When You Are Left High, Dry, & Hungry

It was 12:30pm and I saw pictures of yummy looking handmade milkshakes in the window of a burger place 🍔 I’d never eaten at before. I went in and saw a checkout station immediately ahead. To the left was a bar area – maybe for the milkshakes. And there were booths. There was nothing to indicate if this was a sit down place where everything is done at the booth or an order at the front and then find a seat place.

And there weren’t any restaurant employees in sight.

After a five minute wait, a staff member came to the register. I indicated that it was my first time there and I didn’t know the procedure. He pointed to this big sign with a QR code and said that I had to scan to see the menu. I asked if there was any other way to see a menu and he said “no.”

I turned around and left.

I’ve been in restaurants that have menus accessed by QR codes. They’ve always had paper menus for those of us who are too old and/or stubborn to use our small phones to view a menu. (Or those few, like my parents, who don’t have cell phones.)

I understand the desire to be environmentally-friendly. Alternatives could be posting the menu on the wall behind the register (this place had a large, blank wall there) or have one or two laminated copies of the menu at the counter.

By now you’re thinking, “Ok, Janice, what’s the point?”

It’s this: we deal with many types of information each day – emails, texts, notes, magazines, websites, TV – and part of managing this data well is having it in formats that work for you.

Many times a phone message, text, email, etc. isn’t just information. It’s often something that requires action. When this is the case, there may be multiple formats. An electronic bill statement email leads to the action of paying the bill. A text about a committee meeting gets recorded on your calendar.

Handling notifications and documentation can be challenging when life is going smoothly. It’s even more difficult when you have a medical issue. You have the addition of educational materials, test results, and more.  In fact, any life transition will have distinct “facts and figures.”

What’s one thing you struggle with when it comes to corralling information?

Let me know below and I’ll respond with an idea or two.

Sidenote: when I got home, out of curiosity I checked the menu of the aforementioned burger place. I’m so glad I didn’t stay. I would have been so frustrated! There were eight tabs for different kinds of food. Then, a number of those categories also had multiple tabs.