Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/24/restaurant-reservations-have-become-the-hot-new-scalping-racket.html
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Meanwhile I’ll be at Gray’s Papaya.
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For a few seconds I thought this might be something to be concerned about, but then I realized it’s scammers targeting rich assholes willing to drop $225 on just the reservation. Suddenly I no longer care!
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My fear is that they’ll try to expand the model to the general public.
Restaurant Ticketmaster.
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They do that shit, I’ll not only be cooking for myself, I might even give into the BF’s zany idea to start a food truck.
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The idea of the stupid rich paying an idiot tax is appealing and all, but restaurants like Don Angie aren’t exactly for the billionaires of the world, they’re just nice restaurants being priced out of a lot of people’s ranges by these shitty arbitrage middlemen adding nothing of value and making everyday life just a little more expensive and just a little more unpleasant.
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This.
Scalpers, ransomware builders, stock promoters and cryptocurrency creators, they’re all in the same scummy class. I don’t care who the target is, I’m irritated to be living in a world that really rewards people who obtain (hard to use the word ‘earn’ here) money by doing nothing at all of value. Not ‘something I don’t value,’ but nothing at all of value. Step one: Obstruct. Step two: Profit!
And also: some of us love fine cuisine, and we save up for it and do without other things just to enjoy it. Not all of us are the ‘elites.’
Pick something you love, something that’s not necessary, but that you make sacrifices for because it gives you joy. Suddenly some twerp steps in to stand between you and it with his hand out, for no other reason than that he knows you want it and he’s found a way to keep you from getting it. Whatever your objective was, that person is a sh*tstain.
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I never have a problem getting a reservation at Olive Garden 
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We call it enshitification, as coined by Cory Doctorow.
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I loved that bit in the Bear where he’s stageing at a high end, ultra high end, restaurant and they are talking about the diners in for the day and they wax lyrical about a Chicago public school teacher who has been waiting for years for this and impresses on everyone that that responsibility to give them the absolute best ever is why they are there.
And I think about two teachers I know whose hobby is fine dining (and going out for long walks, not hiking or travelling somewhere expensive to sightsee, just walking places their feet get them) and I think about how that will never happen in the future because of techbro scum man in the middle attacks.
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The only thing wrong with that episode is that they took the middle of a piece of Pequod’s pizza instead of the crust with the caramelized cheese.
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Being a coeliac not from Chicago that passed me by entirely!
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Can I get 500 reservations for 7pm please?
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No Rez.
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Enshittification applies so well so just so many things in modern life… it’s both enlightening and depressing at the same time
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Maybe ‘eye-opening’ would be a better word to use
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Meanwhile you’ve got assholes who make reservations at multiple restaurants for the same time slot so they can choose later where to eat. More often than not they never phone the other restaurants; they just don’t show up and the unlucky restaurants lose business.
What is wrong with people?
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I agree with the second statement; it’s depressing as all hell.
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