is more the standard practice than the opposite.

>Is there any part of the world you can have a six top with individual checks when you didn't tell them up front to split the bill?

Not uncommon here in Norway. I had payday beers with well over ten people where there was a shared tab with people paying for their stuff as they leave.

Europe. You just walk to the register and point out the items you want to pay for. I've never seen a place where paying for a group of 6 separately would be a problem, it's the default and expected.

I enjoy the codes. It skips that whole dance we do in the US of waiting for the server to return - twice! - to pick up payment and then drop off the card and receipts. I can sit there as long as I want, pay once, then walk out. And the card has never left my hand.

What's more nonsense is the author of the article trying to split a check 6 ways and stressing over the fact two people shared a dessert. Sack up, split it roughly or better yet don't split it at all. Good friends return the favor sooner or later. Unless you're a cheapskate.

These folks have patted themselves on the back for devising a solution to the last mile without then realizing that the hardest part of all was the last 20 feet.

They'll just ignore that problem, drop the package on my front lawn and then snap a picture for proof of delivery from 50 feet up before flying away. To be fair, at least one of the Chinese international carriers does that every time already -- pull into my driveway, open the window, chuck the package onto the lawn, and then drive away. At least Amazon still brings it to the front porch and 90% of the time even puts it in a spot where the rain does not reach.

A popular solution in my country, at least for less formal restaurants and bars (and even nightclubs) is for each customer to have their own tab, which gets marked by waiters and stays with the customer. In those places, it's also the norm that you pay your tab at the cashier prior to leaving, and waiters don't have to handle with money.

Agreed.

Generally, with QR menus I'm used to paying when we order. No need for secondary processes or worrying about something not being paid for.

I am curious to hear why you believe those roles don't provide any value.

I absolutely love waiters in any decent restaurant.

You can ask they waiter what's good on the menu, or what's the restaurant specialty or just what was delivered in the day and thus fresh, and it's a completely different experience.

Or the place could go to the extraordinary expense of putting multiple cards on the table with the codes.

> multiple people can scan a QR code simultaneously

If it's large enough, and posted in a place where people sitting around a table can all see it clearly.

My supermarket has the handheld scanners and they are a game changer. They fit handily into the trolley if you want and you just scan stuff as you go. If you want 8 of something, you can just tap the item and increase the quantity, none of the having to scan each one and add it carefully to the bagging area, etc... And best of all, at the end you just scan a self checkout screen (and they have special ones as well with no bagging area and no queue, but you can use the normal ones if the queue is shorter), so you scan the screen, click pay, click pay by card and hold your card on the machine. Done. Takes about 15 seconds all in, and the queues on those machines are basically non-existant as a result.

Best of all is that you put your stuff directly into your bags as you're shopping so there's no frantic packing stage.

Oh, and maybe Decathlon deserve a special mention here for their self-service checkouts. Every item has an RFID price tag usually sown into the care labels of their own-brand products. They don't have a self-scan machine, handheld or otherwise, you just drop everything you picked up into the box, it scans all the RFID tags and makes sure the weight is correct, and it's all done.

Self checkout is absolutely more convenient if you're not buying a lot.

(I find ways to make it worth my while..)

If that means what it sounds like, congratulations on accelerating the descent to a low-trust society.

> the savings are absorbed by the company, not passed on to the consumer

How do you come to this conclusion without a deep dive into a supermarket's finances?

I love self checkout, let me scan what I want, not stand in a line with people who seemingly don't know what they're doing or don't have cash or their credit card declines etc.

> Like all the other versions of this, the savings are absorbed by the company, not passed on to the consumer.

Grocery stores (at least here in the UK) are notoriously low margin and have been for a long time. I think this is the one sector where savings are indeed passed on to the customer.

> It’s a form of free labor that somehow society is okay with.

It's very popular to say this in some places, but wouldn't you expect that the money that businesses are saving when they do this is passed along to the customer in lower prices? Since they're competing with other businesses?

No web form can ever be worse than doing stuff over the phone like we’re still in the 19th Century.

I had a Korean colleague who remarked how backward the US is, you have to do everything over the phone, and you lose signal in elevators.

Because staffing can/has be/been reduced since they made it possible for people to print their own labels. They aren't interested in making the queues faster.