Identification:
The small but consistent problem of receipts in the cafeteria. This practice seems to add unnecessary expense, time, inconvenience, and waste to every transaction. This creates expense in that it costs money for paper and the electricity to power the receipt machines. It wastes time, in that every transaction forces a community member to wait for the person working at the register to print and hand them a receipt. It creates inconvenience in that community members frequently have their hands full at the register, and managing a receipt seems to be one more item that need not be dealt with. Lastly, this practice creates physical waste, as many persons exiting the school cafeteria seem to throw out their receipt upon first chance.
Action:
I emailed Jessica Roberts, the director of sustainability and campus operations, to try and set up a meeting. We ended up having an impromptu meeting to discuss all the above issues and my proposed solution of putting the receipt system online. I believe that this would effectively transfer over all of the pertinent information that we use receipts for, such as transactional history and account balance, while allowing for a more quickly searched and accessed account history experience.
Reporting:
Upon meeting with Jessica, she brought up three great arguments for the continuation of the printed receipt system:
1. “Shop” lifting:
Given the open design of the New School’s dining hall, stealing some of the ready made items and drinks is rather easy. With physical receipts, any member of the dining hall can ask to see a proof of purchase to ensure that the dining hall remains as inexpensive as it is for all students. While I see why this is an important function of receipts, if we could make an instantaneous and easily accessible online platform, this could serve the purpose of proof of purchase.
2. Protection of dining hall employees:
Receipts act as proof that the dining hall employees charged the students the correct amount for the correct items. This helps the students keep track of how much they are spending while making sure that they aren’t being overcharged for their purchases. This in turn protects dining hall employees by preventing accusations of being overcharged.
3. An online platform for receipts raises privacy concerns:
If an online platform for receipts and transaction history is built, it will be possible to hack into it. Additionally, depending on how it is built it might enable administrators to view a student’s transactional history. This represents a violation of a community member’s privacy. My counter argument to this point would be that I personally don’t care who sees what food I buy, but I might be unique in that opinion so I’m not sure if that counter argument stands…
