Fifteen seconds to take it back
Finishing a ticket is the only irreversible press on a kitchen screen. Why the card goes green and waits — and why nothing reaches the server until the window runs out.
Every other press on a kitchen screen can be walked back. Start a ticket too early and you drag it back a lane. But the final press — collected, done, gone — takes the card off the board, and a card off the board is a card somebody has to go hunting for in a recall list, under pressure, while the food gets cold.
Hold the press, not the apology
So the last press does not send anything. The card stays where it is, turns green, counts down, and carries a cancel. For fifteen seconds the bump exists only on that one device. Cancel during the window and there is nothing to undo anywhere — no server ever heard about it. Only when the window runs out does the bump actually go.
The wording finishes the job
The button that starts the window says what is true for that order, not a generic "Done": a counter order reads Order collected, a delivery reads Driver collected, because a chef recording that a driver took the bag is recording a fact, and a ticket that came back from a failed drop must not offer to record a collection that did not happen.
One promise underneath
The window has a rule that outranks it: it must never come to nothing. A press that promised a ticket its final state has to end in that state even if the board redrew, the lanes changed, or a poll dropped the row in between — the early version got this wrong, and a chef photographed a card that flashed green, counted down, and snapped back to "being made" with nothing sent anywhere. A safety window that sometimes eats the press is worse than no window at all. Now the send at the end of the window is unconditional, and cancel remains the only way out.