I just got back from the supermarket. I am overwhelmed by the quantity of pet peeves I encountered there.
It is a busy supermarket that seems to be selling thousands of dollars of groceries every ten minutes. Yet they have THREE registers open? And when the lines get 4 deep with full carts, they wait 5 minutes before finally opening a new one. Of course, instead of taking the next person in line, they usually just say, "This register is open" and some jerk in the back of the line jumps in.
The self checkouts are no help because the scanners are unreliable and the system constantly screws up and says, "Please place the item back in the cart and try again," or worse, "Help is on the way, please wait," for no reason at all.
Then the damn thing has to talk, and you cannot move the next item until it finishes.
"Please move your ... Jonah GOLD apple... to the bagging area. SAVINGS! 19 cents!" etc.
Anyhow, so I am in the checkout line and I have grabbed a box of Protein bars. They are a dollar each. I have no idea how many I grabbed but they fit neatly in the box. She sys, "15?" And I, seeing that the box says, "15 bars," say, "Yes, it seems so."
so she scans the box UPS and for some reason it comes out as 17.99, so I object. She then says, "I'll have to scan them one by one."
I said, "There is no button to hit quantity @ 15 and scan one?" She says, "no." Scanning them takes forever because the UPC is on a crinkled up part of the label, so after 6 she gets exasperated and presses ...... TA-DA! 11 @ 1.00 each! Exactly what she said she couldn't do just a minute or two ago.
But wait, that is 17 bars. I am confused. SO we count, and it is 17. The box says 15 but it holds 17. And why does the box say it holds 15 bars but scan as 17.99 if they are a dollar each?
Of course, it is rarely worth it to ever complain when you get overcharged at the store, because they have to call a manager over, get a key, do some stupid crap, and sometimes you still have to go see the manager. It makes it not worth your while.
When I got home, I discovered that in fact I did have 18 bars. If I had just shut up in the first place I would have paid exactly $1 per bar as I was supposed to.
Then they have a guy standing AT the door just inside the store, saying to EVERY customer as he walks in, "Would you like to donate a dollar to cancer research?" Holy fucking shit! Yes, of course I want to donate a fucking dollar to cancer research, who the hell would say no to that? Yet that is EXACTLY what the supermarket employee is forcing most people to do, because most people aren't going to. Not because they don't care, but because they are trying to get their food and probably prefer to donate to charities in other ways than being pressured by an employee when they walk into the supermarket.