“https://ogden_images.s3.amazonaws.com/www.tribtoday.com/images/2024/11/08205347/Cole-Burt2022-WEB.jpg” alt=”” width=”200″ height=”300″ class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1325875″ />I studied the menu board as I ambled up the counter. But before I could get the word “Quesadilla” out, the teenage punk behind the cash register spoke first:

“You have to use the kiosk to order.”

He pointed behind me at one of those infernal touch-screen machines.

Forty-some years ago, I used to drop quarters into boxes much like that one so that I could use a joystick to send Pac-Man whooshing through a maze to eat ghosts.

Now, if I want to eat, I gotta stand at a stupid kiosk that has neither joy nor joystick, and tap photos of what I want to eat.

And I don’t insert quarters, either. There’s a slot off to the side that takes a much bigger bite out of debit or credit cards.

I groaned. The kid came around the counter to walk me to the kiosk. “Do you need help?”

Look, pup, I may sport a snow-white beard as well as other white hairs growing from my nose and ears, but I’m not technologically deficient. My generation broke in these new-fangled contraptions before your parents were born.

I know how to use a screen. I just don’t want to.

What happened to human interaction? When I coast through the drive-thru lane at another of my grazing spots, an automated voice now greets me with, “Would you like to use your mobile app today?”

Why would I drive up to a menu board complete with a microphone, only to tap the screen on my phone? This isn’t the dinner table where people ignore each other in favor of their handheld devices.

Sit-down places are losing the personal touch, too. I visited an establishment and expected a smiling person in an apron to hand me a menu. Instead, I found a weird checkerboard square embedded into the table. A sign instructed me to “scan the QR code for your dining options.”

Here’s the option I want — talk to me! I live alone. “Would you like fries with that” might be the only human interaction I get all day.

Have we chucked real live flesh and blood out the back door in favor of touch screens, apps and QR codes? Are we in such a rush as customers that we want our orders placed before we get to the restaurant so that we can rush inside and