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According to a craigslist post supposedly created by an anonymous NYC restaurant, customers take almost twice the time today to eat than 2004 because of mobile phones, food photos and fussiness.

I got passed this on social media today and it is claimed to be true, however I suspect it is a hoax or a joke. Can anyone verify?

2004:

Customers walk in.

They gets seated and are given menus, out of 45 customers 3 request to be seated elsewhere.

Customers on average spend 8 minutes before closing the menu to show they are ready to order.

[...]

Average time from start to finish: 1:05

2014:

Customers walk in.

Customers get seated and is given menus, out of 45 customers 18 requested to be seated elsewhere.

Before even opening the menu they take their phones out, some are taking photos while others are simply doing something else on their phone (sorry we have no clue what they are doing and do not monitor customer WIFI activity).

[...]

Average time from start to finish: 1:55

Archive.org copy of the craiglist post in question

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Sklivvz
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  • Even taking their claim at face value, it looks like some of increase in average time could be attributed to the 15 additional customers that ask for re-seating. Maybe simply asking if the time in a restaurant has increased by an hour would be a better starting point for a question. –  Jul 15 '14 at 22:43
  • @Articuno I am interested in whether this is a hoax, not in whether it is valid. I should change my title but can't quite find a simple way of asking it. – Sklivvz Jul 15 '14 at 22:48
  • Maybe now it's clearer? – Sklivvz Jul 15 '14 at 22:50
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    Made an edit to show what I meant. They don't claim the extra hour is attributable solely to phone use. –  Jul 15 '14 at 23:14
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    I saw this, concluded it was likely a hoax (despite living in a hipster- and uni-student-dense part of my city, this is inconsistent with the behaviour I see), but I didn't post it because I can't see how we could check this anecdote EXCEPT to show it was inconsistent with other restaurants (or for the anonymous originator to come forward). What sort of answer are you hoping for? – Oddthinking Jul 16 '14 at 04:38
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    @Oddthinking like any other possible hoax, either a confirmation it's true, e.g. a NYC restaurant owning up to it, or a denial, e.g. a college kid saying they did it. – Sklivvz Jul 16 '14 at 07:52
  • I saw this recently and concluded it's either a hoax or grossly over-exaggerated. They attribute up to 7 minutes for taking photos alone which means these people must be setting up their own photo studio or taking hundreds of images. – DavidG Jul 16 '14 at 13:42
  • Somehow I don't see how people are more or less fussy than 2004. I don't see how cellphone tech does that. – Mark Rogers Jul 16 '14 at 14:37
  • "26 out of 45 customers spend an average of 3 minutes taking photos of the food." It strikes me as unlikely that over half of customers take photos of their food. I've only seen this very occasionally, and only when the presentation was particularly unusual. I have no proof that it's a hoax, but it sure smells like an exaggeration or an aberrant sampling of restaurant behavior. – Larry Gritz Jul 17 '14 at 19:16
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    I am convinced it's fake. It combines (over-)precise data all supporting single causation of a "get off my lawn!" position. Colorful details about single copies left in the dusty VCRs but nothing to identify the restaurant. Inconsistent implications of effort: calculating the average time between sitting and "closing the menu to show they are ready to order" but then just a sweeping condemnation of "Before even opening the menu they take their phones out, some are taking photos while others are simply doing something else on their phone." etc. The tone isn't right. – Larry OBrien Jul 17 '14 at 22:42
  • I came to Skeptics SE to ask about this, and was glad to see someone already had. Personally, I am suspicious for another reason not yet mentioned in the comments: If it is true that smartphone makes restaurant experiences slower, then surely that would apply at all restaurants in a similar class (eg, excluding fast food chains), and so average restaurant time would be standard everywhere. So why would any one restaurant get bad reviews for slow service? It may be that smartphone use slows things down, but I don't see how it would stand out. – Questioner Nov 29 '14 at 04:22
  • Probably false per analysis reported here-http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/awfulreviews.asp – pericles316 Nov 09 '15 at 13:41

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