In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
So what summed up 2009 for you was it the credit crunch, the death of Michael Jackson, the parliamentary expenses scandal, or something else?
For me 2009 can be summed up in 5 words, “Unexpected item in the bagging area”
Not since teenagers use of the word “like” 20 times in every conversation, ever has a phrase become so ubiquitous and annoying at the same time. I’m a 35-year-old male; I gave up working as a supermarket “checkout chick” when I was 18.
But now for some reason, I think it’s to do with the Large Hadron Collider I’ve been magically transported back in time and I’m now scanning my own shopping!
What the hell is going on? I don’t go into Starbucks and make my own coffee! I don’t get on the bus and drive it; and I have never picked my own strawberries!
I don’t even like it when a hairdresser uses clippers, I’m paying 30 quid for this haircut, I want you to use scissors!
I’m 35, I’ve got a degree, not only do I now have to carry my shopping in organically certified, fair-trade recycled hessian bags, I’ve got to scan it as well, perhaps you’d like me to a little stock rotation for you in my spare time?!
When did intelligent hard working people become checkout staff again? No offence to anyone who works in a supermarket, but checkout staff should be students or part time mothers or ex bankers, everyone else has no excuse.
I wouldn’t even mind but I’m useless at it. Every item takes at least 4 times to scan, I’ve tried numerous approaches, the fast glide, the slow glide, the plop down, and my personal favourite the roll over, nothing works! Most of the time I have to enter the handy 47-digit barcode or I have to wait for the young lady to come over and type in her top-secret password to get the scanner to work again
The lady in charge of these check outs inevitably ends up walking over to me and giving me the “Aahh bless, can’t use a simple infra red scanner” look. Its not my fault, I simply don’t have the wrists for it! What’s worse, her name badge asks, “How can I help”?
Well you could start by scanning my items!
It’s ridiculous. Not only do I have to scan my own shopping, I then have to sort it into the 4 colour coded bins when I’ve used it! Every week I recycle my rubbish, but for some reason the majority of drinks cartons cannot be made out of recyclable material. For crying out loud, there’s a black President of the USA, we have the technology to make Fern Britton thin, Gordon Brown has made the Tories popular, this is the future, surely it is not beyond the wit of man to create a recyclable drinks carton?
These self-service checkouts are apparently about good customer service? How?
How does spending 20 minutes scanning my 10 items (or Less) equal good customer service? I know I don’t have to even go to the supermarket I can do it all online, (and to be fair it’s brilliant) but that only works if the supermarkets have snowploughs to deliver the stuff!
So I don’t care how quick these self-flagellate checkouts are, I’m going to queue at a checkout with a real person, and talk about the weather, and their plans for the weekend. In my humble opinion, great customer service will always involve a person…
