The petrol pump and Idiot No 2...
22/10/2009
Recently I went to fill up the car before petrol went up, and to buy some light bulbs before they went out.
At the petrol pumps I couldn't get the nozzle to release any petrol so I tried the trigger a couple of times and nothing happened , except that a voice boomed out ''Pump number 2 Press the button".
What? What button? Am I pump no. 2? I pressed the trigger again, nothing, so I put it back on the pump. The voice came again "Pump number 2 stay where you are, an assistant is coming". The other 11 pumpers swivelled round to see what Idiot no 2 was doing.
Of course all was revealed when the assistant told me I was at one of the new card devouring pumps but if I wished to pay with actual money to an actual person I had to 'press the button'
I drove off a poorer and a wiser woman, vowing not to do anything else stupid that day... however...Having stockpiled on light bulbs in B&Q I joined the checkout queue.The guy in front had three doors and fifty two rolls of turf. It was going to be a long day.
But help was at hand. An assistant called me over to what in my innocence I thought to be another checkout, but no, another machine.
In all fairness she started me off, but when it came to paying it rejected my £20 note. It went in, out shook it all about, and after three choruses of the Hokey Cokey I gave up and found a pristine note which it happily gobbled spewing out coins from one orifice, notes from another and the receipt from yet a third.The ultimate in DIY.
Right, call in Tesco now and I'm finished for the day. Would you believe it? Tescos have these fiendish machines, and they talk at you, do a wrong thing and the whole store knows your humiliation.
All the assistants seem so proud of these machines, don't they realise they are taking over their jobs? Where is their Luddite spirit?
I put this to one of the assistants today and she said: "No problem. they go wrong all the time so I have a job for life."
Joy Matthews, Caerphilly.