They’re not worried you’re stealing life savers, they’re worried your scanning life savers and walking out with something more expensive. The registers know about how much each item weighs. If you scan lifesavers and put a hammer in the bag, it’ll call the attendant over. Similarly, if you drink half of your Dr Pepper while in line, that’ll throw it off too.
My issue with Home Depot is that I could never get my Samsung Pay to work there. I’ve never had issues with it anywhere else, even places that don’t take wireless payments (my phone can emulate the mag stripe on a credit card). Not a big deal, but often I get 5% back when I use it.
That’s why I won’t use Pantry. I’m paying a hundred dollars a year for shipping, why should I have to pay a hundred dollars a year plus shipping for Pantry? I have used it once or twice though. The shipping cost was waived for whatever reason and the products were considerably cheaper (or not elsewhere available).
Imagine having a migraine and having to turn on all the lights from your bedroom to wherever the meds are and finding out that the blister pack requires a scissors to open. Here’s the sumatriptan I get from OptumRx. It cannot be opened without a scissors. Not something I want to do at 2 in the morning, being woken up by a throbbing headache. More times that I can count I’ve convinced myself “I’ll be find by morning” and go back to bed. Of course, I’m never fine by morning.
For this reason I keep Maxalt-MLT nearby. The packages are easy to open and it dissolves in your mouth so I can keep it by my bed. Wake up, pop one in my mouth, go back to bed.
Granted, this is an issue more about this specific product than blister packs in general. However, there’s a handful of youtube videos and angry blog/message board posts about these specific blister packs.
My ex-wife would continuously get “Convenience Checks” from Discover. The ones you write like normal checks, but they charge you 30% interest as a cash advance. My issue was that she never asked for them. I called them 5 or 6 times over as many months asking them to knock it off. They would tell me if she doesn’t need them, she doesn’t have to use them but my problem is that she wasn’t expecting them so if someone stole them she wouldn’t even know they were missing until the charges showed up on her account.
No, a different company. But your experience seems to validate that this kind of crap isn’t a fluke occurrence. I switched over to a card from the bank I’ve used for many years. They’re no angels either, but they have so far been true to their word that they wouldn’t pull that kind of nonsense.
Edit: Actually, there’s no reason to anonymize them - the offending company was CitiBank.
Are self checkouts the new “What’s the deal with airline food?” Maybe it’s because I had a brief stint working as the self checkout person at a grocery store, but I almost never have issues with them. You scan the item, you put it in the bag. Don’t set your coat, purse, child, etc on the platform.
I’m a systems engineer specializing in software design.
I completely understand the thought process behind it.
“Customer scans item. Customer bags item.”
Period. No exceptions, no variations. The use case is written, carved into stone, translated into specifications, and coded.
No user ever does anything different, because the designer said so. If the user’s behavior differs from the software’s design, the user is wrong and must be trained to conform to the system.
That’s the fundamental rule of UX design. Teach the user to obey the interface, because there’s no way in hell to teach the interface to obey the user.
My wife and I both cook, usually alternating. Whoever cooks, the other one cleans up the kitchen.
My wife has a min-food processor (in addition to her real one). She uses it to chop onions, celery, garlic, etc. Since it is so small, she has to cut the onions and celery, as well as peel and prep the garlic, before putting it in the bowl.
So, when it’s my turn to clean up, I have a food processor bowl, lid, blade assembly, and even the little scraper she uses to get everything out to clean and wash. Mind you, this is in addition to the kitchen knife and cutting board she used to prep whatever she put in.
I’m constantly pointing out to her that she could just chop everything on the cutting board. If you’ve peeled and quartered an onion, it’s just 15 seconds or so to chop it. Drives me nuts.
What chaps my hide are “convenience fees” that are actually more convenient for THEM than they are for YOU. Example: The State of Illinois charges a “convenience fee” for registration payments made on line. Really?! Doesn’t paying on line actually SAVE them money? When you send in a check, there has to be a human to open the envelope and process the payment whereas, if you pay on line, it is handled by computer automatically. So, in essence, they are punishing you for saving them time and money.
Grocery stores are now required by law to state when seafood has been previously frozen. My local Giant Food store, instead of posting “Previously Frozen” posts “Thawed for Your Convenience” (or when handwritten, “Thawed for You’re Convenience” ;)) If it had been frozen, I’d rather keep it frozen until I’m ready to cook it.
I started using Google Pay when I got a smartwatch a couple of weeks ago and I’ll never go back. Wave the watch and sign, and I’m done. I don’t have to fish out and scan a credit card, and the merchant never sees my credit card number. Has worked correctly every time.
Their motivation for it is 100% cover their own ass because you are not liable for fraudulent charges. If it saves you any trouble it’s purely a coincidence.
I am reading this as cynical tongue-in-cheek. I manage web projects, including one we did for the federal government for 40M users, and my UX guys say the whole idea is to make a system with a flow that is based on how people think, behave, and interact with non-human systems.
seems like some stores handle this way better than others. our local grocery store has a great, reasonably fast system that rarely causes problems. wal-mart had a pretty decent system that they recently changed for whatever reason and it is much, much slower. so much slower that you’re not sure if something has actually scanned so you try to scan it again but, whoops, it actually did scan the first time so now you have to wait for someone to come over and void an item (but there are 4 other people using self-checkouts that have the same problem so the wait might be a little long!)
Apple pay almost always works for me. It’s a bonus that I can easily do it one-handed, since the other hand is often holding a wiggling 2-year-old at the checkout. Taking a card or money out of a wallet is very difficult to do one handed.
Self checkouts work well if most of the things have a barcode and they fit in the bagging area. But they don’t have to work well for every customer. If they work well for some, that still makes the checkout process faster (or cheaper) for everyone, since fewer employees can check out more people.
Just recently I used a self-checkout at Walmart and it didn’t care about the weight sensor. Seems like a major improvement to me. Maybe the solution is to just disconnect that part.
I looked at the owner’s manual for my car not long after I got it. It said, “… put the key in, turn it back and forth six times, then select the desired option with the lock switch.” I just absolutely despise the automatic door locking feature. If I want my doors locked, I have a button that will make that happen. The feature (on another car) has in fact inconvenienced me more than once.
Because, like I said earlier, the tablet may crumble easily, and some medications are packaged in a gas other than room air to reduce their decomposition. Others are extremely moisture-sensitive.
I love self-checkouts! I don’t even mind doing produce with them. Probably because, from working in a grocery store, I have a lot of the PLU’s memorized. The only problem I have with them is that they are too slow.
I have no real problem with self-checkouts and use them most of the time because human teller lines are usually clogged. I ‘outrun’ the checkout display constantly, but usually it catches up without serious problems (like, the total is still $0.00 when I hit ‘pay’, yet it still charges me money). I’ve also figured out how to enter PLU codes (go me) so about the only time somebody has to come over is to enter an age verification. No big deal.
And I’m pretty sure the weight check thing is to make sure you don’t try to slip things into your bag without paying for them. Run ten items across the scanner, with the two most expensive ones UPC up - who would know?
