When people post highly detailed and graphic descriptions of their sexual escapades in threads that are completely unrelated.
The problem is displaced workers all across the country while the terminals, etc. are made in one (or several) factories. Second, the number of displaced workers is far more than the number building the machinery and are certainly nowhere near the factory to get a job.
But we do get a benefit for using the self checkout lane, the lines are much shorter and we get through it faster.
And we don’t have to talk to the clerk.
Moderator Note
This may make you seethe, but I have a hard time believing that you think it’s entirely benign and appropriate.
If you really need to snark, you know where the Pit is.
This is why I use them. I don’t want to chat to anyone, I just want to get my stuff and get out. I know where the NO button is for the extra offers which is much better than listening to the poor clerk repeat all their offers for the 900th time that day.
If they’d hire enough clerks we would get through faster as well.
We do our shopping on a weekday to avoid the crowds. In and out much faster.
Around here they have one person watching over the self-checkout stations, so you can’t entirely avoid human contact, especially since they will speak to you and point you to the closest open self-checkout.
If you really hate human contact and the extra offers and such you can order your groceries for pickup or have them delivered. No extra charge for pickup, and the only contact you have with another human being is for them to verify your name. Delivery you can just wave to the delivery person so they know they have the right house, but you have to pay the delivery charge and the tip.
Every store has them. They don’t bother me, they’re just doing their job. No unnecessary talking. As for the rest, I’m not going to let someone else pick out my groceries for me, and substitute things I don’t want when what I do want isn’t available.
I see nothing wrong with self-checkout lanes. All that malarkey about saving jobs is just blowing hot air. @k9bfriender has it right in his post above, go back and read it again.
I hate when you are on a guided tour of a battlefield, a museum, an animal habit, a historical site, or whatever and the guide gives you a very comprehensive presentation on the subject matter and then asks if there are any questions.
There is always one guy (and yes, it is always a guy) who doesn’t really have a question. He wants to preface his “question” with a two minute spiel showing the group how very, very knowledgeable he is on the subject matter at hand, hell, probably more knowledgeable than the tour guide and then finishes his dissertation with a “Do you feel that was the proper strategy?” or “Would it have been better to pursue a different course of action?”
The dillweed’s eyes then glaze over and he does not listen to the answer because his purpose has been served. The rest of us in the group fawn over his vast knowledge and seek his autograph.
I can well imagine how this might make a person seethe, but how is this benign or appropriate?
I live on a north-south street. When I order from Domino’s (another subject altogether), the Domino’s Tracker shows the driver approaching me from the north end of the through street. In fact, he almost always shows up coming from the south. The pizza gets here when it’s supposed to, but I’m irritated about it every single time.
Maybe your screen is upside down.
Or you have the Down Under 2.0 Tracker… change your language preference from Australian to American.
This is quite intriguing, and now I have questions about how that pizza tracker actually works.
This has obviously struck a chord with people. The Tracker shows an icon at the Domino’s store that serves me and tells me that “Georgette has just picked up your order for delivery!” I watch the progress of the icon as it moves west to the north end of my street and then two blocks down to my house. The icon even pauses at intersections with stop signs. There is also a countdown timer to arrival. The icon approaches my house from the north and the timer hits 00:00. I’m sitting on my couch looking through the front storm door and the delivery car actually pulls to the curb after coming from the south.
Now, you can also get a pizza to my house by going south from the store and then west to my street. This would make the driver approach from the south, as observed. But why go to the bother of showing me a fake route? I don’t care how the pizza gets here.
I don’t actually believe this, but security? If I were a delivery driver I’d be a little nervous that my route was being shared. The main problem with this theory is that the software would have to plan a reasonable decoy route that still got the icon to your house at the same time as the actual pizza gets there.
Not impossible, but tricky at least.
It’s possible that they are using software that plots the route for the driver, down to the time spent at intersections, but the driver chooses to ignore the directions and go a different way
Maybe it’s a total fabrication, kind of like most “progress bars” when software installs. However, it is available only for some delivery persons and not for all of them. This might correspond to which delivery people allow Domino’s to access their cell’s GPS. But if it’s a total fake, why not just provide the bogus info to the customer no matter which person does the delivery?
The driver’s app may report a reasonable estimate of the eta, even if the route is slightly different. But if a driver without the app stops for an errand or quickie or whatever, there’s no way to guess the timing. Also, drivers running the app are probably less likely to make these kind of stops, anyway.
You reminded me of a peeve: many grocery stores’ self checkers will not recognize the fruit/vegetable barcodes. The machine stops scanning until the clerk comes over to clear out the machine. I understand the machine shouldn’t accept random barcodes. I seethe that the powers-that-be haven’t programmed them to either recognize the codes as valid or display a message for me to manually type in the item number instead of locking up.