Grumpy Old Forumers

[Rhoda]

I know this isn't a new complaint, and I'd hate to drift into Jerry Seinfeld territory but self-serve machines in supermarkets are the most puzzling invention in recent years. For those unfamiliar with a self-serve (or self-scan) they are tills you can use to scan your own goods/groceries and remove all human interaction in the process. You don't get cashiers pretending to care about your day, and you don't have to endure awkward eye contact as the pretty girl who has had the job for all of eight weeks notices the alarming amount of cling film and baby oil you're buying twice a week.

 

Certain things puzzle me about them however. Essentially what is happening is I am doing a cashier's job for them. This means that whether I like it or not, I am contributing to the downfall of economy. This wouldn't be so bad if they existing cashiers are trained to maintain the machines as a job instead, but whenever these machines fail (which is often, and we'll get to that) they shuffle over with as much enthusiasm as an emaciated boxer. They then scratch their head raw before wiping all issues and starting things off from scratch. This also means if you were so inclined you could quite easily steal something with every visit. I have unknowingly walked away with a pack of Sharpie markers and a Red Bull without paying before, only realising when I get home. I would become so wracked with guilt I would write my suicide note with the Sharpie only to realise I couldn't hang myself because the aforementioned beverage has indeed given me wings, rendering physics useless.

 

Instead of training the redundant cashier staff, they're either fired or left to wander around the store looking lost, like a bored animal in captivity. They look like they belong there amongst the endless shelves of products, but they don't actually wind up interacting with much of it. Their eyes glaze over and their posture overcomes them, giving them the appearance of a question mark. We also see lines and lines of unused tills, gathering dust and pleading to be given an LCD screen so they have one last shot at relevancy in an age where it's important we buy our microwave dinner and kale smoothies as quickly as possible, so we can scurry home and share what we've bought on social media. What's even funnier is I've recently seen these self-serve machines with small conveyor belts so you can further immerse yourself in the world of cashiers. They remind me of those tiny kitchen play-sets or a Wendy house. Everything is miniature and scaled down. The conveyer belt is utterly useless because I could walk an extra foot closer towards the scanner. It's ridiculous.

 

My next gripe about these machines though? They never work. I live in the UK and now you have to remortgage your house if you want so much as a carrier bag to take your shopping to your car. I don't know if supermarkets expect me to carry the shopping on my head in a big basket but asking me if I want a bag is a bit of a redundant question. There's an option on these machines though that ask you if you're using your own bag. It does this so it can automatically detect the change in weight and it doesn't burst into tears when you add 0.03g to the weight of your first item. This never works. The machine throws a tantrum anyway and refuses to continue until some disinterested member of staff with a double digit IQ and a triple figure income budges along and makes everything better with a magic lanyard. I've also encountered the bizarre quirk where the machine will dutifully scold me because there's an "unexpected item in the bagging area". If I've just scanned the f*cking thing, it isn't that unexpected now, is it? Where else am I going to put it, back on the shelf?

 

I'm all for unnecessary human interaction and I support an easy life where possible but we are nowhere near at a level where we can comfortably remove humans from the experience of shopping.

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

^ On the flip side, at least shoplifting is easier. It varies by store, but if you mute or substantially lower the volume on the UI, then you can scan all sorts of items before selecting "I do not wish to bag this item". This is more risky as the attendant knows something is up when they don't hear the annoying beeps they have been conditioned to expect. So the preferred method is selecting the cheapest produce per pound (habaneros, bananas, cabbage, etc.) and then weighing chicken, filet mignon, salmon, or lamb instead. You will consistently realize >90% off discounts. It's best to operate with a friend who can either distract the attendant with a question or cause a scene with a

. Not saying I've done this....I have a tremendous amount of respect for multinationals ...but these things happen. Edited April 14, 2016 by Triple Vacuum Seal

[Sombra]

^ On the flip side, at least shoplifting is easier. It varies by store, but if you mute or substantially lower the volume on the UI, then you can scan all sorts of items before selecting "I do not wish to bag this item". This is more risky as the attendant knows something is up when they don't hear the annoying beeps they have been conditioned to expect. So the preferred method is selecting the cheapest produce per pound (habaneros, bananas, cabbage, etc.) and then weighing chicken, filet mignon, salmon, or lamb instead. You will consistently realize >90% off discounts. It's best to operate with a friend who can either distract the attendant with a question or cause a scene with a

. Not saying I've done this....I have a tremendous amount of respect for multinationals ...but these things happen.

 

shoplifting is piss easy even without self serve machines not that i'd advocate theft

 

f*ck self serve machines though you know what are the worst? f*cking Metro/train machines i swear to god the ones here will spit out money back to you until you scratch it on the machine a little and put it back in like every machine has scratch marks next to the money slot

 

its always when you're in a rush too since the trains pulling in and you could make it if the machine actually accepted the f*cking money

[Flachbau]

 

Asking about planning for my future in r/personalfinance

It's Reddit, why are your surprised? It's full of idiots. Always has been and always will be.

 

 

It's not all that bad.. just don't get involved with politics and you should be fine.

[make total destroy]

f*cking hangovers tbh

 

plz kill me

[mr quick]

 

 

Asking about planning for my future in r/personalfinance

It's Reddit, why are your surprised? It's full of idiots. Always has been and always will be.

 

 

It's not all that bad.. just don't get involved with politics and you should be fine.

 

nah, it's all that bad.

I got this screenshot which imo is the most reddit anything ever:

[dudclub55]

Making work organized - biggest mistake of my life.

Why is Sunday so far away?

It's your punishment for using Wifi over ethernet.

[Sombra]

I'd be more concerned about why there seems to be two internet explorer icons in the taskbar alongside a Firefox icon whilst running Chrome.

[Spaghetti Cat]

Great read Craig.

 

Had something similar happen to me today. Went to the grocery store for a couple quick dinner items and used one of the automated machines. Everything went as well as it could, you've described some of the problems, until it came time to pay. Normally I think you'd use a credit card, but this was just three items and I wanted to pay in cash. So you enter your bills into the slot (heh) kinda like the vending machines. So I entered in a $20 and expected some cash back. Waited. Waited. Waited some more. So I start looking around. Like you, nobody's around and I coulda just taken my buttermilk and bacon without paying, but now the damned machine has my money. Waiting still. The only people that I notice are in this customer service area (ironic) and they're preforming some menial task. Cutting something, coupons I think, for whatever reason. f*cking hell, where is my cash back? And just when I'm about to go and find a manager, or even just a flesh-and-blood humon, it spits out my change. It's Skynet I tells ya, they're taking over the world. Wake up sheep people!

[Gnocchi Flip Flops]

 

 

Asking about planning for my future in r/personalfinance

It's Reddit, why are your surprised? It's full of idiots. Always has been and always will be.

 

 

It's not all that bad.. just don't get involved with politics and you should be fine.

 

It's bad. I was an addict early last year but slowly I begun to hate the place. I don't know, a lot of it just felt like "trash" internet. Reading a bunch of mindless junk. Circlejerks, downvotes, people who think they know it all. Lengthy hard-to-believe stories. A lot of it just felt like I was reading the same junk over and over. And you have to post something "edgy" to get noticed or get upvoted. Otherwise you'll get downvoted.

 

I prefer more tight nit communities, regular forums, anyway. You know everybody and for the most part can have real discussions and there is no crappy vote system, karma or any of that.

[I was a Junk]

I tend to hang out in the smaller reddits like for specific video games. Generally cool places. I also hang out in r/vegan which I guess is fairly big though.

 

OT: really not a fan of the swim unit in school. Always very cold in the pool heh,

[Mister Kay]

I'd be more concerned about why there seems to be two internet explorer icons in the taskbar alongside a Firefox icon whilst running Chrome.

It's coz I have to speedily retrieve unit statements from various internet portals when client is sitting in front of me wanting to know his investment and insurance valuations. Some of the insurance and government portals only work properly on internet explorer, they don't render properly on Edge, Chrome or Firefox. We've also got several mutual fund agent codes so logging on to all of the distributor portals together is made possible by using chrome and its incognito window, Firefox and its private window and edge and its InPrivate window, for separate sessions lol

 

There are four laptops and three desktops in my office so we use a wifi router for networking. I didn't get why it got buckminsterfullerene concerned. Bdw I confess I've blocked buckminsterfullerene's sig because it used to make me wonder why I even came here and it was kinda NSFW like many other sigs n avatars on here. Gifs of f*cking rodents, who would have thought.

 

Ed: Oh it's the grump thread.

Ed2: Oh BMF has removed the sig already.

Edited April 15, 2016 by Mr.Monk

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

Reddit is kind of a circle jerk by design. The "front page of the internet" slogan is a pretentious euphemism for watered-down 4chan + yahoo news run through a millennial-friendly filter. Though the site is too large to be absolute sh*t (the AMAs can be good among other things), it comes off as lazy. The top articles are desperately sensational and oversimplified. Reddit definitely panders to the myth that one can be a well-informed subject matter expert while approaching research with the attention span of a duck. The typical Redditor just clicks and skims. f*cking dilettantes.

 

 

If you want quick information (especially for tech) minus the attitude, then Quora.com is better. The quick registration process is definitely worth it. You just have to subscribe to quality topics to see quality post.

Edited April 15, 2016 by Triple Vacuum Seal

[Gnocchi Flip Flops]

Meh I just stopped going to Reddit entirely. Made me stop hating the internet.

[drifter.]

I want to stop using Reddit,

 

Honesty , I'd feel like I'd still be dating this one girl had I been myself before I started taking relationship advice from redditors, or just have a better view and be better with women in general if I never signed up for Reddit..

 

but besides that, there's so much traffic that any thing I have a question on I can get an answer in a matter of minutes .

 

I tried Quora, and it was working out fine until they got more strict with guidelines for asking questions ( 300 character limits, questions need to be straight forward)

 

Like it's kinda really hard for me to ask a question about a specific situation or abstract concept with a 300 character limit.

 

But then I keep forgetting I have a front page on Reddit tailored towards me.

 

But honestly I'm slowly trying to work on not being on the internet so much. I heard it's bad for the mind..

Edited April 15, 2016 by drifter.

[Not A Nice Person]

had dinner out tonight, the bathroom was just uncanny, you know those barriers that divide the toilets so no one can see you taking a sht? yeah, those weren't even there. it was worse than having no toilet paper when i went to Carmine's (atleast in the disabled stall which made no sense since the bathroom was upstairs and the entire place is tight corners galore). I feel so bad for the man who's been holding in a 40 minute ache and has to worry more about the guy peeing right next to him, trying to avoid piss vapors (the urinal was directly next to one).

Edited April 15, 2016 by Sayuri

[Clem Fandango]

This also means if you were so inclined you could quite easily steal something with every visit. I have unknowingly walked away with a pack of Sharpie markers and a Red Bull without paying before, only realising when I get home. I would become so wracked with guilt I would write my suicide note with the Sharpie only to realise I couldn't hang myself because the aforementioned beverage has indeed given me wings, rendering physics useless.

lmao I just scan half my groceries, put the money in and walk away. It looks like you've done everything properly from a distance.

[Not A Nice Person]

my sister actually does that, i didn't notice till you mentioned it.

[Clem Fandango]

your sister is a very smart woman.

[Gnocchi Flip Flops]

My mom hates those machines, it makes me laugh every time. "Unexpected item in the bagging area" "I just rang the sh*t up" or "Do you want to bag this item" "I just bagged the sh*t" And then you have to wait but she just taps the bagging area to wake the thing up.

Edited April 15, 2016 by Scaglietti

[sreyazsec]

Am I the only who appreciates self service machines?? I only use them.

I'm incredibly grateful that they exist. Makes life so much easier.

 

OT - Hidden motives make me feel so bloody disturbed.

[AlienTwo]

Am I the only who appreciates self service machines?? I only use them.

I'm incredibly grateful that they exist. Makes life so much easier.

 

OT - Hidden motives make me feel so bloody disturbed.

I like them, for the same reasons as some of my crooked forum brothers/sisters who posted earlier.

 

Thievery.

[Sombra]

tfw gtaforums is a community of shoplifters

 

i like it

[AlienTwo]

tfw gtaforums is a community of shoplifters

 

i like it

For the record, I only steal from Wal-Mart.

[Sombra]

f*ck the corporations bro

 

same though

[unbid]

tfw gtaforums is a community of shoplifters

 

i like it

You should. Shoplifting is one of the basic human rights where you can get free stuffs without anyone notice.

[Clem Fandango]

It's them who are stealing from us, as I see it. "I own all the toilet paper roll pay me" get f*cked you fantasist.

[sreyazsec]

 

tfw gtaforums is a community of shoplifters

 

i like it

For the record, I only steal from Wal-Mart.

 

Can you even get anything of value in Wal-Mart? I went to one once, and remember nothing besides boxes of milk.

 

Boxes of milk.

[Gnocchi Flip Flops]

Am I the only who appreciates self service machines?? I only use them.

I'm incredibly grateful that they exist. Makes life so much easier.

 

OT - Hidden motives make me feel so bloody disturbed.

It's great when you need to run in real quick to get something without waiting for some dreary fat pink headed 30 yo to slowly ring your sh*t up. But traditional just feels better.

 

H-E-B doesn't do any of that crap. I guess they don't believe in it.

[Sombra]

 

 

tfw gtaforums is a community of shoplifters

 

i like it

For the record, I only steal from Wal-Mart.

 

Can you even get anything of value in Wal-Mart? I went to one once, and remember nothing besides boxes of milk.

 

Boxes of milk.

 

 

well Wal-Mart's just the US equivalent of ASDA so whatever you can get at ASDA you can probably get the equivalent there

 

used to steal mad amounts of spraypaint walking out of places with 20+ cans at a time.

 

good times