Self Check out
Taking the frustration out of finding parkingEFTPOS machines. I didn’t use it at all in checking out at the supermarket in Thailand. Cash is still king in Thailand even for buying cars! However, I mostly use credit cards in Australia and when I was checking out at Woolworths for groceries I saw the EFTPOS machine it said, "swipe anytime", even though the checkout chick was still scanning the items. This was new. So I swiped the card and started going through the options. But I got stuck at the last option. It had “Entire sale” or another option I can’t remember. I paused thinking which button should I press. I didn’t know the entire sale amount and it wasn’t showing so I hesitated in pressing it. By that time the check out chick had finished scanning my items and seeing how incompetent I was, she reached over and pressed the “entire sale” button for me. She had a bit of look of contempt on her face as if I was such an idiot.
Anyway, I said my nicest “Thankyou” to her when she gave me the receipt and she gave me a sincere and happy “have a nice day”. Obviously she didn’t know that I was some weirdo out of Australia for the last 2 and half years. This option must have come in while we were away. It certainly wasn’t there before we left.
Just before this incident, I overheard an elderly couple who had lined up behind me, seeing that the line was long, say to his wife “lets go to the self-serve option”. This is something new too. I guess it involves scanning the items yourself and paying by credit card(see photo at the top). I heard rumours about this just before we left so it must have been introduced while we were away.
Parking: One very positive reverse culture shock was seeing thin metal rods coming down from the ceiling at the parking lot of the shopping centre at Westfields, Hornsby. A green light at the botton of these rods indicated an empty space, the red light an occupied space. Then there were helpful indicators showing you how many empty spaces were left and which direction. So all you needed to do was follow the arrows and look for the green light. Fantastic. Gone are the days of spending endless minutes going round and round looking for parking.
Just before this incident, I overheard an elderly couple who had lined up behind me, seeing that the line was long, say to his wife “lets go to the self-serve option”. This is something new too. I guess it involves scanning the items yourself and paying by credit card(see photo at the top). I heard rumours about this just before we left so it must have been introduced while we were away.
Parking: One very positive reverse culture shock was seeing thin metal rods coming down from the ceiling at the parking lot of the shopping centre at Westfields, Hornsby. A green light at the botton of these rods indicated an empty space, the red light an occupied space. Then there were helpful indicators showing you how many empty spaces were left and which direction. So all you needed to do was follow the arrows and look for the green light. Fantastic. Gone are the days of spending endless minutes going round and round looking for parking.
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2 comments:
I encountered those evil self check out machines for the first time when I came back from Thailand to the states in 2002. They weirded me out. I still don't like them.
So this is another thing we inherited from the US and not an Aussie innovation.
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