'Tivo complains
Sep. 3rd, 2005 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoNo, not about New Orleans and Katrina, though that's pretty bad stuff. Everyone else has beat the subject to death already.
Not just about gasoline prices, though they are obviously wildly out of control. Stations here in Marengo actually went down 2 cents for the holiday weekend to $3.27 for unleaded, and $2.99 for diesel. Meanwhile, in Harvard (where I work and just 12 miles up the road, in the same taxing district) the same brands are now priced at $3.64 and $3.59 for unleaded, and $3.99 for diesel. Someone is gouging. There's no question.
But... I just got back from the supermarket, making my usual Saturday visit. Prices there were generally normal (so far) but as usual, the help is from outer space. For years now I've been complaining about teenage cashiers who don't know what food items are, except for frozen pizza and other convenience foods. Cashiers in most US locations now just have to scan bar codes in order to ring up purchases, which is fine except I watch the register tape because the computer is often programmed incorrectly. However, fresh vegetables and fruits don't have barcodes on them. They are sold either by weight or by count, and a numeric code must be input to identify the item on the scale. The register then calculates the correct(?) price. That's assuming that the correct numeric code was input. I generally try to go to the older women cashiers, because they know the difference between lettuce and cabbage, parsley and cilantro, and are both quicker and more accurate. Every time I am forced to let a teen of either gender ring up my order, I have to correct them constantly. Green cabbage at 29 cents a pound is emphatically NOT Boston lettuce at $2.09 a pound. Nor is it celery. And eggplants are not just big plums, even if they ARE purple. Today I had to make several corrections, fortunately catching them all before the total was rung out. This is a too-frequent occurrence. Surely it should be part of the training for the job to have new cashiers work with the produce manager until they know the names of the vegetables and fruits, since evidently these weird items are not part of their normal diets any more.
Then there are the baggers. Some markets let you bag your own purchases. The one here, however, prefers to do it for you. OK. They don't charge for the privilege, and they insist on carrying it out to your vehicle for you free of charge too. I take paper rather than plastic because I can recycle or reuse the paper and no one will take the plastic back. Paper comes from a renewable resource, plastic does not. However, it seems that they only teach baggers to fill plastic bags now. The shapeless plastic carriers do not lend themselves to organized packing, so they just toss stuff in randomly. Paper, however, can be filled efficiently so as to use fewer bags, putting heavy objects in the bottom and the bread and strawberries on top. Nope. They don't learn that any more. Some have a vague notion of the old practice of double bagging heavy items, only they can't tell what is heavy. Today the canned goods were put into single bags, which rip if handled carelessly. The lettuce and carrots were loaded into double bags, for no reason at all. Twice as many containers were used as were needed because of no idea how to load them effectively. This happens nearly every week. My brothers worked in supermarkets, and I know they were taught and actually made to practice loading bags efficiently. I guess it's a lost art.
I know, I sound like a geezer complaining about "kids today". And maybe I am. But at least I'm not out buying thousand dollar fashion shoes and having my critics dragged away by the bodyguards, or promising everyone that conditions in Louisiana are safe and under control when they aren't. I can't do anything about those things, so I'm complaining about this. ;P
Not just about gasoline prices, though they are obviously wildly out of control. Stations here in Marengo actually went down 2 cents for the holiday weekend to $3.27 for unleaded, and $2.99 for diesel. Meanwhile, in Harvard (where I work and just 12 miles up the road, in the same taxing district) the same brands are now priced at $3.64 and $3.59 for unleaded, and $3.99 for diesel. Someone is gouging. There's no question.
But... I just got back from the supermarket, making my usual Saturday visit. Prices there were generally normal (so far) but as usual, the help is from outer space. For years now I've been complaining about teenage cashiers who don't know what food items are, except for frozen pizza and other convenience foods. Cashiers in most US locations now just have to scan bar codes in order to ring up purchases, which is fine except I watch the register tape because the computer is often programmed incorrectly. However, fresh vegetables and fruits don't have barcodes on them. They are sold either by weight or by count, and a numeric code must be input to identify the item on the scale. The register then calculates the correct(?) price. That's assuming that the correct numeric code was input. I generally try to go to the older women cashiers, because they know the difference between lettuce and cabbage, parsley and cilantro, and are both quicker and more accurate. Every time I am forced to let a teen of either gender ring up my order, I have to correct them constantly. Green cabbage at 29 cents a pound is emphatically NOT Boston lettuce at $2.09 a pound. Nor is it celery. And eggplants are not just big plums, even if they ARE purple. Today I had to make several corrections, fortunately catching them all before the total was rung out. This is a too-frequent occurrence. Surely it should be part of the training for the job to have new cashiers work with the produce manager until they know the names of the vegetables and fruits, since evidently these weird items are not part of their normal diets any more.
Then there are the baggers. Some markets let you bag your own purchases. The one here, however, prefers to do it for you. OK. They don't charge for the privilege, and they insist on carrying it out to your vehicle for you free of charge too. I take paper rather than plastic because I can recycle or reuse the paper and no one will take the plastic back. Paper comes from a renewable resource, plastic does not. However, it seems that they only teach baggers to fill plastic bags now. The shapeless plastic carriers do not lend themselves to organized packing, so they just toss stuff in randomly. Paper, however, can be filled efficiently so as to use fewer bags, putting heavy objects in the bottom and the bread and strawberries on top. Nope. They don't learn that any more. Some have a vague notion of the old practice of double bagging heavy items, only they can't tell what is heavy. Today the canned goods were put into single bags, which rip if handled carelessly. The lettuce and carrots were loaded into double bags, for no reason at all. Twice as many containers were used as were needed because of no idea how to load them effectively. This happens nearly every week. My brothers worked in supermarkets, and I know they were taught and actually made to practice loading bags efficiently. I guess it's a lost art.
I know, I sound like a geezer complaining about "kids today". And maybe I am. But at least I'm not out buying thousand dollar fashion shoes and having my critics dragged away by the bodyguards, or promising everyone that conditions in Louisiana are safe and under control when they aren't. I can't do anything about those things, so I'm complaining about this. ;P
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-03 11:35 am (UTC)Then they stopped bagging goods and got rid of the greeters too, because people were complaining about being "harrassed on the premises".
(Eight months later, they fired most of their all-American management and replaced them with locals. Five years after that incident, they're still the only international branch to make losses and to never successfully penetrate the alien market.)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-04 10:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-03 07:30 pm (UTC)Though i definitely agree with you. We do have a few younger local kids working for us, and it seems like they just have no sense of responsibility. I think it's because so few people are raised on farms now, and the general ethic of society is "quantity not quality" and kids don't have to do any work until they're in their middle-teens, if not later. Now we have video games to keep our children occupied until they have to be kicked out of the house when they're out of school and they have no motivation to do anything but sit around all day.
As you may have noticed, i complain a lot too. But there's a lot to complain about! I'm only 22, granted, but I feel comfortable in saying that I have a much better grasp of responsibility than plenty of others around my age. I know it's got a lot to do with maturity, plain and simple... but seriously, it wasn't as bad a decade or two ago. (two decades being an assumption on my part... but yeah) I was lucky to have had my childhood just a few years before it became 'wrong' to discipline your children, and it became 'right' to let them vegetate in front of a screen 8 hours a day.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-03 09:14 pm (UTC)The thing that really bothers me is that young people are getting to be 16 or 17 years old without knowing a squash from a melon. What are they eating? It can't be healthy.
That and I miss the days (not so long ago, really) when the produce clerk weighed my vegetables in the produce department and marked the price on the paper bag. She was fun and entertaining, too, and full of good advice like "Oh, this peach isn't ripe, see the green here. It will never ripen up, it was picked too soon. Take this one instead." And by golly, she could tell a jicama from a sweet potato too.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-04 01:02 pm (UTC)what I dont understand is if your depends already come in prepackaged plastic,then whats the differance of just having the rest of it bagged in plastic too?
*nieghs and runs away*
no subject
Date: 2005-09-04 01:21 pm (UTC)Re: Back in my day...
Date: 2005-09-05 03:59 am (UTC)