I check my blood pressure often. I check it at home, I have the nurse at work check it every once in a while, and when I’m at the store and see a blood pressure machine I check it. My doctor said those machines are actually pretty accurate.
But now there are new blood pressure machines in stores all over Milwaukee county and they are ridiculous! Rather having the little cards to record ones blood pressure, it spits out a ticket with the pressure on it. One should take their pressure a couple of times at one sitting to get an average reading, so each time you check your pressure you get 3 or 4 tickets.
So now there are zillions of these tickets on the floor around these machines because people don’t need to have a little citation with their blood pressure on it to remember what it was. What a waste of paper.
I think the idea is to protect people from having someone nearby see the reading on the machine. Everything is about privacy these days. Some anal retentive people may wish to keep the record too. Many folks are just lazy slobs. I see the same thing at the ATM machine and around anywhere Lotto tickets are sold.
You don’t save those tickets? You could win fabulous prizes! Anything in this general area right in here. Anything below the stereo and on this side of the bicentennial glasses. Anything between the ashtrays and the thimbles. Anything in this three inches right in here in this area, that includes the Chicklets but not the erasers!
They might be catering to people who suffer from CRSS…Can’t Remember Shit Syndrome. I might look at my watch/phone to see what time it is, and if you ask me the time 30 seconds later, I can’t tell you.
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I used to love to ask people the time 30 seconds after they checked their watch. A surprising number of people who check again. Including me, because I’m usually looking for a relative time (“I don’t have to leave yet”), not an absolute time.
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Nope! These machines still have a big bold lighted display of your blood pressure that Stevie Wonder could see a mile a way, on top of the stupid tickets.
Easy way to handle this stuff: Ask if we want a print out. You know, throw in a little button that says “PRINT your blood pressure.” People who want it can use it. People who don’t don’t waste paper.
I’ve seen places that actually stick a trashcan under machines that shoot out useless paper like this.
