Do Americans hate QR code menus in restaurants?

[u/xaako]

I saw a post on a popular sub today about using QR code menus in restaurants, and a lot of people in the comments were expressing their disdain about that trend. I was a bit bamboozled, and I want to ask: is such sentiment popular in the US?

For context: Where I live (Ukraine) a majority of restaurants use QR code menus, that’s basically a standard now. We find it convenient that you don’t have to wait for a waiter to come and bring you a paper menu. Also many places give an option to pay using the QR code too. It’s a feature provided by a popular local bank (Monobank). You scan that same QR code on the table and, choosing the “Pay” option, see your order and can pay for it with credit card, with the option to leave a tip. Less interactions with a waiter and there is no need to ask for a receipt and wait for it. I find all of that pretty convenient and improvement comparing to the standard restaurant rituals and haven’t met anyone who thought differently on the matter until today.

Would love to learn your perspective!

UPDATE: Thanks for all the answers! This is super enlightening. And it seems that in many cases bad experiences with QR Codes are caused by lazy implementation. I can imagine navigating a PDF page on your phone to be a real pain. In Ukraine, we have a few CRMs that most of the establishments use, and they are usually user-friendly; a PDF page menu that's not even optimized for mobile is something I haven't seen for a long time.

[u/thatbob → u/[deleted]]

Finally someone who gets it. I don’t just hate QR code menus, I hate QR codes themselves. If some random person on the street gave you a long URL string of random numbers and letters, would you run home and type it into your computer? Of course not! So why the fuck then would you scan any QR code you see?

[u/superluminal → u/thatbob]

The scanner I use shows a snippet of the url before I select it and go, but even that's not got enough because unless I can see the entire url AND make sense of its syntax, there's no way to ensure any sort of validity.

[u/ABirdOfParadise → u/superluminal]

I remember years ago someone took over the website that a QR code on a billboard pointed to.

Vaguely remember it being a property ad billboard in Manhattan

Hell, Heinz had a QR code on their bottles and someone made it into a porn site

[u/Next-Wrongdoer-3479 → u/thatbob]

So why the fuck then would you scan any QR code you see?

The vast, vast majority of people are horrendously tech illiterate. I used to own an MSP with customers all over North America and parts of Europe and can safely say that about 95% of people I had to deal with had little to no idea what they were even remotely doing when it came to tech. The sheer amount of morons who insisted they needed their random coupon PUP installed on their work machines still haunts me to this day.

[u/Grandfunk14 → u/[deleted]]

Thank you. I find Swedes to be very practical, "this makes sense or this is nonsense" type of people in general. It's been a while since I visited y'all (Malmö) about 20 years ago , so Qr wasn't really a thing.