Self-Serve Checkouts

The self-serve checkout. I don't get it. Why do they seem to be springing up almost everywhere, and why do people use them? Well, aside from the initial thrill of trying something new, that is. In my experience they do not save time, and the combination of self-scanning and self-bagging means you're doing far more work than you'd be doing normally. I would rather spend an extra minute standing there waiting my turn, and let the person who's being paid to do the scanning and bagging* do all the work. Usually, the only reason I will use one is if there's one empty, there's already several people at the open staffed checkouts and I'm only getting a couple items, but it's a choice I often regret.

Scanning my items is such a slow process. First, I scan one item, then it waits for me to place it in a bag, or at least in the bagging area. Then I have to wait for it to tell me to go ahead and scan the next item. In the time it takes for me to scan my items, I could have already finished paying if I were at a regular checkout. And another reason it takes so long is that I usually have to take the time to look at the item to find where the barcode is to make sure I scan the right part. The professional cashiers do this for a living, so they seem to always know exactly where to scan right away, or at least have mastered the knack of finding the barcode so fast it doesn't really slow things down.

And heaven forbid I should remove anything or set anything else in the bagging area during the process. When I tried the new self-serve checkouts at one store, I took my cloth bag I brought from home out of my pocket and set it down in the bagging area. Makes sense, doesn't it? Put a bag in the place you're going to be using it? But, no, the machine complained about an unexpected object and wouldn't continue until I removed it, and a staff member also came over to see if I was having problems using the checkout. And if I'm just getting one item and don't need a bag, I have to either set it down in the bagging area anyway, or specifically press a button to tell it I'm not going to bag the item.

And then, some scanners are just plain hard to use. During one of my Ikea shopping trips, I noticed that they had new self-checkouts. Since there were fairly long lines for the other checkouts, I thought I'd try it out. At Ikea, they use hand-held scanners because many of the items being purchased there are large, bulky, and/or heavy and impossible to lift up to a stationary scanner. But just as impossible for me, was holding the scanner just right and at the right distance to correctly scan my items. I actually had to get help from one of the staff and even with guidance it still took several tries for me to successfully scan one of the items.

Here's the weird thing. You'd expect that the stores would give some sort of discount to the customer (even if it was just 0.5%), since the customer is the one doing all the work. Plus, the store also saves money with these machines because they only need one staff member overseeing the whole bank of checkouts, rather than one person per checkout.

But maybe self-serve checkouts are just a passing fad, and within the next few years they'll disappear? That actually happened at the local Walmart. They put in a whole bunch of self-serve checkouts, and they took them all away less than a year later. So who knows? I just hope things don't continue down this path and stores start going completely self-serve, or at least not until they find a way to significantly improve the experience.

* I never quite understand why the cashiers don't bag groceries at the Real Canadian Superstore. They could say that it's a cost saving measure and they're passing the savings along to you through their lower prices, but I don't buy that. Even Walmart doesn't make you bag your own stuff. Heck, dollar store cashiers even bag things for you and they're the epitome of cheapness.

New Calendar Time!

Well it's getting close to the end of January, so I figured it was time to finally buy a 2011 calendar. I got a nice, big one with great photographs from the Canadian Rockies, for only $4. I was really tempted by one with hamsters or another, titled The Cutest Kittens in the World, both of which were only $2.50 each, but when it comes to wall calendars I prefer nature scenery.

To be honest, I don't understand why so many people buy their calendars early, while they're still full price. Unless it's your first year ever purchasing a calendar, you have to know that the longer you wait, the cheaper they get. Even back in the last couple weeks of December, they were already starting to be marked down 50%. Now, most places have them down to 75% off or even more.

Maybe most people are just more picky than I am? I guess if you absolutely had to have that calendar with pictures of your favourite movie star, shots from a TV show or works by your favourite artist, you'd need to act before it was all sold out. But a lot of people just go to the calendar rack and browse the available selection for one with nice pictures that they like, and buy it.

Some years, I didn't even have to buy a calendar as I got a great one from one of the vendors I deal with for work. But I haven't ordered anything from them in several months so there was no shipment in which to include a calendar, so I didn't get one this year. And another vendor which sends us their calendar yearly, only makes desk calendars which I don't care for. My desk is cluttered enough already, without a calendar taking up space on it. Wall calendars hang up nicely out of the way. Plus, the pictures are considerably bigger.

The downside of waiting this long is that I will only get to see this great picture of Mount Robson for a week or so (depending on when in February I remember to flip the page). But there are still 11 more amazing photos to look at throughout the year, and I'll get to see December's one for at least a month and a half. Because you know I won't get around to replacing it until mid to late January 2012...

Stir Fry

I'm not that big a cooking fan, but every so often I like to experiment. Usually, that takes the form of a big slow cooker full of chili. I have never used a recipe to make chili, and it has never been the same twice. And then there's pizza. I always have fun making pizza. Tonight, however, I thought I'd try my hand at making some sort of stir fry.

In my skillet I cooked up some zucchini, red and green peppers, and some tofu that was leftover from when I made my last batch of miso soup, and I needed to use it up soon. Then I added a sauce I threw together using plum sauce and the last of my miso paste. Finally, I thought I'd add a packet of Chinese noodles. You know the kind—the ones that come in the little packages that only cost 25¢. And when it was done (or I thought it was done—I'm not even sure if the way I cooked it actually counted as a stir fry), it looked great. But did it taste great? No.

Well, it wasn't exactly that the taste was bad, but it just felt weird once it started gathering in my stomach. I'm not sure what the problem was. Separately, before cooking, all the ingredients tasted good. Well, except for the tofu, which has no taste at all. But together, it really didn't work well at all. I'm thinking it might have been my sauce. Perhaps I should have just left it out and let all the natural vegetable flavours stand alone. Or used straight plum sauce, without the miso paste. I've tried something else before where I mixed miso paste and sweet & sour sauce and that worked great, so maybe there's something in the plum sauce that caused a weird reaction with the miso paste. It couldn't have been that it was undercooked, since all of the ingredients can be eaten raw with no adverse effect.

But in any case, maybe stir fries just aren't really my thing. I do have childhood memories of being disappointed whenever my mom made a stir fry for dinner, so I'm not sure why I even attempted it. Or perhaps next time I should, you know, actually follow a recipe. There's enough left for two more meals, but I think I'm just going to toss the rest. I don't like wasting food, but at least all the ingredients only cost me $3 tops, so I don't feel too bad about doing so. And to make up for tonight's dinner I'll definitely have to cook a pizza tomorrow.

Cleanest Shop in BC

As I drive around town, a particular tattoo parlour has caught my eye a few times. The reason is that, in addition to their other selling points listed, their sign outside advertises them as being the cleanest shop in BC.

I already have absolutely no desire to get a tattoo. Even if you offered to pay me I would still refuse (well, unless it was a very large sum of money, and it would need to be a very small tattoo somewhere like my ankle). And seeing a sign like that reduces that desire even further, if that was even possible. I mean, what kind of places advertise how clean they are? That's pretty pathetic if one of their drawing points is that they're clean.

I'm not saying it's not a good thing that this tattoo parlour is clean, just that it reflects poorly on the industry as a whole when being clean is advertised as a benefit of this particular shop. Imagine if restaurants put signs outside saying, “Eat here. Our kitchen is clean!” Or butcher shops advertising, “Our butchers still have all their fingers!”

A GPS is Only as Good as its Maps

Or, You Get What You Pay For

Last week I tried out the Mapquest iPhone app. I'm a Google Maps man myself, but I heard that Mapquest had something Google didn't—turn-by-turn voice navigation. Plus, it's a free app. So, I figured I'd try it out, since turn-by-turn navigation would be a nice thing to have.

For the fun of it, I thought I'd let it tell me how to get to work the next morning. Of course, the map produced showed it was going to send me down the route I thought it would suggest, so I thought I'd throw a curveball at it and deliberately take a different route. Incidentally, this other route is the way I normally have been taking anyway, lately. After 8 years of taking the same route it's nice to have a change in scenery.

As anticipated, when I took the turn that it wasn't expecting I heard the words “Recalculating route...” come out of my car's speakers. But I was a little disappointed when I got to the place I needed to turn to get to the office, at South Fraser and Progressive, and it did not tell me I needed to turn there. In fact, after turning it proceeded to tell me I needed to make a U-turn. That was completely unexpected, since the office was only a few blocks up the road. I pulled over and checked its map to see where it was trying to tell me to go, and noticed that the street I was on apparently didn't exist.

Mapquest on the left, Google Maps on the right

Mapquest's map is curious for two reasons. First of all, the little bit at the end of Progressive way where it connects with South Fraser Way has been like that for quite a while. I don't know when they finally paved that, but I've been driving on that stretch since last April. Surely Mapquest could have updated their map since then.  Secondly, and even more puzzling, is the part of Progressive Way where it curves north. According to Mapquest, the street just comes to an end. But the road has been going through for quite a few years! Yet the map does correctly show the roundabout on Mt. Lehman Road and redirected South Fraser Way which was only done within the last couple years.

I'm really wondering where Mapquest gets their map data from. If they can't even get a street right that I travel down every day, it makes me wonder how many other streets they have wrong. The promise of a free GPS app with turn-by-turn navigation was nice, but I guess it was too good to be true. It looks like I'll be sticking with good old Google Maps for now and memorizing the route before leaving.

Two _____ Are Better Than One

There's an old saying, “Two heads are better than one.” You know, that's true of most things. Except perhaps rabid Rottweilers in my apartment. I'd rather not have any rabid Rottweilers in my apartment, let alone two of them!

But one idea I heard about a few years ago recently returned to me. Two dishwashers. That's definitely a good idea! The thought being, you would put all your dishes into Dishwasher A to be washed. When that's done, leave them in the dishwasher. When you need a dish, take it from Dishwasher A, and put it into Dishwasher B when you're done with it. When Dishwasher B is filled, run it and then reverse the process, moving the dishes back to Dishwasher A.

Brilliant! No need to take time unloading the dishwasher ever again!

Price Matching Policies

I promised the fellow at the store I would blog about this, so here I am...

Recently, a critical part in the espresso maker I've had for 4½ years broke and rather than try and obtain a replacement part, if that's even possible anymore, I decided it was time to simply buy a new one. A few days later I bought myself a brand-new espresso maker from the local Sears. It's a great unit, a step up from my last one and I love it, except for one detail. A couple days later I stumbled across the exact same unit on sale from Amazon, for $93 cheaper. Well, to be precise, $104.16 cheaper including tax.

I walked in to Sears with my receipt and a printout of the Amazon.ca page for the product, and asked if I could get a price match. I was told no, because they don't consider Amazon to be a competitor. The answer remained no, even after I clearly outlined what my next steps were going to be—buying that unit from Amazon instead, packing up and returning the one I had bought from them, and them losing a sale and a customer.

On my way home I stopped by a couple other stores to see if they a) had that same unit in stock, and b) were willing to price match Amazon. They both indeed carried it, but as expected the price match was a no go. I'm considerably more forgiving in those instances, because in those cases it was simply a case of finding the best place to buy something, and hoping that someone would price match, so I wouldn't have to wait for a package to be delivered.

When those other two stores didn't match Amazon's price they lost a potential sale, yes, but that's a different scenario from the one Sears is in, where they are losing a sale because the sale was already made and it's going to be undone, plus now they're going to have a slightly used espresso maker to try and unload. From their perspective I think it would have been better for them to have lost $93 in profit (but at least they'd still have some profit, in contrast with the zero they're going to have now), but end up with a very satisfied, and most importantly, repeat customer, plus not having the hassle of dealing with another returned product.

I just finished placing my order on Amazon, so now I've passed the point of no return. Well, I guess not quite yet as I can still cancel the order up until when they actually ship it. The next thing is to pack up my other one to take back to Sears. But since they do have a 30-day return window I have some time to make myself a couple more egg nog lattes before going for a week with no espresso maker. At least I have plenty of regular coffee to hold me through.

PS - I know I could take the unit I get from Amazon and return that one to Sears, completely unopened, since they're identical, and save the step of repacking the one I have, but I don't know if my new one will arrive in time before Sears' return window closes. Plus, that would also end up being a huge help to them, eliminating their “slightly used espresso maker to try and unload” problem...