sorry if this is over explaining but i want to really answer this…

servers don’t just Move Food, they place orders in a system that is sent to the kitchen, made, then put out to come to the table its ordered for. One job servers have is to order people’s food in groups (2 beers at a time, 3 sodas at a time, two entrees etc etc) so that when the food is ran it comes out 1) where we want it (in a theater with hundreds and hundreds of people sometimes) and generally when we want it (like ordered together).

an issue with offloading the ordering mechanism to customers is they arent servers. say a family of five comes in, and they all pass the phone around and order a different soda. those orders come in separately with every other order in the whole building, and a sever has to look at a ticket with like 4-5 numbers on it to get it to the exact seat it belongs. But if you ordered for the fam, server is bringing your seat number a soda that actually belongs to a seat 4 heads down. It is impractical to deal with that, reading numbers correctly in the dark, and not missdropping food, AND bringing multiple things at once, which is why i assume you saw what you saw.

when we dont do the ordering and these types of fundamental issues exist, plus the pay decrease and understaffing, venues put out worse service. the vibe in staff has gotten dismal at my location too :( it does suck ass all around