Guide to using a Self Checkout

Apparently people do not know how to use a self checkout. How this is possible is beyond me, it does have instructions on the screen, evidently you genui can’t read.

READ THE SCREEN AND LISTEN TO THE VOICE!!!! The screen and that nice little voice tell you exactly what to do. If its not letting you scan your items then read… you do know how to do that right? Or listen to the voice telling you what to do.

Both the scanner and the bagging area are scales; they’re sensitive to .01 lb changes. You can not scan when there is weight on the scanner, or when the weight on the bagging area is changing/wrong. Keep your delightful little screaming children off the bagging area if you don’t want to be here all day.

If you hit “Skip Bagging” don’t put the item in the bagging area. Skip bagging means you’re *gasp* not putting it in the bagging area… in other words its going back in your cart. If you hit skip bagging and then put it there anyways you get to wait for me to clear your weight difference in the bagging area.

Do you want to know how much your child weighs? No? Then keep them from sitting on the bagging area or I WILL offer to tell you.

My machines are not psychic… you have to tell them when you’re ready to pay and how you wish to pay… card, check, cash, or soul’s of the innocent.

Unless you’re old, handicapped, or I take a liking to you you’re scanning your own stuff. I’ll scan the big items for you so you don’t have to lift them and help with the produce numbers, but no matter how much you whine or glare you’re still checking out your own stuff if you come to the SELF CHECKOUT.

If you have 2 or more carts full go to a regular lane. You’re going to take a good 15 minutes checking out, get annoyed (because you’re not reading the screen/listening to the voice), and greatly increase the wait time of the other people I’m calling over to my 4 lanes.

I’m running 4 lanes at once; when we get busy I try to draw as many people to my lanes as possible to take the strain off the regular lanes. I’m good at keeping my lanes going. That being said if all 4 of the lanes decide they want my attention at the same time (coupons, errors, checks, check ID, take booze if it’s Sunday, dispense change, replace paper, chasing the neurotic monkeys away from the bananas, get the idea?) you may have to wait a minute before I can get to your particular issue.

This has been Gwen, your pissed off, ranting redhead. And would you like to know how much your darling child weighs? 68.2 lbs.

TWitN: 8/20/10-8/27/10

You know, sometimes the news just doesn’t cooperate. This week we had a rare tornado… and that’s about it that’s really worth talking about. Yes, I have you something else for you to read also. But nothing fantastic. God damn people need to be more interesting!!!!!

TOP STORY!!! An extremely rare fire tornado is caught on film in Brazil! Video plays after a commercial, and only shows the fire tornado for the first 10 seconds of it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100825/od_yblog_upshot/8128

Am I the only one that thinks it looks like it's from a Pokemon game? Usually I’d leave weather related events alone but it actually looks damn cool as long as you’re not in its path. And you better have known this was coming… CHARMANDER GO!!! FIRESPIN!!!

In other news! A woman has 3 crocodiles as pets and a husband. The husband sincerely hopes that he will not be fed to the crocodiles in the future. The crocodiles commented that they anxiously await yummy husband nom.

Yes, that’s it, nothing more to report! See you next week.

~Gwen

Fashion

Let me be honest… I don’t know anything about fashion. The tree outside my living room knows more about fashion then I do. I wear what I like, not what’s “fashionable”. That said I am going to talk about a certain “fashion” I’ve seen recently.

I first started seeing it on guys about a month ago. The guys are in their 20s… the age where they’re highly prone to displaying their bodies any way possible if they’re muscled. I blew it off as another silly thing that guys do and that was it… That was until I started seeing women wearing the same fashion this week.

Oh, I forgot to mention the fashion. Take a tank top, cut the sides from armpit to about an inch from the bottom and there you go. Now toss it on a female body with nothing but a sports bra under it and you have the female version of the fashion.

Seriously… a bikini top in summer is acceptable. A top that shows enough cleavage that you’re a beacon for every eye in the room is a kind of slutty but ok. This just makes you look like white trash. If you walked around in nothing but a sports bra for a top it wouldn’t be half as trashy as this! At least then people would assume you were just working out.

Ok, ok, I know we can get away with wearing pretty much anything a guy can. But just as a lot of clothing is female specific some things, like this, are male specific! Even on males it looks stupid but it doesn’t look trashy.

This has been Gwen, your pissed off, ranting redhead. And I am not cutting up any of my tops so I can create an example picture for this post.

Bras

I went to Meijers today, Meijers is a store like Walmart for those that don’t have them where you live. Why? I was shopping… and they had some sales I wanted to check out. And I saw this on one of their signs in the store: Playtex Women’s Boxed Bras $X.XX

This got me thinking, if they specify the bras are for women does that mean that Playtex makes bras for men? Or even that there are bras for men? I was not aware there were bras for men. And no, transgenders and crossdressers don’t count for that, they’re becoming female and playing female respectively so they count as women for this!

I mean seriously, is some guy going to go into a store, wander it for an hour before hitting lingerie and since it doesn’t say “women” on the sign go “Well it dun’t say women on it so it must be meant for me!!!!” and Billy-Bob wanders up to the checkout with his new bra.

Ok, in all seriousness I have seen guys with bigger boobs then I have, and could probably use a bra. Hell, I’ve seen guys with bigger boobs then Britney Spears had after her boob job. But guys don’t wear them! They make a habit of going around topless even when they're hairier then monkeys and can scar small children! So there is no reason to put “women’s” on a bra advertisement! It’s a given, like the government being corrupt and door to door Jehova Witnesses having door slammed in their faces.

This has been Gwen. Your pissed off, ranting redhead, and if you’ll excuse me I'm going to go watch Leo buy himself a bra… just because I find it funny.

TWitN: 8/13/10-8/19/10

~This is a new little thing I’ve been thinking of doing for a while, I usually find a few news articles a week that I think are worth commenting on, but rarely have enough to say on them to bother making a post. So they’re all going to be going into one of these a week.

For those that do read this blog here is what you WON’T find in these: celebrity drama unless they do something worth talking about(Michael Vick’s dog fighting for example), sports crap, things on movies, and whatever else I think is crap.~

This week! Antibiotic resistant bacteria are invading the US, big surprise there. Teens are losing their hearing. And the Miss Universe pageant is going R-Rated, probably the only good news all week.

The contestants for the Miss Universe pageant did some body painting photos and *gasp* since quite a few of the countries they’re from are comfortable with nudity some of the photos are topless! OMFG! Naked breasts! With body paint on them! MY VIRGIN EYES ARE GOING TO EXPLODE!!!!! You know, for a country obsessed with sex we sure are anal about actually seeing a little flesh. Have you never seen yourself/gf/spouse naked? Grow up. *strips topless, flicks my bra at you, and moves onto the next story*

I’ve already covered this one in my previous post but I’ll do it again. Teens are showing minor hearing loss due to playing the music over their headphones too god damn loud. Wow! You put something IN your ear and blast it loud enough it can be heard in China and its going to damage your ears? Say wha? The only surprising thing is that they haven’t released this “study” sooner.

And the final story for this week! Bacteria from India that is resistant to almost every anti-biotic we know of has made its way to the US and UK. Personally I’d bet money that it originated from somebody from the UK/US that visited India, bred, and now has made its way back home to roost. I don’t know about you but its no surprise to me that some super-mega-uber bug has grown, when people go to the doctor to get drugs when they have a fucking cold instead of just letting the shit work its way out you’re going to end up with something nasty.

That’s all for this week. This has been Gwen, your pissed off, ranting redhead and… oh, why not. BREASTS BREASTS BREASTS BREASTS BREASTS!!!!

Teens + Music = Hearing Loss?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_med_hearing_loss_teens

Have you guys seen this shit? Minor hearing loss in teens… who would’ve seen this one coming? Oh, that’s right, anybody with a fucking brain!

Oh my god! NOBODY could’ve seen this happening! Wow! You put something IN your ear and blast it loud enough it can be heard in China and its going to damage your ears? Say wha? Parents have been telling their kids this since there were walkmen! You play your music too loud and its going to hurt your hearing, and oh, look… they were right, AGAIN!

I like loud music, I really do. I play the music from my computer and in my car loud. I have a MP3 player too, but I don’t play it loud from my headphones!

Honestly there’s not a helluva lot more I can say on this one.

This has been Gwen, your pissed off, ranting redhead. And my hearing is just fine… AND WHATS THAT BUZZING!!!!!

Checking out fast at the grocery store.

Like I said in the last post, I work at a grocery store. What most people that don’t work register at a grocery store don’t know is that we get graded on how fast we get you through the lane. So it’s not just you that wants to get you through quickly, we want to also. So… for your benefit, here’s how to check out faster.

~ First and foremost, if the place has a “loyalty card”, such as Harris Teeter, Food Lion, Meijers, Krogers, etc etc. then know where the thing is and have it ready! If you have to search for the thing for 2 minutes after we finish scanning your items that means that’s another 2 minutes you, and everybody behind you, has to wait.

~ Most of your groceries are not fragile. You really don’t have to be super careful placing them on the belt. Unless they’re eggs, bread, chips, or anything else that you can easily squish/crunch you can pretty much just dump it on the belt. Because trust me, if the cashier is going to speed, the items more or less get scanned and just dumped onto the 2nd belt assuming they’re not breakable.

~ Some places allow you to just put one of an item on the belt and tell us how many you have if you’re getting a bunch. 2-liters of pop are a good example. If you’re getting 30 2-liters put one of each kind on the belt and tell me how many you have… you don’t want to pick them all up and put them on the belt, and I don’t want to scan every one of them.

~ Try to keep like items together. Cans, frozen goods, produce, etc. It may not get you checked out any faster, but it’ll mean that for the most part they’ll get bagged together so it’s easier to put away when you get home.

~ I can’t pay attention to everything. I am supposed to scan your items, chat with you, look for coupons, and make sure you don’t forget anything under your cart… all at the same time. If it ends up on my belt, I’m going to scan it. If you have small children, WATCH THEM! I am not responsible if your child drops a bunch of candy on the belt and you didn’t want it.

~ And finally if you don’t look at least 50 in my state I have to ID you for alcohol. If you don’t look at least 27 I have to card you for tobacco. If you don’t like it, complain to your government representatives. Honestly, I don’t like having to card 30-40 year olds for alcohol, but I will to not get in legal trouble and keep my job.

Sincerely,
~Gwen

Stank!

I haven’t had much to bitch about lately… work is good, I love my new apartment, and in general life is pretty nice at the moment. Does that mean I won’t be writing any more rants? NOOOOOOOO!!!!! That just mean you people are going to try harder to give me something to write about evidently!

I work at a grocery store, what one I don’t feel like saying, as a cashier. Its fun, nothing like getting paid to flirt more or less. Unfortunately in the last week we’ve had some clients that need to have a biohazard sign hung on them! I’m serious, these people had an aura of STANK surrounding them that was so foul that the flies were getting high off them!

For those that don’t know there is a difference between “stink” and “stank”. Stink is “dude… you smell a little ripe.” Stank is “OMFG! I need the Constitutional right to spray you down with Lysol before I pass the fuck out!” Ok, here’s a hint to everybody out there. When you are at the grocery checkout and the cashier visibly takes a step back whenever they’re not handing you something that means you need to walk your cottage cheese smelling ass to the hygiene aisle and get some deodorant!

I had been of the assumption that the reason we had so many smelly people coming in was due to the weather… last week was hot enough to melt the fucking pavement after all. That and sometimes the larger members of society sweat more and smell more. I was just going to leave it at that but then yesterday rolled around! Yesterday was in the 70s, was nice… and we still had people like that coming in! The worst one was a woman only a little bit larger then me, and I’m freaking tiny.

Seriously people, you don’t need to be afraid of soap, it’s not going to hurt you.

This has been Gwen, your pissed off, ranting redhead… and I’m going to go get a can of Lysol.