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Time has again dragged a month into its second half.
And we all know what happens in the second half of any month.
Freedom of speech breaks out in a way that can only be labelled unpredictable.
That's right. It's the return of the feature in which the first person to comment gets to pick the topic of the day!
But what is that topic?
Peradventure, it might involve art, films, flans, plans, books, bagels, cooks, nooks, crooks, ducks, drakes, pixies, rocks, socks, blocks, music, mucous, fairy tales, fairy lights, Fairy Liquid, fairy cakes, Eccles cakes, myth, moths, maths, magic, tragedy, comedy, dromedaries, murder, larders, Ladas, mystery, mayhem, molluscs, Moorcock, May Day, mangoes, bongos, drongoes, bingo, Ringo, Pingu, Ringu, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Doris Day, Marvin Gaye, Marvin the paranoid android, Brookside Close, Ramsay Street, Coronation Street, Albert Square, Scarlet Street, Dead End Street, chickenpox, the Equinox, parallelograms, rhomboids, androids, asteroids, The Good Life, the Next Life, pomegranates, raisins, grapes, currants, blackcurrants, figs, waves, granite, marble, marbles, maples, staples, fables, stables, sofas, eggs, pegs, legs, dregs, moons and supermoons, sodas, sausages, eggs, whisky, broth, Bath, baths, Garth Marenghi, Garth Brooks, Garth Crooks, Bruno Brookes, Bruno Mars, Mars Bars, wine bars, flip-flops, flim-flam, flapjacks, backpacks, see-saws, jigsaws, dominoes, draft excluders, blockheads, blackheads, dunderheads, deadheads, webheads, flowerpots, Bill and Ben, Ben and Jerry, Tom and Jerry, flour pots, bread bins, bin bags, body bags, body horror, shoddy horror, doggy bags, bean bags, coal sacks, cola, cocoa, dodos, Dido, Soho, Solo, silos, windows, day-glo, glue, Gloy, Bostik, pancakes, pizzas, pastas, pastors, baking soda, sci-fi, Wi-Fi, Hi-Fi, sewage, saunas, suet, Tomorrow People, Forever People, Party People, Sheila Steafel, steeples, Silurians, Sontarans, Sea Devils, sins, suns, sans, sense, sludge, slumps, sumps, sunshine, slime, soup, sandwiches, servants, Sultanas, Santana, Sultans, grapes, grappling or sandcastles.
Peradventure, it might not.
Just as there's no way of knowing who'll be running Britain next month, there's no way of knowing which way this thread will go. So, make sure to get in there, fast, with your suggestion, before someone beats you to it.
What is your opinion of self-service checkouts in shops? Do you like them or avoid them?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI like self-service tills when you can put the stuff into your own bag. M&S do those.
ReplyDeleteI despise the ones they have on Sainsbury’s where you have to balance everything on a little weighing platform: apart from the platform barely being big enough to accommodate anything more than a loaf of bread and some milk, they have hair-trigger sensitivity that can stop the whole process dead if you move things around. I have walked away from my shopping on several occasions when dealing with those things.
Sorry - very Anglocentric post.
Ah, I can address this from both sides of the issue. I used to work in a large 'box store' where one of my duties was monitoring the self checking stations. They worked pretty well, most of the time. But they did have their infuriating glitches. And once in a while, they would reveal someone trying to pull a fast one. One lady couldn't understand why her items kept getting flagged. I came over to help her- 'someone' had placed different bar codes over all the correct ones. She then decided she had to leave.
ReplyDeleteAs for myself, I use them frequently, especially as I have a pretty good understanding of how they work. That said, I still like to check out with an actual person. Happens too infrequently these days...
Oddly, the grocery stores me and me missus prefer, Fresh Thyme and Trader Joe's and Aldi's (on Ogden Avenue in Westmont, IL) do NOT have the gadgets.
ReplyDeleteThe generic grocery store, all things to all people, Jewel and Marianos do have them. As MM wrote above, the platforms are cued in to weight but barely hold a six pack of bananas. So when you bag them the alarms go off b.c. the weight has changed. So much annoying nutfuckery...
And if you are into grocery stores, the podcast FREAKaNOMICS has a wonderful podcast on TRADER JOE's. It is the most profitable chain in the USA... yet it has very limited selection, crowded aisles, cashiers who converse with you and are in no hurry to get you through the line... they defy every convention that consumers are supposed to want for a grocery store. (They are also mysteriously (!) owned by ALDI's.)
Odder yet, everyone is supposedly eating out but there are no less than 7 major grocery stores, within a few miles, where I live and they all do a cracking business!
Thanks for the subject, Colin.
ReplyDeleteI hate self-service checkouts. I feel like, every time I use one, they've changed how it works and something always goes wrong.
Also, they're forcing me to do the work but I'm the customer. If I'm giving the shop my money, shouldn't it be the shop that does the work?
I don't mind self service if I'm in a rush and only want a couple of things but I am not a fan of being "forced" to use them for a larger shop. The problem is that supermarkets are closing more service isles early so you either have to wait in a massive queue to get served or use these things for lots of messages which is a pain. The number of time there's an error when scanning and you have to wait for someone to come and help so you can rescan a tin of beans is pretty common. It's another move away from any real customer service in my opinion, they are good but not at the expense of a human server. It's Terminator by the back door :)
ReplyDeleteSteve, I completely agree with you about being paid, and how under modern capitalism we are increasingly expected to manage our own exploitation.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, if you don't use the self-service checkout, you have to deal with the humans that work there.
Personally, I try to use the supermarket as little as possible, and at least the self-service makes it quicker. Using self-service you can be in and out in even less time than it takes a British government minister to resign.
-sean
Just curious in a King Charlie Bolshie sort of way...
ReplyDeleteWhen you UK chaps do self-checkout for groceries does an employee check your goods against your receipt before you leave the store, to prevent theft?
I don't have that in my neck of Chicago-land.
Reason I bring it up was during the summer holidays in France this year, they frequently had self checkout and then a gate which prevented one from leaving until am employee verified your receipt against your goods. Me and the missus were a bit surprised. No big deal... just surprised.
Charlie: No, once you scan you can leave with your messages\goods and no one searches / checks unless I suppose they suspect foul play.They have cameras though on each scanner so I suppose someone is always watching.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments.
ReplyDeleteCharlie, nobody has ever checked my goods against my receipt and I've often wondered what's to stop me stealing things - in fact, some of the self-service checkouts in my local Tesco give you the option of not getting a receipt at all so there'd be nothing to check!
I started using self-service regularly only a few months ago and, like Steve, it felt like the rules changed every single time but I seem to have got the hang of it now apart from the odd mishap such as a few days ago when the checkout machine demanded age-verification for a chocolate bar.
For me the big advantage of self-service is that I can go to Tesco much earlier. The store opens at 6am but they don't start manning the checkouts till about 7.30 so thanks to self-service I can turn up much earlier than I used to before.