In absence of additional information I’ll assume Annie-Xmas is making a best effort and some people are just being obtuse.
When one deals with the general public, there are an astonishing number of bozos in the bunch.
(following is not directed at Annie)
With that said, one thing that irks me is where there is some relatively nontrivial part of the transaction that workers are extremely familiar with but customers might not be familiar with.
Don’t look at me like I’m stupid when I can’t figure out how to use the POS terminal…you see the same one day in and day out, while I face dozens of variants with weird setups. Do I click “cancel” to not use PIN, or do I click “Ok” without keying in the PIN, or do I tell you I’m using credit? Please no eye-rolls.
These days it looks like Verisign is making solid progress in harmonizing the POS terminals everywhere, so it is getting easier.
Wow, that’s quite a statement! And an IQ lower than yours isn’t that same thing as an idiot. I agree with needscoffee - “We don’t take American Express” means you don’t take American Express credit/charge cards. It wouldn’t kill you to say that it includes AE gift cards.
And, is the chip reader set up or not? Not every store makes this obvious, so I err on the side of swiping, and then get told to use the chip. :smack:
I would think it would not. As you clearly demonstrated in your anecdote that I’m sure happened. (Did the rest of the store clap when it was over?) If you don’t take AmEx gift cards, then say you don’t take AmEx gift cards. In your situation I would think you were stupidly thinking the gift card was a credit card.
Riiiight. And that’s why you work as a clerk in a dollar store?
I suspect there are different uses for that lane for different states. Where I live now, and where I grew up, such lanes are intended for both purposes (not necessarily as an acceleration lane, but as a way to get onto the street and into traffic without waiting forever at the parking lot exit). People on the street turning left still have right-of-way, so it still requires some attention and care.
Just realized that I’m seriously annoyed when someone posts in the form of a song, and I don’t know what they are referencing or parodying, and I can’t figure out what the song is supposed to sound like. Like this post.
This was one of the reasons why reading Lord of the Rings was an aggravating experience. Too many songs cluttering up the novel.
Not to pile on, but this was handled all kinds of incorrectly, as evidenced by the fact that the head cashier solved the issue in about half the conversation.
I’ve worked cashier off and on in my life and in total for about a decade, and this just treats the customer as if they are in idiot. They very well could be one, but you should never TREAT them like one, or anyone in life for that matter. Would it really have been that hard to say “Even though it’s a giftcard, our system still treats it like an AmEx card, so we still won’t be able to take it…so stupid, right?” That one sentence not only explains the situation, provides an answer but it also shows sympathy with the customer and they’ll remember the conversation positively instead of “She just refused to take my card and never told me why!”
My Pops always lowered the seat after using the toilet. I guess that’s the way he was raised or perhaps it was out of deference for the four girls he raised. I always thought it was a bit of wasted energy on his part. I’m perfectly capable lowering it myself, after all. Not that we discussed the matter.
The Big Crow, who is of the same generation as Pops, never lowers the seat. Needless to say, I’m perfectly fine with that. However, there were a couple of times at the beginning of our cohabitation that I forgot to check the position of the seat before sitting. The cuss words I uttered were directed at me rather than the Big Crow.
We moved from Michigan to Washington when I was very young. We grew up saying “carmel.” Some time in the last five or ten years I started saying “caramel” for no particular reason I can think of, other than that’s always the way they say it on TV. Said it that way in front of my sister a few times. I think if she were posting here, she’d list me saying “caramel” as one of her peeves.
Every time the Big Crow sneezes one of his wimpy sneezes I think of my Pops. He had a sneeze you could hear not only from one end of our house to the other but probably from one end of neighbor’s house to the other, as well.
This month marks four years since Pops died and that sneeze is one of the things I miss most.
I have always known those center lanes to be used as Roderick Femm describes. I have lived in Illinois, Georgia, California, and now Texas, and have seen them used this way in all those places. And never have I heard them called “suicide lanes”; nor do they seem particularly suicidal. What is it that makes this so scary to you, Balthisar?
In California, “suicide lane” is pretty common usage. It’s just a jokey thing though, and I’m rather bemused at how frickin’ terrified Balthisar seems to be about the entire concept of middle turn lanes being used both as the origin point AND terminus of a left turn. Maybe in southeast Michigan it’s not common to have roads that are two or three lanes in each direction with 45mph speed limits and a fair amount of traffic that pretty much insures that a left turn out of a parking lot will be something that could only be accomplished once in a blue moon if that middle turn lane wasn’t there to allow the maneuver to be broken down into two stages rather than trying to set it up in one.
Hence my irritation at people sitting in the exit to the parking lot for twenty minutes trying to line up all five lanes of traffic such that they have a completely unchallenging left turn out into the traffic lane without using the middle turn lane for its intended purpose. They are holding up those behind them for no good reason other than their own unwarranted terror at dealing with a normal traffic pattern. Anyone that ill equipped to deal with traffic ought to either take public transportation or a taxi, or at the very least acquaint themselves with the old adage that “two wrongs don’t make a right, but three rights make a left” and do that for a while until they get better at this whole driving thing.
Nope. I live in Southeast Michigan and people use left turn lanes as acceleration lanes all the time. I don’t think it’s a great idea. It very obviously increases the risk of accidents in certain contexts. But it sometimes just can’t be helped and is certainly not unusual. I do it when it makes sense to do so.
Thing is, in Oregon you don’t get to use the middle turn lane as an “acceleration lane.” You turn left out of the perpendicular street, get into the middle lane and then you stop until you have a clear lane to then get out into traffic, which completes the left turn. So you’ve gone from a left turn across traffic to a righthand merge into traffic. Now, this is not to say that sometimes people do use it more as an acceleration lane, but that will get you a ticket–not the left turn into the lane, it’s the travelling that’s the no-no.
You’re also not allowed to veer into the middle lane in order to go around someone parallel parking or who’s double parked and blocking your lane, although that’s done pretty regularly. It can still get you a ticket.
What cracks me up is that in Oregon, according to the law you’re required to signal a lane change or turn for a minimum of 100 feet before making the lane change or turn. I could point out literally hundreds of left turn lanes that are less than 100 feet long, and if there’s already a car in the lane it’s actually impossible to be legal about doing your 100 feet of signalling before you make the left, unless you first get into the middle lane that becomes a left turn lane and travel in it in order to fulfill your 100 foot obligation to signal. You want to talk about your Catch-22s?
Thank you. I work as a store cashier because I went through a very bad time in my life and a part-time temporary cashier job was the only job I could get. Five years later, I’m still there, working full time.
Just to clarify: It’s part of the higher up job descriptions to show up whenever there is anything going on that looks out of place. They get paid to do this. I’ve had to deal with some crazies, and we even have a loud speaker code for “get your ass here NOW cause I’m dealing with a total lunatic.”
In conjunction with this: turn signals are a thread unto themselves. As we all know, there are untold millions of idiots who don’t signal. However, there are millions more who use them incorrectly, in a way I can sum up in the following sentence:
Use turn signals to show your intent, not what you’re in the middle of doing.
Seriously, what’s the point of signaling a lane change while in the middle of changing lanes? I can see that you’re changing lanes, your signal adds nothing to the interaction. You need to start signalling before you start moving over, or it’s pointless.
Because a lot of times, turning on your signal causes morons to speed up so you can’t change lanes. Turning on the blinker while you are moving over shows people that yes, you are moving over, instead of just, say, swerving or whatever.
They’re legally required to do it. It ain’t their fault, blame the gov’ment.
I have a coworker who always tucks in his shirt, but he doesn’t wear a belt. For some reason that drives me insane. His pants aren’t falling down, and he looks perfectly fine, it’s just, I mean, who doesn’t wear a belt all the time?
I’m not sure I buy this. I see the “cookies” message on many commercial and forum sites, not just government sites.
If it’s required, then why isn’t the SDMB site also telling me all about cookies?
