The condensation from my ice-water glass is currently migrating across the laminate tabletop, threatening the corner of my phone. I am hunched over, my spine curved in a shape that would make my chiropractor wince, squinting at a 6-inch screen while trying to ignore the 76-decibel roar of a nearby birthday party. We are at a mid-priced bistro where the lighting is designed for ‘atmosphere’-which is code for ‘you cannot see anything’-and I am currently locked in a struggle with a small, greasy square of black-and-white pixels. My thumb keeps slipping on the glass because I just touched a stray drop of balsamic glaze, and the restaurant’s Wi-Fi is currently providing a staggering 16% of the bandwidth required to load a bloated PDF menu that was clearly designed for a desktop monitor in 2006.

The Efficiency Myth

I missed my bus by exactly 16 seconds this morning, and that minor failure of timing seems to have set a tone for the day-a day where the systems built to serve us seem determined to make us work for them instead. We are told this is progress. We are told this is ‘contactless’ and ‘efficient.’ But as I watch the little spinning loading icon on my screen, I realize that efficiency is rarely measured by the user’s experience. It is measured by the 46 dollars saved in printing costs and the 16 minutes of labor saved by not having a server walk a piece of cardstock to a table.

Maya T.J., a grief counselor I’ve known for 6 years, often tells me that the heaviest burdens aren’t the giant tragedies, but the steady accumulation of small, unnecessary frictions. She deals with people at their absolute breaking point, and she’s noticed a trend: when the world feels like it’s falling apart, people crave the physical. They crave the weight of a book, the texture of a napkin, and the simple clarity of a menu they can hold with both hands.

She’s right, of course. There is something fundamentally dehumanizing about being forced to use your personal device-a tool associated with work, emails, and the 106 unread notifications currently haunting my lock screen-just to participate in a social ritual. The restaurant has successfully offloaded its labor onto me. I am now the typesetter, the navigator, and the data-entry clerk. If the link is broken, it is my problem. If my battery is at 6%, it is my problem. If the sun is hitting the table at an angle that makes the screen unreadable, I am the one who has to shift my chair.

We have entered an era of the ‘unpaid employee.’ We scan our own groceries at the 6th checkout lane, we tag our own bags at the airport, and now, we navigate 46-megabyte files just to order a burger. This transition was accelerated by a global crisis, sold to us under the guise of hygiene. But ‘contactless’ has become a synonym for ‘service-less.’ It’s a convenient excuse to strip away the human elements of hospitality. A physical menu is a curated experience; it has a flow, a hierarchy, and a personality. A PDF on a phone is a digital filing cabinet. It is the architectural equivalent of being asked to walk into the kitchen and read the labels on the cans.

The Inevitable Glitch

I find myself thinking about the bus I missed. If the city’s app had been 6% more accurate, I would have caught it. But we rely on these digital layers so heavily that when they glitch, we are left stranded. The same thing happens at this table. When the QR code leads to a ‘404 Not Found’ error, the social contract of the restaurant is breached. The server, who is likely managing 16 tables at once because the ‘efficiency’ of the QR code allowed the manager to cut the staff in half, is nowhere to be found. I am left staring at a black screen, wondering if I should just leave.

There is a better way to think about tech. It shouldn’t be a barrier or a replacement for human touch; it should be a quiet supporter. Real innovation doesn’t demand your attention; it facilitates your life. For instance, when I look for tools that actually respect my time, I think of something like

YT1D, which aims for a level of simplicity that doesn’t require a manual or a high-speed connection to understand. It’s about reducing the noise, not adding to it.

Maya T.J. sat across from me recently at a different spot-one that still used heavy, linen-textured paper for its menus. She ran her fingers over the embossed logo and sighed with a relief that was almost physical. ‘My brain just relaxed 16 percent,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t have to manage a device. I just have to choose.’ That distinction is vital. Choosing is a pleasure; managing is a chore.

The Perfection of Physical UX

We often fall into the trap of thinking that because something is digital, it is automatically better. We mistake novelty for utility. But the UX of a physical menu is nearly perfect. It has a high-resolution display (the printed word), it never runs out of battery, it works in direct sunlight, and it allows for shared browsing. You can point to a dish and show your friend. You can leave it open to mark your place. You can close it to signal to the waiter that you are ready. These are social cues that have been refined over 156 years of restaurant history, and we threw them away for a sticker on a wobbly table.

There’s also the question of accessibility. Not everyone has a smartphone with a 6-inch OLED screen. There are 66-year-olds who find the interface baffling and people with visual impairments for whom a small, backlit screen is a nightmare. By making the digital menu the default, we are quietly telling a significant portion of the population that they are no longer the target audience. We are designing for the ‘average’ user who doesn’t exist, while alienating the actual humans sitting in our booths.

What’s more, the data privacy implications are rarely discussed. When you scan that code, you aren’t just looking at a list of pastas. You are often being tracked. Cookies are set, IP addresses are logged, and your location is confirmed. Your desire for a $16 carbonara has now become a data point in a marketing cloud. It’s a high price to pay for a menu that won’t even load properly.

As I finally manage to get the PDF to open-after 26 seconds of staring at a white screen-I find that the prices have been updated in a font so small it looks like a row of ants. I have to use two fingers to stretch the image, and then I have to scroll left and right just to read a single description. It’s a cognitive tax that I didn’t agree to pay. By the time I find what I want, the mood has shifted. The conversation has stalled. We are all just four people staring at our own private screens in a public room.

The Call for Quiet Support

I think back to the bus. Missing it gave me 16 minutes of unexpected stillness on a park bench. I watched a bird, I looked at the trees, and I didn’t look at my phone once. It was a reminder that the best experiences aren’t ‘contactless.’ They are full of contact-with the world, with each other, and with the physical reality of our surroundings.

If we want tech to actually improve our lives, we have to demand that it stays in its lane. It should solve problems, not create them. It should give us more time to look at each other, not more reasons to look at a piece of glass. Until then, I’ll keep asking for a paper menu. I’ll keep seeking out the places that understand that service isn’t an algorithm, and hospitality isn’t a QR code.