The ‘Cell Phone Slows Restaurant Service’ Story Going Viral Has Some Holes in It

I'll admit, after reading the story of a "restaurant" that did a "study" (sorry for all of the "quotation marks"), I thought it sounded legit enough to post it on Facebook, so I did. Later, I read another article on the Happy Place blog that disputed some of the "results" listed in the original article. Are you still with me? Good.

I usually try to check things out at places like Snopes.com (an excellent resource for sorting out online fact from crap), but this time, I didn't do any fact-checking. Happy Place did, though, and you can see what they concluded here.

Here are the opening paragraphs of the "investigative report" from Happy Place:

A couple days ago, someone posted the results of a behavioral study into the effects of smartphone usage on restaurant service. The study was published in a very well-respected scientific journal, The Rants & Raves Section Of Craigslist. [Archive viewable here]

While the typical "rant" on CL usually concerns the proliferation of lizard people in senior executive positions at the World Bank, this post claimed to have solved a "Major Mystery" of the modern dining scene, concluding that our phones are ruining everything.

It's nothing but lies but all your friends are sharing it anyway.

Well, I guess you could say I have egg on my Facebook! You can read the entire article by clicking the link below. Now...does anyone know the Wifi password at Hunan Chinese Buffet?

(via A restaurant studied its old surveillance and discovered why it takes so long to get a table. Happy Place investigates. | Stop Sharing This Crap | Happy Place.)