Schinckel.net

Last night, after Uni, I went to the supermarket to buy a few things. BBQ chicken is always worth a couple of meals, so I thought I’d grab one of those. There was a short-ish line for the deli, so I used the whizz-bang new touchscreen system to place an order for a small BBQ chicken. It printed out a little voucher, which promised me a coffee on the day of printing only, and which I could also use to collect my goods.

There was a counter that I assumed was where you go to wait for the express-style ordering, so I went over there. A couple of minutes passed before someone asked me if I was waiting for something. I pleasantly said yes, I had ordered a BBQ chicken, and dutifully gave her the number on my voucher.

The next (fat, but that’s immaterial) girl took one look at me, and just said “we don’t have any.”

I said “Super. Does your feeder know you have gone out.” No, I really said “Well, that’s pretty silly. Your automated system should have told me there weren’t any left.”

She haughtily replied, “Yeah well, the system doesn’t work properly.”

This raises lots of questions in my mind. The system in question stands to really improve a shopping experience - it means you have to deal less with people (and let’s face it, people are dumb). It also should make things quicker, and less hassle free. Instead, I walk away vowing not only to not use the system again, but to abuse it. (Can anyone say, I just printed out 30 BBQ chicken orders, and used the vouchers to get 30 coffees I threw away out of spite?)