In article , J G Miller wrote:
(An aside:Much the same is true of self-service checkouts in
supermarkets. In principle, I think that they're a great idea.

Yes, replace several normal checkouts with self service checkouts
and one can "let go" a number of now redundant checkout operators.

Bigger bonus for senior management and a bigger profit for the
stockholders.

You know it makes sense!

Yes, and a lower human presence resulting in more theft/vandalism,
resulting in the need to employ more security thugs, all helping to
make shopping a more friendly and enjoyable experience.

Rod.
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On Friday, April 8th, 2011 at 09:35:05h +0100, Roderick Stewart wrote:

Yes, and a lower human presence resulting in more theft/vandalism,
resulting in the need to employ more security thugs, all helping to make
shopping a more friendly and enjoyable experience.

The scariest shopping experience I had was in a supermarket just before
closing time on the eve of Christmas, when reaching the checkouts noticed
that there was a police man with a machine gun walking up and down on
the other side.

On Thu, 7 Apr 2011 19:16:46 +0000 (UTC), J G Miller
wrote:

On Thursday, April 7th, 2011 at 17:31:11h +0100, Peter wrote:

(An aside:Much the same is true of self-service checkouts in
supermarkets. In principle, I think that they're a great idea.

Yes, replace several normal checkouts with self service checkouts
and one can "let go" a number of now redundant checkout operators.

Bigger bonus for senior management and a bigger profit for the
stockholders.

You know it makes sense!

The Safeway/Morrisons where we used to live had an effective system,
you carried a bar code reader and scanned what you bought, then
plugged it into a stand and inserted your card to pay.

Here (Co-Op) they have bloody annoying things which chorus

"please place the item in the bag" and fall over with monotonous
regularity.

The other big difference is that there the staff were thick and
unpleasant. Here I actually *prefer* the checkout cos I get to have a
chat and know most of the staff by name

Albert Ross wrote:

The other big difference is that there the staff were thick and
unpleasant. Here I actually *prefer* the checkout cos I get to have a
chat and know most of the staff by name

There's a bloke who works in the car park at one of the hospitals we
visit, and as soon as I saw him I thought, "He's not a natural car park
attendant." He was obviously of a much higher calibre. His bearing and
physical presence were quite wrong for such a person. He was neat and
tidy without being ostentatious, and he wore his uniform gracefully,
rather like Sgt Wilson in Dad's Army. He had no visible tattoos, no
crafty fag pushed in his top pocket, he was not given to ostentatious
scratching of his groin or rectum, and his eyes pointed in the same
direction as each other. When he walked about it was for some rational
and discernible purpose, and in his conversations with the public he was
helpful and courteous (thus breaking the main rule of his profession I
suppose) and was not restricted to grunts and hand gestures, even using
polysyllabic words and compound sentences occasionally. He obviously
took no pleasure in frustrating the desires of people to park in silly
places, which really set him aside from the usual sort of chap, who as
we all know was bullied at school and sexually abused by his step-father
and now has an occupation that lets him get his revenge on the world.

One day when I'm loitering in the car park waiting for madam to emerge
having been blasted with ionising radiation I'll make conversation with
this fellow. I'm sure he must have an interesting story to tell.

Bill

On Sat, 09 Apr 2011 13:53:45 +0100, Bill Wright
wrote:

Albert Ross wrote:

The other big difference is that there the staff were thick and
unpleasant. Here I actually *prefer* the checkout cos I get to have a
chat and know most of the staff by name

There's a bloke who works in the car park at one of the hospitals we
visit, and as soon as I saw him I thought, "He's not a natural car park
attendant." He was obviously of a much higher calibre. His bearing and
physical presence were quite wrong for such a person. He was neat and
tidy without being ostentatious, and he wore his uniform gracefully,
rather like Sgt Wilson in Dad's Army. He had no visible tattoos, no
crafty fag pushed in his top pocket, he was not given to ostentatious
scratching of his groin or rectum, and his eyes pointed in the same
direction as each other. When he walked about it was for some rational
and discernible purpose, and in his conversations with the public he was
helpful and courteous (thus breaking the main rule of his profession I
suppose) and was not restricted to grunts and hand gestures, even using
polysyllabic words and compound sentences occasionally. He obviously
took no pleasure in frustrating the desires of people to park in silly
places, which really set him aside from the usual sort of chap, who as
we all know was bullied at school and sexually abused by his step-father
and now has an occupation that lets him get his revenge on the world.

One day when I'm loitering in the car park waiting for madam to emerge
having been blasted with ionising radiation I'll make conversation with
this fellow. I'm sure he must have an interesting story to tell.

Yes that's something that really stood out from moving from Surrey to
Suffolk.

The population there could largely be divided into ignorant aggressive
yobs and arrogant aggressive snobs. Well not everyone obviously but
enough of them to make a significant difference.

There's much less of that here, and I've seldom met *anyone* who
wasn't interesting. In fact it is pointless to be in a hurry. Last
time I decided to go for an hour-long brisk walk it ended up taking
over two hours. I started out chatting to a neighbour, then met
another round the corner and went in to see what he'd been doing with
the garden. I stopped for a chat in every shop, bumped into a couple
of people I knew and chatted to a couple of other people I'd never met
before walking their dogs. On the way back I saw the people who sold
us this house, who now live the other end of the road, and dropped in
to see what they'd done to their new house, then just as I thought I
was close to my coffee I met *another* neighbour.

I can't recall when I last met someone who was not interesting or who
was attitude-ridden. Oh yes, the hospital we no longer go to, the
other hospital(s) are still staffed by humans.

A psychiatrist once wrote me up as "a rather odd person". If she came
here she'd want to section half the town and most of the population of
some of the villages. (She was too stupid to realise that my "mental"
symptoms were actually hypoglycemia attacks from the then undiagnosed
diabetes.)

I'd love to see how she reacted to The North, or South Wales, or,
well, anywhere outside of her comfort zone in the south east.