There are many challenges and choices presented by the Christmas season. For instance, with Christmas carols in shops, should one sing along loudly and add rude words, or simply burn the place to the ground as one leaves? Is the appropriate Christmas drink a longneck of beer on the couch in front of the telly or a stubby of beer on the couch in front of a computer game? And finally, To self-serve or not self-serve?Emergency Contact and I had to go to K-Mart for under-chunders. We weren’t actually Christmas shopping, but if you are at the shops at this time of year, you are inevitably part of the insanity. We were lined up waiting for a checkout chick, and got bullied into the self-service lane. We obediently, if reluctantly, trudged over and served ourselves. I don’t like the idea of staff losing jobs but that’s not the real reason I don’t like self-service. It just feels like shoplifting. What adds to the sensation of an unending crime spree, is when Emergency Contact starts setting the beepers off in every shop we walk out of afterwards.
(Actually, it’s not just the guilt of petty larceny. I have discovered there is a big difference between the least user-friendly and most user-friendly of self-service checkouts. I’m fairly hard to bamboozle with this kind of stuff but I was at a supermarket recently where the spoken instructions from the machine were inaudible and the visible, semi-animated instructions on the screen appeared to be happening out of sequence with what I was doing. The good ones give you a subtotal and then ask for the money. I‘ll be really impressed when the machine can count it back into your hand like the little Greek ladies in corner shops, “… and 15 makes 85, 22 makes lizard and ten should be fifty. Tank you!”)
Here’s the thing - if you are going to buy stuff that has those impossible to remove radio tags on them, don’t let the staff bully you into a self-service line. You either won’t be able to remove the tags, won’t think of removing them, or won’t find them all to remove.
Also, as handy as I am with matters practical, I will ruin your Bonds T-Shirt Bra getting the radio tag off with normal domestic tools.
I love self service. I'm such a crazy mofo and on the edge sort of dude, that I scan truss tomatoes as the bog standard cheap ones.
ReplyDeleteThis "miss scan" is not only is a massive adrenalin rush, but I get a much tastier end product!
As for the loss of human jobs...pffft. We will all be bowing down to a mechanized overlords in the next couple of years so getting on side with them now is politically savvy
Miss Scan, my new girlfriend.
ReplyDeleteMiss Scan's voice makes me cringe. Her condescending yet fake-cheerful-yet-abrupt tone just rubs me the wrong way, and I'm sorry, I can't stand her, and I object to 'using' her on principle.
ReplyDeleteThe only trouble is that there are six clones of her (those damned machines from hell) situated directly next to the "human being" checkout chick. Whenever I try my luck at shopping, the human checkout chick's line is invariably stuck, waiting for a price check. So whilst in the unmoving line behind Pricecheck Pete, I am forced to listen to the army of Miss Scan clones (all with the fake-cheerful-yet-abrupt voice) telling/instructing/bullying the next group of schmos to "place items in the bagging area".
I'm just not quite certain which circle of hell the machines came from.. but can we send them back?
Happy Shopping (maybe one day?),
MD
Just be wary if you plan to "teabag" Miss Scan.
ReplyDeleteThe wild variation in weight to her metallic face will cause her to freak and call for human intervention.