I was in Tesco yesterday and the conveyor belt on the check out was broken. I know this coz there was an upside down plastic basket sitting on it, bearing a piece of paper w/ the legend CONVEYOR BELT NOT WORKING written on it.
Thing is, it didn’t slow the process of paying for our shopping down at all. If anything it might even have been faster! I mentioned this to the girl standing behind me in teh queue and she said “Yes, they should get rid of them and spend the money on having more check-outs!”
Give e.g.s of mechanical things that aren’t needed.....
Someone’s probably gonna say cars, aren’t they.
Were you in the big Tescos on the retail park, Mark? I saw that broken checkout yesterday too!
No, the Cowley Road one.
I am going to the big Tescos later this pm tho. It’s v near my work.
Having sat at a checkout with a broken conveyor a few times (front and/or back) I can assure you that they are very useful in the prevention of RSI and other types of wrist and elbow strain.
Last year I got an electric vegetable chopper for Christmas which I’ve never used because I have, like, A KNIFE!
Conveyor belts be breakin’ all over the place.
I suppose you could say that many mechanical things aren’t necessary, but they do make life easier, i.e. using a washing machine -vs- trampling laundry clean in a bath full of soapy water. (I have done this, btw).
television.
dildos.
depends how lonely you are Alex (on both counts).
You could improvise with a non-mechanical dildo easily enough, but a non-mehanical television would just be a cardboard box and a sock puppet.
That sounds much more fun CJ!
actually you have just found a use for all my socks with holes in!
I have enough of those for all of the BBC newsreaders and the complete cast of Hollyoaks.
You have wooden socks??
actually you have just found a use for all my socks with holes in!
I have enough of those for all of the BBC newsreaders and the complete cast of Hollyoaks.
You’re still talking about masturbation, right?
yeah, sounds great : can you make it plasma ?
as for dildos, yeah, mother nature has provided many vegetables that make electric dildos not necessary...
Wooden socks? Meet Mark C!
socks with holes may not be that convenient for masturbation. depends on the size of the holes, I guess...
guns!
(right on)
Hot air blowers in toilets. If you don’t want to have so much paper trash, why not use the rollable towel things instead?
Because they’re usually dirty and full of GERMS.
I love it how every one of the hand drying solutions makes itself out to be the most environmentally friendly. The last one of those hot air blowers I used actually had a picture of a tree on it and trunpeted its green credentials by saying it was saving trees and I thought “How about all the greenhouse gases relased by the electricity needed to *power* the dryer????”
Because they’re usually dirty and full of GERMS
name me one person who’s died or even GOT ILL thru using one, CJ!
Anna Nicole Smith
Because they’re usually dirty and full of GERMS.
Er, thec whole point of the rolling system is to provide you with a clean part of the towel. And they’re washed after the whole roll is used.
I see your point, but what’s to stop the pathogens and germs from climbing up the towel from the used bit to the clean bit, by osmosis*?
*actual usage of word meaning water being drawn from bit of something to another
no osmosis is across a membrane. you mean capilliary action.
think about the energy used to wash the roller-things, mark.
Some people (a) don’t wash their hands properly and (b) don’t roll the towel on to leave a clean dry bit when they’ve finished wiping their hands on it, so you sometimes have to touch yuckiness. I’ve seen some horrible stuff smeared on those roller towels before.
I was thinking of the towel itself as the membrane, Mark H.
Though maybe capillary action is more appropriate.
air blowers suck. rollable towels also suck. public toilets suck (putting my hand on public toilets’ door handles make me sick every time)
capillary action = def. more appropriate, you were saying it was going up the towel. Osmosis would assume it was water going thru it from one side to t’other and that the concn. of stuff was stronger on one side than t’other, coz rules of osmosis state that water always flows across a semi-permeable membrane from the less concentrated side.
holding it in until you get home sucks more, shurely?
There have been times when I was v grateful for there being a hot-air hand dryer at work. Back in my young free and single days I have been known to use them as hairdryers after having been out on an all-nighter and needing to wash my hair at work in the morning.
Well, osmosis is more appropriate if this is the case, because the germs are flowing through the membrane of the towel from the more highly concentrated germy dirty bit to the less germy clean bit.
That said, have you ever known anyone to actually get sick off using public toilets? Outside of, like, Quincy episodes?
well don’t a lot of them capitalise on that CJ by having a directional thingy?
No offense, but I think people who worry about germs in public toilets are being a bit overhygienic. I don’t think it’s common to catch any sort of disease from there.
(x-post)
except venereal disease, possibly....
they’re useful for drying your trousers after peeing all down your leg
Ok, I think we’ve gone a bit off subject !
public loos are disgusting, the end.
the trader joe’s in new york does not have conveyor belts, and there are always like 100 checkout lines open.
My new favorite retail experience is the self-checkout—no conveyors, no clerks, just swipe your card and follow the on-screen instructions. I especially love this at IKEA.
I’ve been trying to think of mechanical things I’d get rid of and can’t come up with any. I love mechanical things though; they are fascinating, I like to take them apart and see how they do what they do.
self-service is great, definitely. need thread on human beings that aren’t even necessary.
Power windows!
my step dad hates those self service checkouts haha. The amount of times I’ve heard his story about how he complained to the manager that he was forced to use one is hilarious. I think he boycotted Tesco after that.
Not as funny as him complaining to the manager in Morrisons for them stacking the frozen food too high in the freezers.
Self-service will suck until they start giving discounts for using them. I would just as soon let the professionals bag my groceries. They’re less likely to smush the bread than I am.
I like the conveyor belts. The stores I go to don’t have them, and you have to push your cart off to the cashier side and then wander back to the customer side. Then the cashier has to reach into the cart and get the items when I could’ve done that five minutes ago had there been a belt!
Skaggs-Albertsons have these cool lazy susans that you put your produce on, and the cashier can just spin ’em around at his or her own leisure.
I think an electric can-opener is more trouble than the manual kind.
“professionals”
“of, relating to, or characteristic of a profession”
i.e. It hasn’t been my profession to sack groceries since 1986.
Power windows are great when you need to open or close windows that aren’t on the driver’s door.
Oh, is that what “power windows” are? I thought it was some kind of computer application!
Power windows suck when you’ve just driven your car into the river.
Those automatic flushing toilets are no good either. Often the sensors are too sensitive and it ends up flushing repeatedly.
I hate self-service checkouts, and ranted to that effect somewhere on here quite recently.
I will totally rep for the hand dryers in Chinaskis in Glasgow, btw. They had some futuristic woohoo name like Excelerator or something, and the force would knock your hands to the ground if you were a weakling. They would be brilliant for when you needed to wash your hair in work after being a skanky stop-out.
Automated sanitary bins also rule.
(I could totally do with electric windows in my car on cold mornings as running windows up and down is the best condensation-clearer ever and it’s a pain in the arse to have to lean over and do it manually)
PP OTM about can openers.
I like self-checkout lines, but I’m a detail-oriented micromanaging egomaniac, convinced that I can do everything better than a Wal-Mart team member, even (especially) the bagging.
but when the machine starts shouting at you for taking one bag away and putting another one it and anything you want to buy that they don’t want you to buy without someone seeing you (e.g. making sure you’re old enough to buy a bottle of wine) means you can’t scan anything through until someone’s come and manually punched in a code to let you buy it.
Do you not just do your own bagging in America? Do you have to tip the baggers?
I’ve never tipped baggers, but I grew up in the Midwest where baggers are always full employees of the store and are usually high-school kids you know. It’s their job to bag your groceries, not a personal favor etc etc. Here in the city I try to bring my own tote bag to store and re-pack it myself? So have also never tipped anyone. That might make me an asshole but I didn’t realize until I saw recent Times article that it’s not unusual for baggers to be working for tips alone (tho it IS illegal, I think?).
xpost
some stores yes, but not most. When I worked at a grocery store we were told to refuse tips. I’ve never tipped a bagger but then I’ve never had them take them out to my car old lady-style.
re: no conveyor belt check-outs: i take items out of the basket so the cashier doesn’t have to b/c i’ve always thought you were supposed to do this, and have heard from friends who’ve worked as cashiers that reaching into baskets to get stuff does in fact create wrist pain due to repetitive motion of it all. perhaps they are just whining, but on the other hand, working as a grocery store cashier can really really suck.
instead of conveyor belts there should be a robotic arm that takes everything out of the basket and scans the items and the cashier can just, like, update you on the weather and what’s going on in celeb news.
I always take items out of basket. May be a holdover from childhood of giant metal shopping carts with the extra rack underneath for massive 20 lb boxes of laundry detergent, which the cashier cannot reach into. Plus you put the heaviest/least smushable items first, and the eggs and bread and veg last so they go on top or in own bag. There are right & proper ways to do everything!
I wouldn’t even mind doing that, but at the grocery stores I go to, the checkout path forks at the register with the cart going to the left and the customer going to the right.
Alisa alludes to something else I hate about self-service checkouts: PLEASE PLACE ITEM IN BAG when said item is a 20lb bag of dogfood. Or when I’m using self-serve for the “speediness” of it all, and it insists on me placing my purchased inkpen into its own bag.
I’ve never tipped baggers though like Sam, I’ve never had anyone carry my groceries for me out to the parking lot. When I was in Mexico, I was shocked to see children bagging the groceries and yes, you were obliged to tip them. When I asked my hosts how the grocery store got around child labor laws, he told me that they weren’t really employed by the store; they were paid solely by tips.
did they also try to sell you chiclet?
That happened more at the bus stop.
I was kidding about the tipping thing.
My rant, from other thread:
You know what computery thing I really hate? The self-service scanner checkout in our local Tesco. Scan something, it tells you to put the item in a bag, you put it in a bag, its stupid fucking voice goes “unexpected item in bagging area” really loudly, then you remove the (surely expected, since you’ve just scanned it) item and it goes off on one at you for not scanning it and placing it in a bag, even though you did that and it shouted at you for doing so! Also, when your bag’s full and you take it away to start putting other stuff into a second carrier bag, it shouts at you for removing the bag, then starts again with its “unexpected item in bagging area” shite if you put it back. FUCK OFF, MACHINE. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO MAKE SHOPPING EASIER!
Grrrrrrr.
— ailsa_xx (ailsa.watso...) (webmail), February 12th, 2007 3:16 PM. (ailsa_xx) (link)
The Excelerator hand dryer is unbelievable. It makes your skin ripple like a fat guy getting shot with a cannonball. They have them in America as well.
...a non-mehanical television would just be a cardboard box and a sock puppet.
There’s a guy who does this kinda thing on Haight St. in the summer, but with a gutted TV and a bunch of puppets and props.
i always used to think a dishwashing machine was fairly useless idea, that was until recently. Now that i’m doing a helluva lot more cooking it seems half my day is taken up with washing more and endless amounts of dirty pans/plates/knives/trays/bowls/chopping-boards/...godpleasetellittostop.
Ah, but dishwashers scratch your glasses and cutlery and everything comes out tasting soapy and salty.
Not with the right dishwasher.