Totally non-political rant here.... Express aisles in grocery stores should be based on age of costumer not just the number of items. A 70 year old with 4 items, 4 coupons and paying by - scoff - check takes far longer than a 35 year old with 20 items and an ATM card. So I propose that express aisles be changed from "10 items or less" to "25 items and 60 years old or less." If age discrimination is an issue we could accomplish the same goal buy making it "25 items or less, no coupons, ATM only."
Just a heads up for you all so that when I become dictator of the world you won't be taken by surprise.
10 comments:
In California, they've gone partway down that good road, Mr. Dictator :-) Most express aisles I know of are "cash only" lanes--although an ATM card usually counts as cash. Coupons, however, are usually still allowed.
They even have lanes with no cashiers at all now (scan your own items) although they do not work well in any event, and rarely work for fresh produce. And you can ask for help, which eventually will always be provided, but as you can imagine, the supermarket staff have little investment in making sure their robotic replacement lane is functioning properly or quickly.
Yes, they have the scan your own items aisles here too (they were actually test marketed in Ohio first). But the age thing hits them double. I've been stuck behind some old person squinting away at the screen and talking to themselves while they try to figure it out.
It works much better in California where the bulk of the customers and the checkers share a common language (Spanish). The rest of us do our best.
I think there should be an "Old People With Bad Hearing Who Love Fractious Toddlers and Harried Working Mothers Lane." I'd like to be fast, but I'm slow when I have to take Law Talking Baby and sick of getting the stinkeye from the local hipsters. This is why I do little grocery shopping.
-Seventh Sister
Everyone just needs to slow down and be more patient with each other. Speed is over rated and it is part of problem as a society.
Do you think we'd have credit default swaps if people had to actually fill out forms in triplicate?
"when I become dictator of the world"? Not if I get there first mate! :-)))
(mwoohahaha)
I'm with USWest - we all need to just chill out, life doesn't need to be lived at warp speed. I do shop at weird times though, because I hate being stuck in the 'rush hour' - it makes me grumpy, stressed and impatient, even though I'm normally perfectly happy and chilled when queueing (I am British after all - it's one of the things we do best, along with complaining, and brutally colonising innocent countries). So shopping tends to happen on a weekday morning at the market for fresh stuff (it's quieter, both in terms of number of people, and shouting from stallholders - still reasonably chaotic though), and weekend afternoons, sometimes weekday late evenings, for the supermarket.
Big W here (not a food shop, seems to sell everything else though), has the DIY checkout lanes where you scan all your stuff and then pay, they're usually a bit quicker, as only the younger tech-savvy types tend to brave them (plus Spotted H's mum, cos she finds it quicker. She's not a slow old person though). And Waitrose in the UK (high end food supermarket - where you buy food when someone else has offered to pay, guaranteed to have all the essentials like caviar and blinis) has had hand held scanners for at least six-seven years: only available for Waitrose store-card holders, i.e. people who've been credit checked and have an account there, you carry it around the store and scan everything as you go around. I'm not sure what happens at the final checkout - I think you hand the scanner to a staff member, they eyeball your trolley, and just do the charging bit, thus removing the whole time consuming scanning-everything stage.
Seventh Sister - yeah, having kids would be so much easier if you were a multi-millionaire with all the time in the world wouldn't it?! Not that I've ever experienced shopping with a child, not having any yet, but I've witnessed a fair few people tearing their hair out. I don't have the link to hand right now (at work and don't fancy googling for it), but there's a great ad, French I think, that I reckon you'd appreciate - a young-ish dad shopping with his about-five-yr old. Will try and remember to find it later...
When you become dictator, you'll be 62 and love those money-saving coupons. (And I second the self-scanners, which by and large resolve most delays here.)
Only peripherally related (though I think it might have come up on the blog before) -- who here, when they were 13 or so, felt they were perfectly qualified to vote? If so, have you done anything about that sentiment since you've turned 18? I admit I thought I'd be better than those grups and actually push for redefining "minors", but I've been woefully stereotypical.
At 13 I wasn't even thinking about voting. Possibly would've felt ready at 16, although equally I wouldn't've trusted a lot of my peers to do so. That's still true a lot of the time though...
Actually, I had a bit of a nonchalant approach to voting I must admit - when the ballot card reminders came through I would actually bother to turn up and vote (unlike a lot of people in the UK; optional voting), but I wasn't really keeping track of when elections were going to be. However, now that I'm in Australia, as a resident but not citizen, and thus not allowed to vote, I really want to! It could be because it's compulsory here, so all "Aussies" get to vote (a belonging thing), it could be that I'm actually getting quite passionate about certain topics now and want to express them with a vote, it could even be that voting here is kinda fun because you get these big forms and get to number candidates from first choice to about 80th, by picking the whackjobs first and giving them the high numbers. Could just be the sausage sizzles though.
When I was 13, I was already very much into politics and certainly felt I was ready to vote. I did not feel that way about most of the rest of my age-cohort. And with the country electing Ronald Reagan, I had serious misgivings about the adult population's ability to vote also.
Dear blogger
either you haven't been grocery shopping for a long time or have few acquaitances in pre-boomer age, if you take an octo or nanogenarian for a 70 years old.
People in their 60s and 70s now, especially big city dwellers, are adept at using credit and debit cards, computers, and -if they need them - also eyeglasses and hearing aids.
;-)
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