Where this was said
Grievance #1: The Pen-and-Paper Checkout Ordeal
At 2:40 · chapter starts 2:05
Steven Bisaha opens with a vivid scenario: you've just finished a perfect meal — filet mignon or a quarter pounder, doesn't matter — and you cannot leave. Paying requires flagging down a busy server, then waiting through four distinct steps that can collectively take longer than the meal itself. [1] — Steven Bisaha "You need to pay your bill, which means one, flagging down the server, probably busy with a dozen other tables. 2, wait for them to bring ba…" 02:05 Darian Woods adds that beyond the delay, the system asks customers to extend a lot of trust: your card disappears out of sight, and there's no easy way to know what's happening to it. [2] — Darian Woods "You also need to have a lot of trust that nothing nefarious is happening with your card when it's taken away out of sight." 02:40 The grievance is real on both sides of the table — servers juggling multiple tables find the back-and-forth just as exhausting as the customers doing the waiting. This sets up Bisaha's main argument: the traditional checkout system isn't just annoying, it's structurally inefficient, and the restaurant industry is slowly waking up to that fact.
Traditional restaurant checkout forces customers through four separate waiting steps — flag the server, wait for the check, wait for card pickup, wait for card return. Handheld payment devices like Toast's are cutting that down dramatically, with one server reporting his service time nearly halved.
Server Miguel Aguilar tried both systems. The old way: constant trips back and forth, everything taking forever. The new way: four to six tables at once, service time nearly cut in half. The change wasn't optional — it was transformational.
US restaurant menus don't show tax-inclusive prices — not out of malice, but because it's a collective action problem. Any single restaurant that adds tax to listed prices will look more expensive than competitors. Add overlapping state, city, and county taxes, and you start to understand why menus stay the way they are.
