Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed
So we’re in the big Tesco in Hove this morning picking up a few bits. In the store, they have those cashier-free cashier desks that allow you to scan your own shopping, feed your money into the machine and leave without so much as clapping eyes on a member of staff. All very convenient. All very “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”
Except. Except. The computer system is of such glacial ponderousness, the bar code scanner is so temperamental, the touch screen that allows you to key in how many packets of lard and cans of budget lager you’re buying is so unsensitive, the “jolly” splosh! noise the machine makes when you scan an item is so ulcer inducing, that by the time I was feeding my twenty pound note into the machine – like trying to stuff a marshmallow into a test tube – I was on the verge of going Krakatoa. From soup to nuts the whole transaction took at least three times longer than if we’d gone to a human cashier and the stress it induced has probably shortened my life by considerably more.
And then realisation. Which didn’t help my temper. The machines aren’t there to make the customer’s shopping experience any more quicker, more easier, more pleasant or any less dispiriting or less soulless or less “In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep underground, the lunch queue jerked slowly forward“. They’re there so Tesco doesn’t have to employ so many drones with all the overheads that that entails. It’s about buying yet more fur-trimmed solid jade commodes for the corpulent amoral shysters at the top of the tree.
I’d be tempted to try and comfort the rest of us by saying they can’t take it all with them when they’re finally dragged screaming to the new and exciting circle of Hell that’s currently being built for them*. But in my darker moments I think that they’ve probably worked out a way to do it. I bet when the likes of the chairman of Tesco or Digby Jones or Tony Blair or Polly Toynbee are inducted into The Greater Good, right after they’ve had their HIV/AIDS and bird flu vaccinations and been measured up for their jetpacks, they’re shown the teleport technology – powered, literally, by the sweat of the lower classes – that will allow them to send their wealth into the afterlife.
I think the reason nothing works in this country – trains always late, government computer systems always vastly overdue lemons, our troops dangerously and criminally undersupplied in battle, and the rest of the fourth-largest-economy-in-the-world-my-arse incompetence – is that the cream of the scientific community have been commandeered for the likes of building said teleporter or making Blair’s hair just the right shade of Statesman Grey or making Digby Jones look just that little bit less smug (you should have seen him before the £600m was spent).
*The bastards have probably got a nice, fat, dripping slice of the PFI pillage being used to build it.
Posted on February 14th, 2006 at 12:50pm under ...In a brewery, Pooterism
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• 15 Comments |
What you don’t realise evidently is that with GP’s shortly to have rooms in Tesco’s that these terminals will be programmed…
As you slap your 24 cans of Extra Strength Carling on the desk it will speak out … hey here’s a guy who doesn’t care about his liver… 4 litres of milk Heh ? checked your cholesterol recently? …an appointment at Dr Patel’s has been made for you … attend next Thursday at … Packet of 12 Durex heh ? think you’ll get lucky heh ? … had an STI checkup recently ?
This message is brought to you by Dr Foster Data … by the way there were traces of cocaine on that note .. you really need help.
You don’t get it do you ?
By the way it’s beyond science to make Digby Jones less smug , or even look less smug … he’s a fucking accountant.
I find that they’re a little less annoying if you swipe your items through *slowly*, waiting for the friendly computer to finish talking inbetween each piece of shopping.
The annoying thing is the bagging mechanism. If you don’t want to use plastic bags (eg. if, like me, you have 50,632,526 of them cluttering up the space under your sink) you have to get ‘approval’ from somebody before you can proceed. That somebody is usually down the other end of the shop floor eating bacon-flavoured crisps.
The next step, obviously, is to centralise all of the “not using a bag” approvals by linking each terminal by CCTV to a central server. In Chennai.
I suffered the same fate when I thought I’d “jump the queue”. Oh no…
By far the best system I’ve seen is the one Safeway had about 6 years ago, where you get a scanner, and you use it to scan your shopping as you walk around. I think Waitrose has a similar concept.
Saracen: Yes, Waitrose do have the facility. But it does tend to be a bit of a gamble with a random spot-check at the end of your shopping that actually takes three times as long as your actual shopping trip.
Things to be avoided, parts 2 and 3. Firstly, The “QuickTicket” machine at train stations that should really be called “TicketsWithoutDealingWithRealPeople”. Unfortunately, they’re only marginally quick if the whole line of people in front of you knows exactly which virtual buttons to press. Otherwise you’re stuck waiting for the person in front of you (young, old, male, female, whatever) to navigate the badly-designed interface. Always go straight to queue for person with a little PDA thing who actually knows what they’re doing.
Secondly, I’ve noticed that things are faster if you pay with cash rather than sign^W enter your PIN in front of everyone. High-speed network connections being what they are, it takes a fair time to authenticate a card, ask a customer to type a number in, authenticate it again and print some stuff out. No bloody PINs with cash, and at least when the cashier’s sorting out change, everyone knows something’s happening. Maybe card machines should have a big flashing light so that everyone in the queue behind you knows you’re not just deliberately wasting their time.
Tesco’s is evil. It’s slowly taking over Cardiff and putting many good independent shops out of business.
I’ve been avoiding all supermarkets for nearly three months now – I’ve saved money and feel so much more better for it (although I appreciate it depends on the shops in your local area). Try giving up Tesco’s for a month and see how you do. It’s actually quite fun pottering round the local deli.
Try Waitrose
Here’s a thought. Why do so many things fail to live up to your expectations? Because things are generally a lot harder to do than you appreciate.
That’s what I call a hypothesis with great explanatory power.
And anyway, weren’t you complaining the other day about how mind bendingly dull most jobs are nowadays, and harking back to the lark about days of the dark satanic mills. Surely you should be pleased to see self-checkout techology relieving workers of their boredom?
Luis, I have a long, dull history in IT and control technology. Trust me, those Tesco machines are bobbins. It seems to me they use the same touchscreen technology as the new ticket machines at Brighton railway station that had the long queues of irate travllers missing their trains the other week. In whose interest are these machines installed?
I’m not that naive that running a railway or supplying an army is easy but I’d argue that one probably shouldn’t put a soldier on frontline duty if you’ve failed to supply him with body armour. How about proper accountability and financial penalties when farming out goverment computer projects? It ain’t rocket science. The Government should have the IT companies by the balls not vice versa.
On your “dark satanic mills” point, you are right – I’m attempting to have my cake and eat it. There’s a synthesis somewhere in here and I’ll find it in order to wriggle out of this one…
Errr, except I don’t think this is a case of technology relieving workers, since they’re not likely to go gambolling in a field of flowers with their P45…
Shouldn’t we be looking for ways tomake jobs better, rather than dropping people from the bad ones?
Sainsbury’s in Hove has the carry-with-you scanners… I’ve yet to try them yet, though, because I like talking to people!
It is an interesting point that Niels makes, though. When we reach and I, Robot era of automation, there will be few non-creative jobs left. That, I guess, would be the end of capitalist job markets and gamboling in fields will become the answer to filling people’s time…
Forgive my spelling in the last “and” before “I, Robot” was “an”…
Non-creative jobs are a fiction created by McDonalds executives.
Gavin, your I, Robot era would have either an awful lot of people who are ’something in Media, darling’ or an awful lot of people on welfare. I’m not sure which worries me more..
I feel there may be only one solution. Soylent Green.