[j1elo]

I just play dumb and ask for a physical menu, claiming that my phone broke this morning. Adapt the experiment for the number of people. With 2, the other one might say "and I'm out of battery". 3 could be "mine I forgot at home". And 4+ people are already too many to reasonably expect customers to share a single phone between them all.

It's all just a social experiment which hopefully ends up trickling up and making owners aware how stupid it is to expect everyone to bring a phone in their pockets in order to being able to order food.

Some times it's not even a lie: as part of mentally cleaning up from an intense addiction to social media, I've forced myself into offline mode and purposely leave the phone at home from time to time.

[ramenbytes]

One time my phone was getting terrible reception in the restaurant, and couldn't download the way-too-big menu file. I ask the server for a paper menu, and apparently they'd went all-in on paper-free, so no menu for me. Instead, the server had to present their iPad to me so I could see all the software buttons for the items I could choose from as they scrolled through. Ridiculous. The next time I went they had paper menus.

[PhasmaFelis]

You can skip the theatrics and just say "I'd like a menu, please."

[j1elo]

It's for fun. I just want to have them making the effort to realize that they shouldn't drop physical menus altogether.

Also some times I didn't feel like doing the theatrics, and upon asking for a menu, they'd say "it's there in the QR code, please scan it" and leave me to it, as if they had done a good job. Not on my watch!

[blackshaw]

I always do, but increasingly I'm finding places don't even have one to give me.