Restaurants overcharging on the rise

Baked Potato said:
Isn't Chicago actually quite safe compared to many other US cities?
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It depends on the neighborhood … parts of west and south side has always been basically war zones but since the Covid days there has been a lot of violence ( not necessarily homicides ) filtering all the way to the Loop.
 
Warmi said:
It depends on the neighborhood … parts of west and south side has always been basically war zones but since the Covid days there has been a lot of violence ( not necessarily homicides ) filtering all the way to the Loop.
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Sure, like any other city there are areas where I'd not want to go. But as a whole, the per capita violent crime rate in Chicago has generally not even cracked the top 20 for a number of years, to my knowledge.
 
Flatiowa said:
On a counter note, I ordered a “gas station” supreme pizza today, lady on the phone said it would be about 45 minutes. It takes 15 to get to town so I waited a bit then ended up taking the “scenic route” to check on the conditions of some corn fields and got there 50 minutes after ordering. It still hadn’t been started yet…the lady working there was extremely apologetic, was the only one working there, was her third day on the job and had never made or been trained on anything other than the mini pepperoni and breakfast pizzas they sell by the slice in the display wracks. She said she has been calling her bosses and coworkers to find out how to make one but nobody answered… I told her that was fine, just make what you think will taste good, if it doesn’t I won’t be upset and I’ll come back in 25 minutes to pick it up. BEST damn pizza I have ever had in my life! I get it home and open the box, it’s 1 1/2” thick and loaded, cooked to perfection. She will be getting a $20 tip the next time I see her (even though she forgot to cut it into slices).
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Iowa...gas station pizza...has to be a Casey's.

Casey's really tries to push the we are more than a gas station market. They even had ads years ago that they are a pizza place that sells gas. And their pizza is pretty good compared to like "fast-food" chain pizza places.

I will say though, they do need to up training and work on hiring and retention. They used to be a go to for a quick pizza, but we don't much anymore. The pizzas became too inconsistent, good one day, terrible the next. So bad to the point that you really must open the box before you leave the store, even though they seal them since COVID. I once got home with a pizza with no cheese at all. Like they just forgot to put cheese on it. Another time there was literally 2 inches of cheese on the pizza, and as much as I love cheese, it was too much.

They have the capability, but they need some better management.

They just completed a rebranding effort, but they need to work on their infrastructure too. While fueling at the pump at our local store, I noticed the supports for the canopy were nearly rusted away. You could see through them with large patches of rust flaked off on the ground. I emailed their HQ photos, and a couple of days later there were repair crews there welding on sleeves.
 
Baked Potato said:
Sure, like any other city there are areas where I'd not want to go. But as a whole, the per capita violent crime rate in Chicago has generally not even cracked the top 20 for a number of years, to my knowledge.
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List of United States cities by crime rate - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

23 for murder and non-negligent homicide per capita. Top 3 are Birmingham, St Louis, and Memphis. Those pesky facts keep getting in the way of the narrative.
 
AKiss20 said:

List of United States cities by crime rate - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

23 for murder and non-negligent homicide per capita. Top 3 are Birmingham, St Louis, and Memphis. Those pesky facts keep getting in the way of the narrative.
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And #92 overall for violent crime in 2024.

(BTW, if they're ranked much higher in murder rate than overall violent crime rate, does that mean criminals in Chicago have better aim than criminals in other cities?)
 
It's unsurprising that the third largest city in the country would set the absolute (not per-capita) record for homicides. It'd be scary if the absolute number of murders was claimed by a tiny town!

But like going anywhere, exercising common sense will decrease your odds of being a victim by a factor of like 1000x.
If you plan a late night out in Chicago where any reasonable people would go, you're almost certainly going to have a trouble free evening.
If you plan that same late night out, but decide to go to 63rd and Halsted and then pick fights with guys hanging outside a liquor store at 2am, you're probably going to have a really bad time.

But if you're planning the latter night out, then I hate to say it but "you're asking for it".

The same approach is true in pretty much any place I've visited, in the USA or elsewhere.
 
One of my favorite funny by accident political quotes. And I think more would say things like this if they didn't have a filter.

Marion Barry — 'Outside of the killings, DC has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.'
 
Baked Potato said:
And #92 overall for violent crime in 2024.

(BTW, if they're ranked much higher in murder rate than overall violent crime rate, does that mean criminals in Chicago have better aim than criminals in other cities?)
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Here is a website containing everything you would ever want to know about the subject , aptly subtitled “
Illustrating Chicago Values“

heyjackass.com

Chicago Crime, Murder & Mayhem | Criminal Infographics | HeyJackass!

Illustrating the Chicago Values of Crime, Murder & Mayhem with comprehensive charts, precise graphs and exhaustive data sets of Chicago stupidity.
heyjackass.com heyjackass.com

Like I said, avoid south and west- pretty much all the crime happens there.
 

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For 99.9% of the people I've known who travel to Chicago (or my own life there), the blue shaded region below is where you'd go.
Ain't no tourists coming to Chicago to see the beautiful tree line streets of Englewood, South Shore or Austin/west garfield. Anyone with a lick of common sense would quickly conclude they took a wrong turn if they ended up in those places :D
1757630636708.png
 
The Germans are up North, and they are hard on crime.

I stayed at three different hotels near the Navy Pier, did not realize that was a dangerous area.
 
geezer said:
The Germans are up North, and they are hard on crime.

I stayed at three different hotels near the Navy Pier, did not realize that was a dangerous area.
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Is that the area near the dragon in the picture? I'd want to stay well clear for sure...
 
midwestpa24 said:
Iowa...gas station pizza...has to be a Casey's.
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Nope, Casey’s is 20 miles the other direction from home and I stopped buying pizzas there for exactly the things you mentioned. This was a little mom and pop gas station that had a pizza oven and deep fat fryers, was the only place in town and handled the lunch rush every week day from a small factory employing around 100 people. Yesway came in and bought them out, stopped selling pizzas (though thankfully they left the oven in) and tried to force “their menu” the town boycotted them and after a month or so they started making pizzas. I heard last month yesway is pulling out of the area so it’s kinda in limbo if it will be open in a year…
 
Substitute "Beirut" for "Chicago" and you could probably draw the same kind of map.

I had a similar discussion with someone about Troy NY, which is a miniature funland. The guy gave me an address in Troy where a house was and I said I wouldn't live there. He said "what, that's not a bad neighborhood!" I pointed out the intersection where you could drive by at any time of day and watch a drug transaction. He said "that's two blocks away!". I laughed.

It's the same argument as the folks that think that deer can read the deer crossing sign and know not to cross a mile down the road from there.
 
Baked Potato said:
per capita violent crime rate in Chicago
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Google is a thing:

Chicago has reported the most homicides of all US cities every year since 2012, according to FBI data crunched by Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst for AH Datalytics. The last city to have a higher homicide count than Chicago was New York City in 2011, said John Roman, director of the University of Chicago’s Center on Public Safety and Justice.

And while many people point out that 'red' States have the highest levels of crime, the true data shows that those high crime rate cities have been historically been very 'blue'.

Birmingham Al (this murderest place now) run by a blue mayor since 2010.
Memphis Tn (also a very murdery place) run by a blue mayor since the 1960's.

It you look at the high crime cities, you're gonna notice a pattern of who's running the council/mayors.
 
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pfarber said:
Google is a thing:

Chicago has reported the most homicides of all US cities every year since 2012, according to FBI data crunched by Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst for AH Datalytics. The last city to have a higher homicide count than Chicago was New York City in 2011, said John Roman, director of the University of Chicago’s Center on Public Safety and Justice.
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Refer to the words "rate" and "per capita" explicitly mentioned in my post.

It matters.
 
The color of the people, the color of the party, doesn't matter. The problem is as the ratio of people/ft2 goes up past a certain point, violence and everything else bad goes up. The worse problem is that the economic system is based on continual growth which isn't just bad, it's clearly unsustainable.
 
Albany Tom said:
The color of the people, the color of the party, doesn't matter. The problem is as the ratio of people/ft2 goes up past a certain point, violence and everything else bad goes up. The worse problem is that the economic system is based on continual growth which isn't just bad, it's clearly unsustainable.
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It does matter who lives in these cities ….just to give you completely random data points , Warsaw - Poland ( population 2 million) and Tokyo - Japan ( population 14 million ) have crime rates that are 1/3 that of Chicago ( population 3 million ) - thats not 30% but 3 times difference, so size is not really all that relevant but who lives there definately is.
 
Baked Potato said:
Refer to the words "rate" and "per capita" explicitly mentioned in my post.
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Only when you try to sanitize bad results. Dead people are still dead. It really doesn't matter what that stats are when you are that 1 in X the stats are trying to mitigate.

Criminals should be in jail. No cash bail should be abolished, mentally ill (danger to themselves or others) need to be in a care facility.

Ask that young Ukrainian woman how its feels to be in 1:100000
 
Warmi said:
It does matter who lives in these cities ….just to give you completely random data points , Warsaw - Poland ( population 2 million) and Tokyo - Japan ( population 14 million ) have crime rates that are 1/3 that of Chicago ( population 3 million ) - thats not 30% but 3 times difference, so size is not really all that relevant but who lives there definately is.
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I think that actually makes my point. Population density of Tokyo is, by quick google, 1/2 that of Chicago. And Warsaw is half that of Tokyo.

Are the graphs going to be a little bit different, country by country? Sure, and for lots of reasons. The deltas between economic level within a city matters a lot, as do the local spikes of density. But overall, put more people in the same spot and crime, disease, environmental issues, they all go up. It was true in the middle ages and it's true today.
 
Albany Tom said:
The color of the people, the color of the party, doesn't matter.
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I don't have the time to prove how wrong this statement is.

There a cities in the world that are many people living in very close quarters and they don't have the issues that you proclaim are due to population.

Cartels run most of Mexico. They don't do it with number of members... but with violence.
 
pfarber said:
I don't have the time to prove how wrong this statement is.

There a cities in the world that are many people living in very close quarters and they don't have the issues that you proclaim are due to population.

Cartels run most of Mexico. They don't do it with number of members... but with violence.
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It's not, but I don't want to drag that out, either, way off topic. Every country is going to have a base level of crime, poverty, pollution, etc, and it's always going to track with population density and it's not going to be a flat line, Within probably most countries there are "colors" of party or faction. Here we've lately been color coding it, in Mexico it might be of family of cartel, in other countries what particular flavor of base religion they have. In many cases there are people willing to fight family members over their party, faction, whatever being better than the other, but in terms of how that affects crime, economics, the environment, except in periods of revolution or massive civil unrest, it just doesn't matter much.

Back on topic - the local bar/grill down the street now has QR codes on their receipts. And they still take cash, thankfully.

Has anyone been to a place yet that doesn't have paper menus, but instead expects you to use your phone? I'm waiting for the moment where you can't order without a phone. I hope that doesn't happen to anyplace I like. I'll miss them.
 
pfarber said:
Only when you try to sanitize bad results. Dead people are still dead. It really doesn't matter what that stats are when you are that 1 in X the stats are trying to mitigate.

Criminals should be in jail. No cash bail should be abolished, mentally ill (danger to themselves or others) need to be in a care facility.

Ask that young Ukrainian woman how its feels to be in 1:100000
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What do you mean "only"? Crime RATE is how the likelihood of one being a victim of crime is determined.
And your retort to me showing that Chicago is a pretty safe city relative to dozens of other US cities is to highlight a murder in ... *checks notes*... Charlotte?
 
There are good and bad things about diversity. But homogenous populations generally (not always) have lower crime rates, even with larger populations.
:stirpot:
 
Albany Tom said:
Has anyone been to a place yet that doesn't have paper menus, but instead expects you to use your phone? I'm waiting for the moment where you can't order without a phone. I hope that doesn't happen to anyplace I like. I'll miss them.
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I agree. The day I have to use a cell phone to order food will be my final trip to that establishment.
 
Albany Tom said:
Has anyone been to a place yet that doesn't have paper menus, but instead expects you to use your phone? I'm waiting for the moment where you can't order without a phone. I hope that doesn't happen to anyplace I like. I'll miss them.
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I've been to more than one that tried to tell me I needed to scan a qr code on the table and order on my phone. But when pushed they came out with paper menus and took my order on their tablet. But the day is coming.

One new thing I do sort of like though. There are a few restaurants around here where you can scan a qr code on the table and bring up your bill and pay on your phone, including tip. Then just get up and leave. No waiting for the waiter and nobody hovering over you while you figure out the tip and do the arithmetic. And they don't take you credit card to some hidden place and do who-knows-what with it.
 
JOhnH said:
I've been to more than one that tried to tell me I needed to scan a qr code on the table and order on my phone. But when pushed they came out with paper menus and took my order on their tablet. But the day is coming.

One new thing I do sort of like though. There are a few restaurants around here where you can scan a qr code on the table and bring up your bill and pay on your phone, including tip. Then just get up and leave. No waiting for the waiter and nobody hovering over you while you figure out the tip and do the arithmetic. And they don't take you credit card to some hidden place and do who-knows-what with it.
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Yeah, paying with your phone IMO is much better than the alternative for the reasons you mentioned. I wish this was more common. There are some establishments I'd very much rather they not take my card out of my sight. :)
 
JOhnH said:
I've been to more than one that tried to tell me I needed to scan a qr code on the table and order on my phone. But when pushed they came out with paper menus and took my order on their tablet. But the day is coming.

One new thing I do sort of like though. There are a few restaurants around here where you can scan a qr code on the table and bring up your bill and pay on your phone, including tip. Then just get up and leave. No waiting for the waiter and nobody hovering over you while you figure out the tip and do the arithmetic. And they don't take you credit card to some hidden place and do who-knows-what with it.
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What … you object to a waiter with a rough look , taking your card away with a somewhat mysterious smile while mumbling something with a heavy Russian accent “ let me take kare of this for you my frend” … how not very cosmopolitan of you !
 
JOhnH said:
I've been to more than one that tried to tell me I needed to scan a qr code on the table and order on my phone. But when pushed they came out with paper menus and took my order on their tablet. But the day is coming.

One new thing I do sort of like though. There are a few restaurants around here where you can scan a qr code on the table and bring up your bill and pay on your phone, including tip. Then just get up and leave. No waiting for the waiter and nobody hovering over you while you figure out the tip and do the arithmetic. And they don't take you credit card to some hidden place and do who-knows-what with it.
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I carry (small) amounts of cash for places like that. If the thought of them taking my card who knows where freaks me out, so does the thought of using their QR code so it can load who knows what on my phone...
 
SkyChaser said:
I carry (small) amounts of cash for places like that. If the thought of them taking my card who knows where freaks me out, so does the thought of using their QR code so it can load who knows what on my phone...
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Damn you. I thought I had enough to worry about after clicking a link on what I thought was a legitimate email and all of a sudden, I couldn't log on to any of my email accounts. Now I have to worry about qr codes!
I got two of my email account passwords changed but the third is locked because of too many attempts to try to change it. The lock should time out around midnight tonight.
 
Yeah, phones are one of the favorite targets these days. Because people use phones for multi-factor auth, have passwords saved on them, etc. I haven't heard yet of the wallets being corrupted, but I'm not taking any chances by running software that I don't know about on phones that I use for banking or MFA.

The fun part is that the restaurant doesn't have to be a direct participant. If their link also pulls up an ad from some random service, that ad could be corrupted. Long time ago in this area one of the most frequent sources of malware for the outfit I worked with was the local newspaper. Not because of their primary content, but because their embedded ad service was littered with bad ads. And pretty much nobody is immune from that. There's enough money in malware that people will pay actual dollars for good advertising spots just to get it in. Those usually get found out pretty quickly, but not before some damage is done.
 
Again, as I said in another thread most people have never left the USA and would be amazed at how advanced most second/third world countries are.

China is a great example (as are others like Vietnam, Thailand etc) even the farmers markets used QR codes to but a few yuan worth of vegetables. I rarely used cash when with my wife/friends overseas... they do it all on their phones. Want a 40,000 VND boba at a cafe? Scan the QR, order and pay all in one seemless transaction. Mostly because unless you pay first, you don't get the food.

Any yes, even the menus (although most just write it on the wall).

They also have QR codes for wifi (for the love of Lindberg never, ever scan a random QR code overseas unless you read and speak the language.
 
pfarber said:
Again, as I said in another thread most people have never left the USA and would be amazed at how advanced most second/third world countries are.

China is a great example (as are others like Vietnam, Thailand etc) even the farmers markets used QR codes to but a few yuan worth of vegetables. I rarely used cash when with my wife/friends overseas... they do it all on their phones. Want a 40,000 VND boba at a cafe? Scan the QR, order and pay all in one seemless transaction. Mostly because unless you pay first, you don't get the food.

Any yes, even the menus (although most just write it on the wall).

They also have QR codes for wifi (for the love of Lindberg never, ever scan a random QR code overseas unless you read and speak the language.
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China is a damn totalitarian society run by a fascists ( certainly no longer fitting a communist label ) regime and their “advanced” technology is there more to account for their existential need to track and monitor every activity rather than for convenience of their citizens so yeah, pretty ****ty example you got here.
 
pfarber said:
Again, as I said in another thread most people have never left the USA and would be amazed at how advanced most second/third world countries are.
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"advanced"... depending on the definition of "advanced"
 
Warmi said:
China is a damn totalitarian society run by a fascists ( certainly no longer fitting a communist label ) regime and their “advanced” technology is there more to account for their existential need to track and monitor every activity rather than for convenience of their citizens so yeah, pretty ****ty example you got here.
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I might not have used those words, but that is an accurate enough description of their government and how they use their technology.
 
Albany Tom said:
Has anyone been to a place yet that doesn't have paper menus, but instead expects you to use your phone?
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Wife took me to Applebee's (you do what you gotta do) sometime ago and they didn't have menus and my phone wouldn't read their code. I have a lot of reasons I don't go there but that one sealed the deal ...
 
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