I don't QR, so don't ask! (Revisited)

They are here to haunt me for the rest of my life. I don't know anyone else who is so horrified, mortified, and just plain angry at the sight of these things that look like a cross between a maze and a Rohrschach test.

WTH are they anyway? They are a devise used as part of a phone application. Most folks say, "App." Again, I am not most folks. WTH would I want to have an application or icon on my phone that I don't want to use? These things open up menus in restaurants, or they give you access to tools that can buy tickets to museums, or provide you entrance to any number of things. These icons also seem to want to know:
YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER,
YOUR MOTHER'S so-called MAIDEN NAME,
YOUR DATE OF BIRTH,
and any number of other none-of-your-GD-business questions. I don't want to offer my personal or financial information for the database of some QR peddler.

Now please don't think I'm from the Stone Age. I do accept bar codes and their readers. I also accept chips that are part of the credit card world and also affixed to my United States Passport. But these QR things are just way too invasive.

First of all, I can hardly read anything that pops up on my cellular phone screen. And I don't like doing excessive fingering to make something big enough for me to read. And I also don't like readers to recite information that's on my cellular phone screen because I never know who's listening!

I want a menu in a restaurant. Or I want a sign. Or I want someone to read something to me. I remember going into a café in Old San Juan and they had the QRs taped to the table. I told the waiter I wanted a menu. He said they don't have them anymore. I pointed to where they were and asked him, "¿ Han cambiado todas las opciones de tu menú ? ¿ El menú ya no es válido ?

He said that the prices have changed. Fine, I can live with that. I just don't like the attitude of people who don't have menus anymore.

And--ODDLY ENOUGH--I have found that ethnic restaurants are among the worst to be customer friendly when it comes to accepting orders that haven't been placed via QR. I was in one restaurant that didn't even have waitstaff to come to the table. After a 15-minute wait, I phoned the restaurant and got the clerk at the cash register. I told him that I was sitting at a table with a friend of mine and no one has even given us water. His response was not very friendly, but he realized that it wouldn't go well when I said the name YELP.

The last straw was yesterday. I signed up for a health study. It took them over 4 hours (mostly waiting) to have me fill out paperwork, get checked over by a P.A., and answer a battery of questions. At the end, they told me to download the QR thingie that was on their calling card. I asked them if this could be accessed with a computer. They said that it was an "app". I said my computer doesn't "DO apps." They said I'd either have to use my smart phone (ain't got one) or get the app from a play station.

What kind of grown-up person wants to have dealings with an icon called PLAY STATION?

I made a feeble attempt at logging into it (they said that that was the ONLY WAY I could get paid). But this icon was asking me way too many personal questions. They were the kind of questions and answers that I didn't want on my phone. So, I called the esteemed study and told them that I was opting out. When they asked why, I told them what I thought of their app and that if they were looking for older people who might not be savvy with computers or interested in using icons, they should consider other options such as writing checks.

So much for my contributions to science!