So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Peacoat]

View attachment 142957

I love it. So typical once a dog gets used to the ways of a cat.

 

[Touchofevil]

Adult trick-or-treaters who are not in a costume of any sort. This was the first year experiencing this annoying behavior. The waited until their children received their candy and would stick their bucket/bag out as if it was all very normal. At least put forth the effort of a costume.

 

[Zombie_61]

Adult trick-or-treaters who are not in a costume of any sort. This was the first year experiencing this annoying behavior. The waited until their children received their candy and would stick their bucket/bag out as if it was all very normal...

 

[3fingers]

The adult trick or treaters may well be trivial, but I see such things as the result of rewarding ridiculous behavior in general. What we allow we encourage and are guaranteed more of. I feel sorry for the children. They have had the misfortune of being born to idiots.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Normally, I forget the dates of Halloween and (St.) Martinsday (11. November), but this year, I remembered. But nothing happened on Halloween, like it was the previous years, as far as I remember. We got to less kids in my corner of smalltown, hooray.

I did Martins-singing/begging for sweets as a kid on 11. November in the early 90s, but I remember, that this became out of fashion on the kids, already in the late 90s.
And we were not more teached about any religious backround (East-Germany ) and I don't remember exactly, if we kids remembered the date because of St. Martin or beginning of carneval-season on the same day.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I didn't see any trick-or-treaters at all, of any age, around town this year. Main Street was completely deserted. It's as if everyone in my town under the age of fifty has been relocated under cover of darkness, leaving only grim, humorless, joyless, grey-faced, thin-lipped, clench-jawed entities who occasionally peek out from behind shaded windows to ensure that nobody is having any fun whatsoever.

I won't survive long in an environment like this. Time to go underground.

 

[GHT]

I love it. So typical once a dog gets used to the ways of a cat.

You're right, and don't you just love the way that the dog looks so subservient?

Talk about annoying trivia, does anyone else get p*ssed off with self service tills in the supermarket? I usually find that if an older person is on duty at these tills I will get some sort of empathetic sympathy. A couple of weeks ago, the till was telling me this, and instructing me that, in the end I lost it, and told it to shut up. Although tempted, I avoided using the 'F' profanity, but only just. The 'older' lady on duty came over and sorted it in seconds. Her smile put me back on a better temper, she's such a charmer. I asked why these wretched things had a female voice. She told me it was because men recognise a female voice and immediately know their place.

So, today at the self service checkout, the till was throwing a right hissy fit, all because I had the temerity of lifting my bag from the weighing area so that I could shake it open in order to put my purchases in. The same lady was on duty today, she mockingly chastised me for upsetting the till. But she couldn't stop the grin when I replied that if the till wasn't female it wouldn't be so damn hormonal.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our self-checkouts don't talk, fortunately, or at least not that I've noticed, but the ATM at my bank used to have a voice exactly like Deanna Troi from "Star Trek TNG." "Thonk yew forr bahnking weeth oos." Mercifully, Deanna-bot was decomissioned when they last replaced the machine, otherwise I was trying to figure out how to beam her into deep space, wide dispersal.

 

[Touchofevil]

I didn't see any trick-or-treaters at all, of any age, around town this year. Main Street was completely deserted. It's as if everyone in my town under the age of fifty has been relocated under cover of darkness, leaving only grim, humorless, joyless, grey-faced, thin-lipped, clench-jawed entities who occasionally peek out from behind shaded windows to ensure that nobody is having any fun whatsoever.

I won't survive long in an environment like this. Time to go underground.

It was getting like that around here, but this we had quite a few trick-or-treaters. It was nice. Maybe it was the Halloween music, the fog machine, the lights, and the decorations, I don’t know. Every year we decorate for the holidays and normally see very few kids out. It was a fun evening. Although it was sad/annoying to see so many houses with their lights off when I knew the owners were home.

 

[Fading Fast]

When CVS And Home Depot first installed self-checkouts they gave out verbal instructions loudly. That clearly didn't go over well - it was obnoxious to any sentient being not designing self-checkout machines - as most now don't talk with the rest saying very little and saying it at a much lower volume.

I'm mixed on the self checkout. For simple purchases in many (repetitive) situations, they work better. But if you have some complexity to your checkout, a traditional clerk-drive process is better. To that point, I've noticed that CVS and Home Depot have pretty much landed on this place as both now offer both options (self or clerk-driven) and don't "push" you one way or another.

Because of that, I see that most of the people, like me, who are using the self-checkouts machines are content as they've chosen to and have not been forced to use them. When forced to use them, many become quite frustrated (at least CVS and Home Depot in NYC have figured that out and, now, seem to have struck the right balance).

 

[Doctor Strange]

I hate those self-checkout machines and just refuse to use them. I may be a loner, but I still prefer interacting with human beings for some things!

I also think they're an especially pernicious example of how service jobs that could be providing salaries to actual people are being thrown away in the name of efficiency... without really considering the collateral damage to our society.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The robots aren't coming, the robots are here.

 

[3fingers]

So, today at the self service checkout, the till was throwing a right hissy fit, all because I had the temerity of lifting my bag from the weighing area so that I could shake it open in order to put my purchases in.

I have only used the self checkout at our local evil empire branch a couple of times. I find it odd that there are usually more gold vested attendants in that area than there are open conventional check out lanes. I had it hollering at me to remove my purchases from the bagging area as soon as it was satisfied that I had fed it sufficient cash to cover my items. No time was allowed to bag said items after payment. If you tried to bag as you scanned it would screech at you to scan your next item. Phooey.

Thonk yew forr bahnking weeth oos."

Ours also reminded you after inserting your debit card to
"Entah your seecret numbah."
Ya OK, got it Deanna. The voice has since been silenced.

 

[Fading Fast]

The robots aren't coming, the robots are here.

To echo this post (not arguing the risks and rewards of automation today), the theme of robots eliminating jobs and driving unemployment up dramatically has been with us for a long time. I recently read the 1950s novel "No Downpayment" and one of the themes is the concern of the middle class workers that all the new inventions - electronics, appliances, atomic power, etc., - would eliminate their jobs / careers and that society would have to deal with mass unemployment in the next ten years (the '60s).

 

[tonyb]

To date, the lion’s share of occupations made obsolete by automation aren’t the sorts of jobs most people dream of spending their entire working lives doing anyway. They’re drudgery, mostly. Tedium.

Self-driving motor vehicles may spell the end of millions of jobs. I enjoy driving, and I enjoy the view through a windshield. But really, driving for a living, taking all that time that might be spent in more creative and/or stimulating pursuits, is a waste of human potential.

Taking in the vast countryside, especially those wide-open spaces of the American West, as long-haul drivers do, can be a pleasant enough way to pass one’s time. But the novelty wears thin after a million miles or so.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
None of which is to say I like self checkout. I’ll wait in line for a cashier even when the self checkout would be faster.

It’s a losing battle, probably, but I ain’t going down without a fight.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

" Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." - Niels Bohr.

We can prehaps rely of two things; Firstly, advances in automation & A.I. will be the least of human concerns in the not too distant future & secondly, what lies ahead will never be as we imagined it.....much like our deaths really & our lives when we look back. It's probably best not to know what awaits us, otherwise humans may start to make the right decisions for once & that would spoil everything.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"It's progress until the robot takes *your* job."
-- Some nameless victim of automation.

I'm bothered by self-checkouts for a lot of reasons. The majority of checkout people here are older women -- most of them in their fifties and sixties, and they aren't working for fulfillment, or to make "extra money," they're working because they have to to survive. When they lose their jobs to automation, as they inevitably will, what happens to them? You aren't going to see the average sixty-five year old woman who's been doing checkout work because it was all she could get after she lost her job at the fish cannery "going back to school to learn how to code so she can get a job with a tech startup." Tech startups don't hire sixty-five year old women, no matter how many coding certificates they have. "What's going to become of her?" is a legitimate question, and "well, that's just how it is" is not an acceptable answer. I've yet to hear an acceptable answer.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Yeah, the "automation" they used to talk about so optimistically in the sixties, which was going to provide all this additional leisure time... really didn't work out that way.

Me and the robot working away
He looks at me, as if to say
"I'll be doing your job someday"
I'm stuck on the treadmill

- Richard Thompson, "Stuck on the Treadmill"

 

[HanauMan]

Yeah, tell me about it! I spent my childhood going over the rosy future as forecast in the pages of Dad's National Geographic Magazine and thinking what a great future I was going to have. Still waiting for all those vacations to the moon that I was going to take or racing down a futuristic highway in a fancy car while reading the papers.

One vision of MY (!) future as shown in the pages of the Sept. 1969 issue.