cashback?

Last night, in my weariness I forgot to mention - there was an altercation last night in the Coop. I was in the self check out line. Two of the machines, call them 1 and 3 were closed and I was going to be next on 2 when the man had taken his change, receipt and groceries with him out of the store. So...just as I was about to pay the 84p for my bottle of Volvic, this swarthy man comes in off Walton Street looking like he has seen a ghost. He approaches a member of the late night skeleton crew and starts yelling at the poor woman about the noise emanating from the self service check out. You can hardly blame anyone in this situation: the swarthy man who evidently lives above the Coop's self check out section (that would be too much!) clearly is bothered at night by the computer voice of the self service check out yelling at everyone (three at once) telling them to "remove the last item from the bag, and place it on the scanner". At the same time, the Nigerian check out lady can't care much for Robot Rhonda as she takes away jobs yet creates a LOT of extra work for all the humans who work in the store. For an example of this, just think of any time I have tried to buy a croissant from the self check out till on a visa debit card and it's required the assistance of the check out human across the room punching something in, and the awkward guy who works in the back opening up the machine with his keys.

Still what struck me about the situation last night was then, not the absurdity of the self check out and the noise it made, because I could see everyone agreeing that it was unpleasant. What really shocked me was the violent nature in the swarthy man towards the check out lady when he told her the machine should be turned off at 10 pm. We don't see violence much in the world today, certainly not in grocery stores where the heartiest decent meal you could buy is a Linda McCartney line Chili Non Carne.

I'm not going to go the Coop anymore really. I was with Rebecca recently in the big Sainsburys' and was reminded of how they have a much better food section and certainly more healthy.