@Charisma I didn't want to name names, but since you've 'fessed up already. From my perspective it was like sitting up in the Gods, munching on lark tongues and dromedary pretzels, waiting for the gladiators to get on with it. I suspected the recipient of the term views it as I do.
It's much worse when they stop dead to have a chat after getting OFF the escalator, believe me. Just had this happen to me at Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow ...and the culprits were two teenaged boys. Or people who stop dead as soon as they reach the pavement after crossing a busy street ...and the green man has just gone red? My favourite supermarket numpty is the one who is pushing the cart along, sees something they want or are thinking about wanting, then pushes the cart AT RIGHT ANGLES out into the aisle as they retrieve their item or decide whether they want to buy it or not. It's as you say, a lack of situational awareness. I'm considering carrying a bicycle horn strapped permanently to my forearm....
Yes; I remember my father explaining, when I was a very small child, WHY you need to step clear of the escalator after it deposits you on the top or bottom. You'd think that only very small children would need an explanation.
This happens in cold climates too. I don't know which is worse. A blast of sub-zero air or a blast of hot air. Oh, wait ...I do....
It's even worse when it's the TOP of the escalator, not the bottom. Erm....there's nowhere to go but down, is there? I don't normally go around shoving teenagers out of the way, but I sure did then! They did apologise though ...so that's something.
And while I remember. Self service at supermarkets. Judging by the queues at my local Asda, they have done nothing to speed up the shopping experience. They just make me get really narked at the incompetency of some folks. Just scan the damn bar code already!
I don't think the lack of situational awareness is a generational thing. I can't tell you how many fifty year old women leave their shopping carts right in the middle of the parking lot.
Haha. Well I learned its usage in an endearing, respectful context, not a condescending or inappropriate one (as a non-native, I've learnt colloquial English either through media or online exposure for the most part), but thanks for being honest, mate.
@Charisma You are gunning for a virtual kick up the arse. Where's @Lewdog when I need him? I bet he'd have an emoticon for that.
Ooh, and that's another one of my 21st century hates. Self service checkouts. DAMN. Aside from all the checkout jobs getting lost by these things, why should I do the work of checking my own groceries just to create more profit for the supermarkets? From a purely practical point of view, whoever pretends that these will speed up checkouts is barking mad. Checkout people are trained how to put groceries through the system as efficiently and quickly as possible. Ordinary customers are not. How self-service translates into 'more efficient service' I can't fathom. What it does, though, is reduce the supermarket's employee bill. Will that translate into lower food prices? Will it hell. Higher profits, that's what. And once all the supermarkets have them, they'll move towards giving us no choice but to use them or starve. I don't care if I'm only buying a carton of milk, I will NEVER use self service checkouts. If I had religion, this would be one of the things my religion would be against. Just had a fight at my local Sainsbury's over this issue. When I finished my shopping—at midafternoon on a weekday—I found a huge queue of people built up behind the self-service counter, all looking bewildered and grumpy. I soon realised why. The ordinary checkouts were not in operation. I went and found a store employee and told him (politely) if they didn't open a real checkout, I would abandon my full cart, walk out of the store, and would not be returning. He magically produced several checkout people, and the queue cleared quickly. NONE of the people waiting in that queue remained in it.
@jannert But I like self-service checkouts probably because I only used them for the few months I was abroad, but I like not having to interact with the store folk. Though I didn't think of it from a business POV. XD And oh, mate reminds me of senorita. Anyone find that highly weird especially when the addressing party isn't Latino? @obsidian_cicatrix I think he's been MIA for a while now...I think.
Yay! @jannert. Now I've got a wing man and an enforcer. @Charisma I dropped him a pm the other day... he's alive and kicking, just keeping a low profile.
So.... I really like self check-out. It only exists in one store where I live, Home Depot. You won't see it in any other local store or grocery. We know how our brethren are, so there's a trust issue that doesn't allow for the dynamic to happen. But at Home Depot it's a dream! My People are super shitty at reading shelf labels and price signage and it never frakking fails that the person in front of me swears that everything in their cart is on sale (it's not.... NOT!!) so self check-out keeps me from going to jail, and y'all seen my pulchritude already. You just know I'm'a get snapped up right quick on the prison cell block. Yeah.
Bad manners themselves seem to be a custom. Then there's the selfish and ignorant, those wanting their fifteen minutes of fame e.g. being offended on behalf of others; running to the daily papers with a caterpillar in your salad even after being offered a reasonable settlement; demanding public money - and getting it - for their own choice of lifestyle (gastric bands, cosmetic surgery, weddings); bottom-of-the-Z-list nobodies and failed reality TV dickheads crying in public for attention; celebrities flaunting the 'baby bump' FFS in public just for attention; breast-feeding in public just to get attention; people who persistently complain yet do sod-all about it; people who bombard the media with complaints; Amazon reviewers that say, Must be OK because my grand-daughter's reading it; people who spend too long listing complaints.
@Wreybies... Oh, yes...those dark, brooding good looks of yours would make you the most popular inmate on the shower block, for sure.
I should correct myself, actually. I don't mind the existence of a self-service checkout for the terminally impatient. What I mind is that we're now all being pressured to use them. Where do you think that's going to lead? My sister who lives in the USA has already encountered a few instances where the self serves were the ONLY checkouts available when she did her shopping. And I just encountered the same here in the UK. Very worrying. Our lives are soon going to be almost completely digitalised. Why? BECAUSE AUTOMATION CREATES PROFITS FOR COMPANIES, BY REDUCING THE WAGE BILL. When are we going to wake up and realise this shift is NOT to benefit customers. It's to increase company profits. And who is going to be buying all the company's products and creating their profits if hardly anybody has a job any more? There is always a price to pay for anything we do. Me? I'd rather pay the price of waiting in a checkout queue for the checkout person to earn their wages by helping the slow person ahead of me. Remember gas stations, back in the day when you pulled in and somebody came out to pump your gas, wipe your windshield, check your water and oil, etc? And ...most importantly ...if your car was giving you trouble, there was usually somebody on hand to help you figure out what to do? Then we got 'self-service' stations—and now that's all we've got. All those gas station attendants lost their jobs and the skills that went along with the jobs, and you know what? The service isn't anywhere near as good as it used to be. We've become used to it, but it's not an improvement for the customer, or to the overall economy of the planet.
Speaking as someone who was made redundant by similar means, (i.e. being replaced by a machine) I hate the fact they companies make out like these changes are for our benefit.
Being offended on the half of others, or even abstract concepts, that is a big one. Humans, stop doing these things!
People who snap off the stem of broccoli in supermarkets when it is sold individually, not by weight. People who dress "in season" (like you're a fucking tree!) Selfies & selfie sticks. Selfie being added to legitimate dictionaries. Farmers' markets. People who don't attend family funerals. People who talk on the mobile while being served.
No, I try not to post if I shall come across as the straight-up objectionable pig because I end up in a scrap never sought with @Lemex, @Charisma, @GingerCoffee, somebody clever, all because my knee cap flew up and smacked the underside of the desk: 'Whaaa, bloody bloody religion again, blah, what about France, you buggers?' I think I said, Usually I craft a beautiful paragraph and then delete it, sometimes I show my wife: 'You sound very mad,' she says, 'Thank you,' I say, file the poem, keep my regular posts to the ho ho satan variety. I did take a couple of thumps to the chin the other day but then I waded into a thread and said 'don't talk about that, talk about this.' It was the cats that finished me off, actually. I acquired a whole new tier of respect for @Lemex after my punishment. Back then I was distressed that in the realm of writers, rather than clutching the book of liberty to its chest, proclaiming 'death to tyranny, long live freedom,' our forum was debating Islamic calligraphy, or so I perceived...like watching Latvian TV pottery wheel in 1987 sort of thing cccp. ............. As for modern irritations, the tongue was loitering roundabouts - above that chin and below the eye socket, you know. I'm not really an absolute curmudgeon, SO I better find something to be irritated about. All good suggestions so far, btw. Okay: CCTV and the impossibility of ever successfully perpetuating a mid-level crime of some sorts. The fact that every fourth citizen is a member of the constabulary and the ever-increasing definition of crime all because a load of politicians have to find something to fill their time etcetera...hmmm
^I guess it depends on the situation, I guess it's different for everyone. (should have stayed objective/collective?) also matwoolf is an investigator of sorts, rather off-putting for me personally. who did you read? etc. oh yah, me too! then you applied it to modernity and its fluctuation, and amazement abound!
