An Open Letter to Samsung Pay

13179454_10208909879120191_5064950570195732276_nDear Samsung Pay,

As a server, I take a lot. I take orders, I take food to the table, I take people ignoring me and now I take umbrage to your most recent advertisement for your product. On your Samsung Pay Facebook page there in a glorious photo of a restaurant customer blatantly ignoring his server as he pays his check, not even making eye contact with the fellow human being who brought his food. And the tag line?

“It’s been a while since you caught up. Don’t be distracted- Samsung Pay lets you focus on what’s important.”

I get it: we servers are unimportant nuisances and your product will keep customers from having to be “distracted” by us bothering them, is that it? After all, how awful are we to approach a table to see if everything is alright? What are we thinking when we have the audacity to speak when we have not been spoken to? And most importantly of all, why would a customer ever feel the need to take time out of their “catching up” to acknowledge the existence of the person who has been taking care of them? Thank God that Samsung Pay is here to fix all of that. Now, when we bring the check to the table, we can just stand there and hold a little electronic device while the customer pays for their meal and they can pretend we don’t even exist. That’s great!

Are you freaking kidding me? Did no one in your huge office of advertising drones even stop to consider how off-putting this image is? And I’m not even talking about whatever they are drinking. (Seriously, what the fuck is that blue liquid in the glass, Liquid Drano? Blue curacao on the rocks? Some cocktail from the Star Wars Cantina?) I’m talking about the smug fucking look on the guy’s face. And also, why is he paying their check before they have even taken one bite of their food? As soon as the server set the food down, the guy must have been all, “Oh, and I need to pay the check right away because I want to try to impress this girl with my fancy Samsung phone. I also have to get to my annual douche bag meeting that starts in 20 minutes.” Meanwhile, the girl is thinking, “Gosh, it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other and I suddenly remember why: he’s being a dick to our server. And why he doesn’t have an iPhone.”

I wonder what other images they passed on to make this one the right choice. A photo of someone sitting in church dropping a Samsung Galaxy in the collection plate perhaps? Or maybe it was of a business man getting out of a cab while shielding his eyes so he doesn’t have to see who was driving. It could have been an image of a rich lady stepping over a homeless man on Fifth Avenue as she walks into a hair salon and when he asks for money to buy food she says, “Why, of course! Do you accept Samsung Pay?”

Listen, Samsung. Your product may be wonderful, but the way you are showcasing it here is not. You need to reevaluate how this photo looks and recognize that it is very demeaning to at least one person in it. (I’m talking about the one person who has their fucking head cropped out of the photo, which is probably a good thing since the server most likely is giving an epic eye roll right now.) Servers don’t want to be thought of as “unimportant” or a “distraction.” We want to be recognized as people who are doing a job that customers should be appreciative of. We expect eye contact and for our customers to say “thank you” and “please” and not just flash their phone at us so they don’t have to speak to us. Let’s be honest, though. How many restaurants are really going to accept Samsung Pay anyway?

Mustard and mayo,
The Bitchy Waiter

 

Here is the Facebook post if you want to go tell them what you think about it:

Discussion

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