Sunday, June 15, 2008

Standing in queue (Is it that difficult?)

Yesterday I was at the Food World chain of supermarkets near the place where in live. I saw they had Alfonso mangoes and I took 2 mangoes and some tomatoes and I was standing in line to get the items weighed and a lady was doing that, she writes the weight on the plastic bag with a permanent marker and in front of me was a guy with quite a lot of stuff. I was waiting patiently for my turn. Out of nowhere an elderly person butts in with his stuff and wanted the lady to weigh it and his excuse was “I have only one item”. I am sick of this line used by people here, I had two items and I was waiting patiently and I told him whether it is one or more item, please stand in line but he just ignored me and he looked educated. What is education if it can’t instill simple civic sense in you?

I told the lady who was weighing that she should not have entertained him but she had a dumb look on her face as I guess the managed hadn’t trained her. This is not the first time I had encountered this, it happens at the checkout counters too. Where someone just walks in with an item and demands that they have to be billed first as they have an item. I did walk out of a supermarket in Banjara Hills and left all the items that I had in my basket worth maybe nearly Rs 1,000 (USD 25) because of this incident and after that I never went to that supermarket again. I did inform the counter girl on what she did was wrong as she told me that the guy had only one item (is it a magic password). She didn’t realize that I too had so many “one” items too.

Sometimes I feel that the counter guys got to educate the customers by asking them to stand in queue and if the supermarket can’t train their staff to do that, what kind of employees do they hire. This to me has a larger implication on the society at large as what had education really imparted to them.

Did anyone of you encounter these problems from where you come from? Do let me know.

©sukku2008

2 comments:

Ugich Konitari said...

Happens. All the time. Most supermarkets here will have a special line for express (1-10) items. Where there is no such thing, try looking tough, raising an eyebrow disapprovingly, and loudly asking for the manager. The operative word is "loud"...

Sukku said...

What I notice in Hyderabad is that there is no express lane or lane for cash or credit cards and usually the number of counters are so few and it takes ages to clear any counter. I had bad experiences with Reliance Fresh as they are usually in a small location with 2 or 3 counters. And with most of them when the cashier makes a mistake in punching in the item, which they always do, they have to get the password and it takes ages for them to undo the mistake. What is the point in installing tech savy machines when the people you have behind the counter are not that bright. Maybe you will get cleared faster in a kirana shop.

Thanks for your comment and it is a honour to see you at my blog.