OT-ish B&Q automated checkout

I'm glad it's not just me then ;-)

I'm also much more comfortable loading onto a belt on the left - for some reason it never goes as smoothly on the right.

Chris

frankly, I am not convinced that the easiest thing isn't just to randomly bung the stuff in bags and sort it just ONCE when you get home.

Or, sort it by weight and crushability (EggsonTop principle) for transit only.

Depends. I know how many and of what rough size we get through between shopping trips and how many we have and just buy the requiste number. If I've been asked for a 1lb of carrots I *have* to weigh them as I haven't a clue how much carrot there is to the lb.

I don't have a trolley for several reasons: a basket gives me a good idea of the volume - when it's full, that's about the limit for rucsack/panniers without squashing things I hate trolleys for relatively small amounts - those old dears parked diagonally...! With luck, I can get off the bus, cross 2 roads and the car park, do the week's shopping, out through the till and back to catch the same bus going out - about 18 mins. the lot.

between 8am and 6:30pm, there's little but supernarkets open other than the smaller local shops who's produce looks pretty dodgey.

looks very appealing.

There are no greengrocers left in our area, however there is an extremely good butcher who also sells fruit and veg. Unfortunately I work five days a week and take the kids to swimming lessons an a Saturday morning. As the butcher's closes at lunchtime, I only have around half an hour to make it and frequently I have other things going on on a Saturday.

SteveW

when comparing to the newbee or the slow one. You now iof to work out which will be faster the slow person serving two or the fast person serving five, and then you end up in the wrong queue anyway !!!!

You've missed the bit where the person in front of you is paying with lots of vouchers and has at least one item with an unreadable barcode and another item that they disagree about the shelf price of!

SteveW

Not _only_ old dears park trolleys diagonally across the aisle whilst they chat or go somewhere else altogether. It's sometimes tempting to drop extra items (such as a tube of K-Y) into an unaccompanied trolley just for fun...

Another annoying trait is to carry youngsters around in the main (non-child) part of the trolley. Dirt from the kid (mainly its shoes) is deposited into the trolley and hence on to, say, bags of frozen food, which is transferred into freezers and is very likely to contaminate the food whilst being prepared for cooking. A lot of the aforesaid youngsters are quite old enough to walk around the store anyway (if they really have to be there at all).

Carrots keep pretty well. I just get 'enough'. Same as spuds.

Oh indeed. That only referred to a large shop. If it's a small amount I'll put things direct into the bag I take with me.

Fine for carrots (usually) because they tend to be at the cheaper end, they often keep well (as you said), and many people use them frequently. Very, very much less acceptable for vegetables which are expensive, have poor keeping qualities, and may not be used very often. E.g. mushrooms (treated as if vegetables though we all know they are not!), leaf vegetables.

Agreed.

Another annoying feature of some supermarkets has been the replacement of wire baskets with plastic.

I suspect that wire tends to gets wiped clean - and there is nowhere liquids can get stuck at all. But you often see plastic with sticky patches all over where various products have exuded over them. They are spawn of the devil. Or is that is what is all over them?

But those sort of things are generally sold pre-packed anyway - not loose?

Morrisons upgraded our branch - and have reversed that on a fair number of vegetables. We have one fair sized installation with veg. all round - and a water droplet device spraying over them all the time. The veg there have to be loose in order for that to work.

The Other Mike put finger to keyboard:

The monetary limit is especially handy nowadays, the price of petrol is so high that the pump can jump by 2p... it's annoying to want £40-worth and the pump jumps from £39.99 to £40.01.

Which is made much easier by going into the store with two banana boxes, one just small enough to fit inside the other. Go around the store as normal, empty your trolley onto the conveyer and when at the actual loading/tipping point, simply turf everything into the boxes, which are in the bottom of the trolley. Back at your car, lift them out, into the boot, easy. No fecking about with bags. I devised this method when I became aware of Lidl's attitude towards bag-packing at the checkouts; so being an awkward sod I decided to do it my way and it's just as quick as they want it to be, but more convenient for me, as it turned out.

A similar methods is my last GF's: take the panniers of the bike, clip them inside the trolley, till, load panniers, wheel outside, panniers on bike, reclaim £1. My panniers aren't so easily clipped (that's why she gave them to me!), but I have the rucsack open and wallet at the ready before Alice processes me. Any odd bits I deal with after paying by moving to the side of the area and finishing loading, then some one else can get through. I also draw out a loadacash every month so paying is quick.

Jeez; I was queueing behind some smelly bugger a couple of months ago. Fark, I was trying to not breathe.

On Apr 17, 12:47 pm, "Dave Plowman (News)"

You really don't do the shopping, do you?

MBQ

Load the belt in the right order, and its naturally segregated into appropriate bags by the time you get it home...

and frozen stuff together etc.