Maplin meltdown

[charles]

At the BBC Club bar in TVC, the steward was found to be watering the beer. It was, ISTR, Red Barrel so the cutomers never noticed.

[Chris B]

Saw a TV programme about the supermarkets - one of them has an algorithm that if no bananas have gone through the till in 15 minutes send message to shelf stackers to make sure the shelves don't need restocking.

[spuorgelgoog]

Round here if no Buckfast has gone through the till in 15 minutes it sends a message to wake up the store detective.

Owain

[tony sayer]

Quite right too its a Medieval town centre they should have made a half decent ring road for the shops, apart for the phone shops, out there where they are car accessible.

If you don't mind those ever so low bar's if you stop for a bevvy;!...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

;-)

[dennis]

They certainly do not know the weights. They can't know the weights of prepacked fresh stuff for a start. They also don't check the weights of stuff they might be able too in any of the supermarkets I use. Next time you are in try putting a box of stuff on at the same time as putting say the free magazine on the scales.

[dennis]

I see huge dick is still posting bollocks. One day huge dick may actually contribute something but I won't hold my breath waiting.

[Andy Burns]

But they can know which items they do know the weight of, and they could know a sensible weight range for pre-packed veg, I don't use them so much for that.

Adding or removing an empty carrier bag is often sufficient weight difference to trigger them.

[Fredxx]

No, but there will be an acceptable range.

They will also know the overall weight before the next item is added, so even light items can be assessed.

[NY]

So are you saying that the scales only look for an increase in weight (and don't care about the size of the increase) to denote that an item (not necessarily the one whose bar code has just been scanned) has been placed in the bag?

I shall have to test that theory when I'm next shopping by scanning one item and putting a different item on the bagging scale. I think you are wrong but I'm happy to be corrected. As regards prepacked fresh items, I presumed that the bar code of every item was different to encode not just the item's ID but also its weight.

[Vir Campestris]

On the rare occasions when I use one I scan the first item, put it in my bag, then put that in the bagging area. It seems to be happy then.

But I avoid them; I feel that using the serviced tills is a way of keeping low skilled people in gainful employment.

Andy

[Tim Streater]

The checkout has these things called "scales", Den, you may have heard of them.

[Fredxx]

But if you use the self-service tills the unskilled staff can chat amongst themselves.

[dennis]

yes but that is because it notices the change not because it has weighed a product and decided it is the wrong weight.

Does it say its too heavy if you put it in a carrier and then put on the scales? No it doesn't.

[dennis]

yes. Can you imagine the error rate of thousands of products and just how difficult it would be. Even the humidity in the shop would affect the weight of the boxes. How about the tub of ice cream I bought yesterday that had half an inch of frost on it that would weight tens of grams more than it should.

Most of them are preprinted and are the same. The reduced bar codes are unique so they know the price and item in some supermarkets. As are the deli items.

Some supermarkets have turned the checkout scale off altogether as it was annoying the customers a lot.

[dennis]

Don't be an idiot, you don't put prepacked stuff on the scales you just scan the bar code and put them on the checkout scale.

[Tim Streater]

Those will be all the same weight.

[Huge]

+1

[dennis]

Do you ever shop? Try Sainsburys baking spuds they are never the same weight. Or a cabbage or a cauliflower.

[Tim Streater]

No I have a propeller on my head to provide all the energy I need.

Either it's packaged and has a bar code, which I imagine for stuff where the weight may vary tells the machine to be lenient about the expected weight, or:

where you tell the machine what it is and it weighs it for you (since even giant brains like yours haven't figured out how to get a cabbage to grow a bar-code).