Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Supermarket Checkout Assistants

How come Supermarket Checkout staff are among the lowest paid workers in Britain,


yet whenever I try and use the self-service checkouts they seem to be the most fiendishly complex pieces of technology ever invented by mankind ??

"INCORRECT ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA !!!!!"
"REMOVE THE ITEM FROM THE BAGGING AREA !!!!!!"
"SET PHASERS ON STUN !!!!"
"DIE DIE DIE USELESS HUMANS!!!
"YOUR TIME ON EARTH IS NOW DONE!!"
" MAKE WAY FOR THE MACHINE MASTER RACE!!"

How hard can it be to operate a bar-code scanner. Well, now we know. Effing Hard.

Checkout operators??? Pahhh!

More like "I got bored of nuclear physics, and my hand-eye co-ordination is so un-naturally good the Chinese ping-pong team cited me for drug abuse" super-beings. These people aren't paid enough for the work they do, they are the elite of the entire workforce.

Why don't they ever smile? I though it was because they had spent all day engaged in a soul destroying menial repetitive task being paid peanuts, but in fact that dour, blank expression is clearly the outward manifestation of some zen-like form of hyper-concentration.

Please join me in committing never to plonk down a "next customer please" toblerone-style intra-shopping barrier with any lack of respect again.



(as a total aside, I cheekily snipped this picture from the Ireland-wide Supermarket website for "Super-Valu" supermarket. Great name anyway, but doesn't Brian Hurley - the manager in this photo - look like Andy from Little Britain ?)

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