Thursday, 3 September 2009
An Invaluable Public Service
From some superstition or scruple, I can never bring myself to use those automated self-service points in supermarkets, the ones that let you buy your stuff without running the many and various risks of interaction with a human being. Just now, however, idly looking around while I queued for a human in Marks & Spencers on Kensington High Street, I noticed that their self-service points offer instructions in the following languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Polish and, er, Welsh. Now, I'm no statistician, but I wouldn't mind betting that there's not a single Welsh monoglot in the Royal Borough, or the whole of London, or England (or, come to that, Wales - but,to quote Father Jack, 'that would be an ecumenical matter').
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Ah yes, I know those automated checkouts - they're the ones that require all the extra staff to help you use them.
ReplyDeleteyep, those self service aisles actually take twice as long as a normal one
ReplyDelete- I had perhaps naively thought the point of them was to speed up people through the tills
but silly me, it just means that the supermarkets don't have to hire as many staff. So they're happy to leave you queuing
I'm with on this one. I figure that if I'd wanted to work on a checkout, I'd have my right breast tattooed and my hair dyed blonde.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a whole year to get the hang of them and master buying ten itens without the computer having a meltdown, and now suddenly I have to start all over. As of last month, the grocery stores started charging a pittance for plastic bags in order to save the planet, so everyone now has large cloth ones. The trouble is that when you put the bag on the scale, the machine thinks you are making a purchase and tells you to take it off. Mortifying, especially if attractive ladies are watching. My wife came back the other day and told me exactly how to do it properly, but it sounded so complicated to me that I now just wait patiently reading The Origin of the Species in one of the very long human-cashier lines reserved for the technologically challenged, or as my son would say, the stupid. I don't really mind the extra time but, worrisomely, my Welsh is getting very rusty.
ReplyDeleteNige, I can't think of a better site than here to explore the absolute madness the computer has wrought on modern life, such as offering automated service in Welsh and convincing us we know what the climate will be like in forty years.
Self-checking works nicely at Waitrose;you get to stroll the aisles with a pistol-like scanner in your hand, pardner.
ReplyDeleteSo, from an automated checkout's point of view, you'd be an "unexpected item in bagging area" then.
ReplyDeleteHmmn, but no Gaelic for Scots or Irish folk? A conspiracy then. I'd guess you work only a couple of hundred yards from the Royal Borough's HQ. Why not give them a call? You might find a whole department just longing for even one call from the public not only about Welsh but about, say, Bhutanese or the lesser known dialects of the Matto Grosso.
Sorry to hear about your "timber moment". Ouch. My last one was literally on a banana skin. My, did I curse the absence of righteous verticality. Gravity can be surprisingly intense even from six feet. Imagine it from 36,000 feet! They'd have to call in Time Team to find you.
Oh no - a banana skin! I didn't think that was even possible - well done for keeping alive a grand comic tradition Mark. My most spectacular fall was caused by that tough plasticated stuff they tie bundles of newspapapers with - a length of it had formed into a figure-of-8 on the pavement and I unerringly stepped into it with both feet and was felled like a lassoo'd steer.
ReplyDeleteLike the rest of Lloegr, Llundain is only under temporary Saxon occupation, you know.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, there are more Welsh speakers there than in any place in Wales.
I've stayed well clear of the automated aisles since the time my father-in-law (70 odd)was pounced on by a whole militia of store detectives as he tried to steer a few bits through one of the poxy things in Morrisons. Police were threatened, despite the fact that he was wearing his clerical collar at the time. Turned out there was some problem with the machine but no such thing as an apology of course.
ReplyDeleteBy the by, did you ever come across the French colloquial expression for a checkout girl -- a beepeuse? Pretty cute, don't you think?
Yes beepeuse is brilliant! So unlike the French to have a pithier expression than ours.
ReplyDeleteAnd welcome aboard Sir Watkin - that's a classy byline pic you've got there...
I wouldn't mind betting that there's not a single Welsh monoglot in the Royal Borough, or the whole of London
ReplyDeleteAnd even if there is he can't afford Marks and Sparks...
Why thank you, Sir. 'Tis a fine likness methinks. (I have commented here occasionally, as the Welsh Jacobite - no picture then.)
ReplyDelete