Car commercials really annoy me. Because there’s really not much to discriminate between different vehicles that all have essentially the same capabilities, the advertisers have to come up with stupid, unrealistic and unbelievable stories that have nothing to do with the product.
At gatherings where there are booths of experts to discuss their views on the theme of the booth, I am really discussed with the few folks who will tie up the presenter with question after question, and completely ignore the growing crowd of visitors standing in line behind them. Come on, folks! Listen to what was being said while YOU were in line, compose your questions, ask them and get out of the way!
Ignoring what you just overheard from the previous questioner had you been attentive was not only rude to the presenter, but to all of the others waiting for their turn. I’ll bet you are that driver that drives slowly in the fast lane while ignoring all of the drivers rushing by on either side…Sheese!
I read somewhere that the same hyper-developed glands that enabled Babe Ruth to hit incoming baseballs emitted the enzymes that caused his nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
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there was a teenage girl who was the youngest certified ms programmer and was one of the smartest people in the world … the sad part was she died as a teenager because it was exactly as you described … the very thing that made her smart caused the disease that killed her …
I think it’s because they want to be able to put their feet on the ground while still seated. At least that’s the case with my wife - I mansplained it to her a couple of times (I’m a slow learner), but she likes it that way.
My wife also likes her bike seat low enough she can put her feet down while remaining seating. I’ve learned enough to not argue anymore.
A similar thing happens at seminars. You sit, along with 20 to 30 other people, listening to an expert taking about a subject that interests you. Hopefully, the expert uses their screen to illustrate what they are saying and does not just read out what I already say on the screen.
At the end, they ask for questions and, after a few moments of silence, someone bounces up and asks one, which gets answered comprehensively, but then, instead of being happy with that, the questioner starts a debate and wanders away from the point of the seminar.
I hate how car commercials yell at you. Nothing makes me change the channel faster than a shouty car dealership.
Going back to the self checkouts, I only use them when I’m not buying alcohol or want a pack of gum. It’s easier to just flash my ID at the cashier at the regular checkout than waiting for the self-checkout person to finish helping the 1100 other people who need to have the scanner reset for whatever reason before they can get to me.
I’m going to be contrarian here. That whole express lane business model makes no sense. In what other industry can you get a dedicated service for people who don’t buy much? People who stay in hotels a lot get upgrades, people who fly a lot get upgrades, people who rent cars a lot get upgrades. You see where we’re going here, right?
But people who buy carts full of groceries have to wait in long lines while a dedicated register and checker wait on someone who is picking up a couple of items. Were I to own a grocery store the last thing I would do is reward people for not shopping big. You want to have better service? Go fill up your fucking cart, I’m not in business for my health.
What? It’s not “rewarding” those who spend less, it’s to make the regular lines shorter and go faster. If you’d rather stand behind 5 people with full carts plus 10 people with 1 item, instead of just the 5 people with full carts, ok…
It’s the same items and the same checker procedure. The two stores I shop at most frequently, Aldi and Costco have no express lanes and they check out customers far more efficiently than the ones with express lanes. Two regular lanes side by side will clear a lot more groceries than one express next to a regular lane.
The person who’s buying two items on Tuesday may be the same person who buys two shopping carts’ full every Friday.
Right. Those express-lane users may be shopping often, and @Bill_Door would dis-incentivize them from stopping in when they only need a few things.
Speaking of which, rewards for frequent flyers might just be an “entirely benign, appropriate thing that makes me seethe.” Wouldn’t the environmentally friendly thing be to encourage people to travel as little as possible?
I want to thank everyone who avoids self-checkout, it makes it a breeze to go through for me. I don’t buy alcohol, and I never have more than 15 items, and I don’t have to chat with a chatty checker (my benign appropriate thing that makes me seethe) and I love it.
I have to agree on this point. I don’t mind using the self-checkout, but feel like I should get some kind of discount since I’m doing the work for free that they would otherwise have to pay someone to do. Instead of six cashiers, now they only have to pay one person to monitor the checkouts and mysteriously become unavailable the moment you hit the “Assistance” button.
Damn, I may have to become one of the old farts that won’t use the self checkout that I complained about up-thread! 
I won’t argue self-checkout and lanes for a limited number of items. If someone agrees they are benign and appropriate but somehow makes them seethe, that’s OK. We are sometimes illogical creatures. Mea culpa.
For me, it’s the person who attempts to use a self-checkout and goes through a regular routine: Take an item from the basket. Pause. Scan it. Pause. Check the screen on the scanner. Think for a while if the price is correct. (Wait so long that the system goes into a conniption about placing the item on the scale/bag.) Place the item in the bag. Pause. Get the next item from the basket. Repeat. — And all of this done one-handed. Bonus points if they call the clerk over who has to explain that “discounts and coupons will appear after you hit the ‘pay’ button.” or to explain something else.
I have to cool down and remind myself “Once - we were all new at this. Be charitable.” But a side benefit is that it makes me appreciate the job the regular cashiers have to do.
Grocery store veteran here (many years in Industrial Engineering specifically around checkout process). I’m going to oversimplify the heck out of this.
The objective is not simply to minimize the checker hours per 1000 items. It is more to minimize the checkout time PER customer. You do that by segregating the large number of customers with a low service time (under 10 items) from the smaller number with a high service time (say over 30 items). You chug the 80% through the 3 express lines and even if there is a queue of 2-3 customers the total time is <2 minutes for those customers.
The 20% of customers with large orders are queued at five “full service” checkouts. Their waiting time might be more than 10 minutes, of which 5 minutes was waiting for customers ahead of them to checkout.
But on average the checkout time for all customers is still <3 minutes because the vast majority are <2 minutes.
If the customers with large orders were spread out through the 8 registers, almost no one would have a checkout time of under 5 minutes. The average could never be under 3 minutes.
All checkout time is not the same psychologically for the customer either. Time waiting to be served is more odious than time actually being served, for example. Waiting behind an older, slower person with 30 items who is checking prices like a hawk is more odious (“resentment”) than watching five people get checked out in a seconds each (“progress”).
Customers buying large amounts are more willing to wait 5 minutes than the person who just dashed in for one or two items. Those people might be otherwise tempted to go to a convenience store or drugstore instead. Also they are less price sensitive buying things they need urgently without regard to price. The cart with 45 items is much more likely to have a bunch of low margin, even negative margin product.
Aldi has a different customer psychology. Their customers are happier with lower selection, lower service. Some of them actually believe they are paying lower prices BECAUSE of the lower level of service.
Costco doesn’t really cater to the dash-in-grab-two-things customer at all. Their business model doesn’t apply to supermarkets.
TL/DR, we aren’t the idiots you think we are. Things might be more complicated than they seem.
FYI, some Costco stores have some self-service registers in addition to the staffed ones. I’ve used the self-service ones when I had only a couple of things.
My one and only reason for not using self-checkout is to do my part to help ensure employment opportunities.
I literally stopped going to Subway not because they’re bad (and they’re bad) but because I cannot tolerate being behind someone in line who has to have their sandwich made just right. They deliberate over all 47 possible add-on ingredients, carefully tasting each one in their mind before consenting to have it added, and of course it has to be just the right quantity, not too much, not too little, and can you put the sauce on just so? Goddamit. Know what you want, order your sandwich, don’t fuss about it, and get out of my way.
Same deal in a sit-down restaurant, actually. I get enraged if my dining companion starts asking the poor server 100 questions and wanting to have the food made just so. No. You’re not that special, you’re not that important. The process of ordering from a menu should take exactly 6 seconds. Gah.
Depends on the sit down restaurant. It seems like often the waiter wants to engage you in a lot of conversation. They have a vested interest in your enjoying your meal. More immediately than the chef-owner.