Yes, but what about “motherfucking”?
When I was a checker at Dominick’s, we were *drilled * on changing tape.
If you couldn’t change the tape in under ten seconds, you were shuffled off to the bakery to work with the old ladies.
Flip up the lid, press a lever to eject the mechanism, snag the empty spool, drop in the new roll, drag the tape around the mechanism, push it back in, close the lid, press the feed button, tear off the tail, done! I tell ya, IBM made a really well thought-out receipt printer back then. Bulletproof, and teenager-proof design that ought to be required by law. None of this nonsense of tearing off the end of the paper just so, feeding it into the right one of several things that look like a slot in the dark guts of the printer and hoping it comes through.
But there ought to be a Slow Tax on customers that stand there, gawking slack-jawed at the gee-whiz technology and hypnotized by all the beeping and booping as if they were in Nickel Slot Heaven at Vegas, and waiting until every last blessed can of cat food is scanned to offer up their discount card, wait for the cashier to scan it and return it, then say “I have a coupon” and rummage around their satchel for the 15¢ off coupon for a different brand of mustard than they bought, then drag out the…
Wait for it…they’re still looking for it.
The checkbook! And then they dig for a pen.
Scribble, scribble scribble…tear…rip…fold back and forth…rip…tear
“I’m sorry Ma’am, you made this out to Jewel.”
Scribble…scribble scribble… “Oh, can I get cash back?”
“Yes Ma’am. You can get up to forty dollars back.”
Scribble…scribble…
That’s the way to go sir, and we’re happy to do that.
Now that the first transaction is done we’ll keep the bag up here, while you go to the back of the line for the next ten items.
Have a nice day! 
I think I’ve *been *you, shopping!
Yeah, the 4680 / 4690 printers were nice for the receipts, but the journal side was a pain in the ass. Open the the top, get out the key and unlock the cover, pull out the old one from the back and the from the front, tear them apart, pull the spools out, put the new tape into the back, feed it through the rollers, wrap the journal around the spool, put that spool back into the back part, close and lock the cover, close the top.
Our new POS system uses a different printer made by Epson that’s even easier. Flip up the top, throw the old one away, put the new one in, close it. No rollers or printhead or ribbons or anything to deal with. It takes about three seconds. No journal either – one of the best things about our new system.
So, this morning I have to run to the grocery store, and I make may way to the check-out section with my 15-20 items. The clerk at the express check-out lane (10 items or less) waves me over. I hesitate, because there is a regular check-out lane at the other end of the store that is empty. But he insists, grabbing my cart and pulling it over.
Guess what happens? As soon as he starts checking my items, a lady comes up behind me with one item to check-out. She kinds of looks at me funny, and I feel like screaming: HE MADE ME DO IT!!! IT’S NOT MY FAULT!!!
When you’re done and paying the guy, say, “Thanks so much for waving me over here - I know had too many items - you saved me a ton of time” or something similar.
I very rarely see this work. Entitiled Idiot (EI) has a few items in their hands, not a basket. EI sees the Express Lane has two or three in line. EI the goes to a regular line hoping they will be allowed to go to the front. When that fails, they line hop until giving up and going back to the Express Lane.
Get out of my lane! :mad:
You may want to write “15 individual items”. That’s what one of the local supermarkets does; they also have a note that says “a pack counts as several items unless the price is per pack” (for example when cans are held together by plastic rings, the price is per can). It’s also the only supermarket where cashiers make you empty your cart completely and scan every single thing, including one of the cans in your 6-pack six times. And the only one where if you have items that are sold per item but which come in packs (like boxes of milk) they go and break the pack to take out one bottle and scan it several times.
Those other supermarkets where you can put one bottle of water on the belt and say “10 waters” count the 10 bottles of water as one item (the cashier still needs to count them). After all it’s one line in the ticket. These also bother have the barcodes for both the milk boxes and milk packs, no need to open the container.
Who pays with cheques any more? The Valu-Mart across the road from my place stopped taking them about four years ago.
I like the self checkout, but so does my 5 year old. EVERY trip to the grocery store includes his request for the “pay by ourself?”
Now, there is no sign that calls that an express lane (which they also have).
Am I being evil using those lanes? I will admit that I keep it to 4 bags or fewer, since that is the limit to bag yourself on the scales. We have fun with the scanners, the buttons, etc. We also don’t tie up a regular line, and there is less impulse purchase crap in those lines as well.
I’ve been in stores that have both <10-items self-checkout lanes and no-limit checkout lanes.
IMHO, if there’s no sign indicating otherwise, you’re free to use whatever lane you want.
I don’t think self check out is an express lane thing. I avoid them when I have more than a half cart of groceries, or anything really large, since that would stretch the capacity of the bagging station/scales to handle my stuff. But the ones here generally have 5-6 bags available, so if I have less than that worth of groceries, I use them by default.
Really? That blows my mind. I use checks a lot. And ALWAYS at the grocery store.
I’ve never heard that the self-service lanes were intended to be express lanes. I’ve never worried about the number of items I had when using them, especially since there’s usually several of them empty. In fact, when I was shopping this afternoon there was an announcement made that there were four available self-check lanes, all of which were still unused when I finished shopping.
Yep nobody using them and they have a limit, and say no gift cards and some other restrictions. There might by 8 to ten of these open and one person at them.
They might not even have a quantity key. At a supermarket I worked at corporate got so pissed because cashiers weren’t following policy and scanning different flavors of the same product (ie apple or peach flavored Gerbers) seperate that they made management disable the quantity key. Which of course meant that every single item needed to be scanned seperately. Even if somebody bought 24 jars of the same flavor of baby food either each jar needed to be scanned or the cashier had to scan the same jar 24 times. The was no supervisor overide option either.
The four self-checkout stations in my local grocery store are expressly (ahem) 15 items or less (their wording, not mine). These stations are seldom not being used and its a 24-hour store (NYC). Although those slightly over the limit won’t be turned away, these stations are seldom available for the obviously way-over-the-limit shoppers to choose during downtime (there’s a head cashier overseeing this area, for beer purchases, clearing snags, etc.).
The store, of course, also has regular cashier-assisted lanes, with express and any-number-goes lines.
There are full-service models and express models. The full service models either have a large conveyor belt leading to the bagging area or 4-5 bag stands. The express models have only 1-2 stands. The retailer can customize them as to what payment options they can handle (ours could accept gift cards, but not load them).
That would mean enforcing the ‘five items or less’ (sorry, but ‘fewer’ would just sound silly, so that’s the end of the matter) at the cigarette counter. Pushing this one is always fun, because there seems to be a certain character who likes this job. Thing is, a big part of the job seems to be standing around chatting up the security guard/guy next to you/him who presses buttons to make photos print. So I have actually been refused service there, when there was no queue and a large queue at every other till, because I had (gasp) SIX items in my basket.