macapinlac.com

Self service isn’t always faster

Cheryl and I were at Superstore a few days ago buying some Krazy glue (cause you can never have enough single packs of $2.99 Krazy glue). We had 1 item and should have been out of there in less than 5 hours and with minimal interaction. High emphasis of ’should have’ in that previous sentence.

We attempted to go to the self-service checkout line because we consider ourselves technically literate, smart people with the ability to figure out these self-serve checkout machines. In theory these machines are an excellent idea, however the idea dies quickly when implemented in real life. Why is that? Let me explain.

1. These machines are totally unusable and most people are idiots. The poor old lady that was trying to checkout a 3 gallon jug of mineral water kept triggering the alarm because the machine thought that she was trying to steal. When an alarm is trigged, a store representative comes and ‘helps’ by resetting the system and then the lady starts all over again. Why would you try to ring through a 3 gallon jug of water through a self-service checkout machine? How does a 120 lbs, 75+ years old woman effectively steal a 20lbs jug of water? Is this even physically possible?

2. People get too ambitious with it. One Asian family was attempting to ring through a month’s worth of food through. Seriously, isn’t it easier and faster to go through a cashier rather than do all of this yourself? Especially when you have to individually ring in each and every individual package of ramen instant noodles? It’s like watching a tiger eat a baby in slow motion.

3. That goth dude in the black trench coat carrying a ham. Ok, maybe this isn’t really a shot at the self-serve checkout but that dude was creepy! We saw him in the line up carrying the ham (which resembled a small pig and could feed a village in Africa). After, we saw him walking around the mall sans ham. Where did he hide the ham? Further proof that goth kids are (1) weird, (2) magical, (3) and enjoy ham.

4. 3 out of 5 working check out machines is an unacceptable ratio. Let’s do some math. There are 3 machines processing 1 transaction every 5 minutes. 1 out of 2 transactions will result in an alarm that requires resetting. There is a growth rate of 2 people per 5 minutes in the line up. That means that the line up of the self-serve checkout will engulf the world, kill all the trees, use up all of the natural gas and kick your puppy all within the next week. Al Gore should make a slide show.

5. In the line-up, personal space does not exist. The unspoken rule is apparently to get as humanly close to the person in front of you and kick your groceries along the floor while griping about how long it takes some people to ring through a 3 gallon jug of water. You also cannot bathe for 2 weeks prior.

At the end of it all, we decided to go to the regular cashier-powered line up and got out of there faster than people who were using the checkout machine. I hate awkward grocery store experiences. Got one to share?

9:59 am 1 Comment

What do I carry around with me?

So I carry around a messenger bag with a combination of stuff in it. I’m curious to hear what other people carry around with them. So to start things off, I thought I’d tell you guys (and gals) what I had in my bag. Don’t worry there isn’t anything nasty in there.

I don’t like heavy bag so I try to carry around a small amount of essentials.

A Moleskine sketch book - not because I like to draw (I consider stick figures and color-by-numbers renaissance art) but I like the paper and I use it for note taking. I tend to take a lot of notes so a small notebook like this works really well. It’s the perfect balance of size and portability. I also have a very specific and particular pen to use with this notebook. I think I might have a notebook and pen fetish.

A dot grid book - I’m working on a project that requires me to document EVERY SINGLE ITEM and action. So I bought me one of these so I can take my project specific notes and any sketches in it without cluttering up the regular Moleskine. So far it has worked really well since the dots tend to keep my writing in place while still offering the fluidness of a regular sketchbook. Did I mention that I’m a stickler for paper? This notebook has excellent paper.

My IBM X30 laptop - God, I love this laptop! It is the lightest. thing. ever. It gives me the ability to take my work around and when I have a longer amount of time at a wifi hotspot/coffee shop I whip it out (the laptop - get your minds out of the gutter) to do some document writing, coding or emailing. Whatever may fancy my interest at that time. My only complaint is that it doesn’t have a trackpad; it has a nubbin’ for the mouse control. Easily remedied by the wireless kensington mouse that I also carry around. Oh yea, it gets a bit hot. Hot enough to burn a laptop shaped patch of my leg hairs.

The IPhone - An mp3 player, a portable media player, a calendar and, of course, a phone. I carry my music and my audiobooks in it for times that I need to distract myself from work (or life). I carry around two movies: Intolerable Cruelty and Thank you for smoking. Two movies that I can just listen to as background because of the awesome dialog. So yea! Screw you Rogers! I already have one!

So how about you? What do you carry inside your bag?

6:08 am 3 Comments

Insomnia

I’m obviously still struggling to fight this insomnia. I can’t believe that I started this day at 4:30am and I’m still awake at 1:30am (the next day). Warm milk doesn’t work with me because my body doesn’t tolerate lactose. Sleeping pills are a pain and generally have worse effects on me the next day.

I suppose I could just lay off the insane amounts of caffeine but that just wouldn’t be as fun. What do you people do to combat insomnia?

ps. I’m trying put the whole Google Ad thingy.

2:42 am 3 Comments