* Maxabella loves...: The tortoise and the conveyor belt

My worst nightmare is a slow check-out chick. There is this one lady at the supermarket I shop at that I avoid at all costs. I don't know how she manages to be three times slower on the scanner than any other checkout chick, but my god the woman is a tortoise. Every now and then I get her. They'll get me by doing a sudden staff change when I'm next in line in the queue. So, there I am, lined up to get in with the super-fast scanner guy (there is this one guy who scans your stuff so quickly you would swear he was part of the conveyor belt) and all of a sudden, I'm staring at the tortoise. "Hey, where did Conveyor Belt guy go?" I protest. "He's on a break," says Tortoise. "He left really quickly." So, there's the slow scan, but there's also a lot of bag shuffling going on with her. She's one of those operators who uses a two bag system. As soon as you see the Two Bag System being utilised for packing, you should abandon that checkout immediately. They hum and har about which bag the item should go into. "Well, I put the eggs and the cereal that bag and then the bag of spinach in the other bag so where is the milk going to go? Wait a minute, if I take the spinach out of here and put it in with the eggs and the cereal then I can start a new bag with the milk. Right, yes, I'll do that but then what can go in with the spinach and the eggs? So if I..." By this stage I've read an entire Better Homes and Gardens and I'm well into the New Idea. Then there's the issue of sections. See, in the scenario above I would have leapt across the conveyor belt and snatched that spinach right back. See, I've neatly lined up my groceries in sections on the belt so all she has to do is scan in sections, pack in sections so I can unpack in sections and we can all get on with our lives. What does she think she's doing, mixing up the 'vege' with the 'dairy/egg' section? Next thing you know she'll have 'items other than food' going in with the 'condiments slash baking slash other pantry stores' items. My god, what is her problem? Doesn't she wonder why the conveyor belt is so darn organised? Lady, if I wanted my ice cream packed in with my toilet cleaner, I wouldn't have spent the last ten minutes creating a five centimetre gap on the conveyor belt between them. See the gap? See it? The gap means it's a bag change. How hard can it be? But the worst thing is... oh I can hardly write it... the worst things is when you do the whole EFTPOS thing and there is a pause and they say "do you have Flybuys/ A woolies card / any other stupid loyalty card initiative that is really just a front for finding out as much shit as they possibly can about you so that next time you shop you buy twenty items you don't need rather than the ten you usually buy?' Well, do you? If I had a card, I would have used the card. I don't need you to remind me every single time I shop that I'm in Coolies and Coolies have a card. Why is the card part of the whole EFTPOS thing anyway? You can't do a simple shop and get away without hearing about the store card. Interestingly enough, in the 20 years since loyalty programs were introduced to Australia (twenty, really), I have been asked approximately 486,961 times if I have a card yet not a single time have I been shown how to get one (should I wish, which I don't, but just in case)... you have to wonder who dreamed up that genius marketing program. "Hey, I know, let's ask if they have FlyTrys every time they purchase!" "Oh, that's good! Better yet, let's make it compulsory for every staff member of Coolies to ask if they have one! It'll be like saying hello and goodbye, only better. Do you have a FlyTrys card? And they'll say 'yes' or they'll say 'no'... won't make a difference either way." "Yes, but let's really piss people off by never revealing what a FlyTrys card does or even where you can get one." "Done! It'll be the biggest laugh in the history of marketing. I'm laughing already it's that good." Love their work. They are slowly killing me every time I shop. Really, really, really slowly killing me, section by bleeding section. What's your pet peeve at the supermarket checkout?  [Image of shopper with dead eyes found on weheartit. Please let me know if it's yours as in addition to crediting your work, I would like to swap stories about what supermarkets do to your brain.]

puts the internet to work for you. via task 505569