So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[3fingers]

Man, I love such people. Who's buying stuff for 93 Euro in a german supermarket, which needs the whole conveyor belt and delays all the business?? Lady, supermarkets are nearly everywhere. Split your puchase.

I'm sure it has been in this thread already,
but just a few days ago I stopped after work for a couple of things. As I approached the express lane, clearly marked 12 items or less, a woman nearly ran me over with her buggy trying to get ahead of me. I allowed it but said "Absolutely, go right ahead." She had well in excess of the 12 items, didn't have her card ready and then complained about the chip function being required instead of swiping like she had always done with her old card. After she paid, she stopped at the end of the counter, blocking the passage to visit with a passerby.
After I paid for my milk, bread and crackers I had to tell her I wanted to go home tonight, not tomorrow to get her to move.

And here, they'd pay by check.

And not get the checkbook out until they were given the total, seemingly surprised that they were expected to pay for their purchases.

 

[Harp]

Black Friday is usually a day off, the cornerstone holiday after Thanksgiving of the sacrosanct annual
four day weekend full of turkey, football, leftovers, and more football. This year however circumstances
brought me in to work a backlog, but coffee, schmoozing, and talking some Bears-yes, the season's a busted flush,
but a win is a win nevertheless and at .500 slight miraculous hope remains. And I am just too lazy to work.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I'm sure it has been in this thread already,
but just a few days ago I stopped after work for a couple of things. As I approached the express lane, clearly marked 12 items or less, a woman nearly ran me over with her buggy trying to get ahead of me. I allowed it but said "Absolutely, go right ahead." She had well in excess of the 12 items, didn't have her card ready and then complained about the chip function being required instead of swiping like she had always done with her old card. After she paid, she stopped at the end of the counter, blocking the passage to visit with a passerby.
After I paid for my milk, bread and crackers I had to tell her I wanted to go home tonight, not tomorrow to get her to move.


And not get the checkbook out until they were given the total, seemingly surprised that they were expected to pay for their purchases.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Seeing Orion rising above the edge of the parking lot as I leave work -- irrefutable proof that Winter Is Here. Bah.

Sixteen weeks until spring. Bah.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
Snowing here, adding to the foot or so we got a couple-three days ago. Leave that frozen white s**t up in the mountains where it belongs, please.

Bah, indeed.

 

[Woodtroll]

Man, I love such people. Who's buying stuff for 93 Euro in a german supermarket, which needs the whole conveyor belt and delays all the business?? Lady, supermarkets are nearly everywhere. Split your puchase.

Maybe things are different in Germany, but in rural America a round trip to town, including errands, eats up half a day or more. So you can bet we buy a week’s worth of groceries at a time, and we won’t be going to multiple stores to do it. The impatient people can either use the self-checkout, express line, or shop at a convenience store at a much higher price if they’re in a real hurry.

Whether you’re buying one item or a hundred, though, not being ready to pay promptly when it’s your turn is just plain rude.

 

[tonyb]

Barcodes came on well within the memory of most of us here.

How soon we forget, eh?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Saw my first barcode in 1975, at a First National store in Belfast, Maine. It was a sticker, stuck to a can of Coke. The can came from a vending machine, which kind of defeated the point of the barcode, but I had no way of knowing that at the time...

Meanwhile, neighborhood stores were still using simple hand-keyed cash registered into the early '80s.

 

[3fingers]

Aldi's stores made cashiers memorize prices early on. It was really quite amazing to watch them ring up a large order. I haven't seen anybody in a store with a pricing gun for years.

 

[tonyb]

Barcodes undoubtedly expedite the checkout process. And in concert with other technologies of fairly recent vintage, they make for greater efficiencies in inventory control and loss prevention.

Throw in “loyalty” cards and you can kiss privacy goodbye.

 

[Hercule]

Ah the season of holiday shopping is upon us. A brief outing with my family reminded me of the process of shopping for presents: I tell/show wife what I would like then she proceeds to argue with me as to how that isn't what I want and then tells me what I really should want. I hate gift giving holidays.

 

[Fading Fast]

Ah the season of holiday shopping is upon us. A brief outing with my family reminded me of the process of shopping for presents: I tell/show wife what I would like then she proceeds to argue with me as to how that isn't what I want and then tells me what I really should want. I hate gift giving holidays.

⇧ This is hilarious.

Aldi's stores made cashiers memorize prices early on. It was really quite amazing to watch them ring up a large order. I haven't seen anybody in a store with a pricing gun for years.

A few of the things that have become less valuable in the employment marketplace are the need for a strong memory and the ability to do math rapidly in your head. Yes, as you note, there were cashier and clerk jobs where those combined skills were a requirement - my first job clerking on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was all but a memory-math combination job. Even at Stern's department store (another one of my jobs during college), my ability to remember the price of many items - and to do discounts in my head - made me more valuable to the company.

After clerking, I became of trader where a strong memory and the ability to do math rapidly in your head was the only way you could survive - and the better you were at both, the better the trader you were. However, very early in my career, as the first trading programs started to become available - I was using early ones in the '80s to help, mainly, track and manager my positions or to help spot patterns deep in the data - you could see where it was all going. Into the late '90s, personal math and memory skills, overall, trumped computers as their expense, speed and clunkiness (and the ability to incorporate them into legacy systems, etc.) allowed strong math and memory skills to still matter to traders.

But that is all past. Today, trading is almost all computer algorithms with humans contributing abstract, non-linear thinking that is either being built into the programs or used directly to trade, but math and memory skills are much, much less important. It's why the field of finance now hires more computer programers than finance majors as traders. It's funny/interesting to think about how different careers - paths, opportunities and required skills - have changed over time.

 

[Trenchfriend]

When you are familiarized with your work-efficient notebook with Xubuntu-Linux and you sit on someone's seldom used notebook with WinXP (which I installed back then), "trying" to start internet-working...

Then you know again:

F..K THIS SHIT!!

 

[3fingers]

Simmer down Trenchy. You're going to give yourself the vapors over a borrowed computer? Life's too short.

 

[tonyb]

When you are familiarized with your work-efficient notebook with Xubuntu-Linux and you sit on someone's seldom used notebook with WinXP (which I installed back then), "trying" to start internet-working...

Then you know again:

F..K THIS SHIT!!

Hit it with a 9-pound hammer. That fixes it every time.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Simmer down Trenchy. You're going to give yourself the vapors over a borrowed computer? Life's too short.

Not borrowed. I was at the other people's home.

 

[Trenchfriend]

A good thing!:

Isn't it great, that good old felt slippers for home sweet home are still alive? Today, I bought my (three ) new pairs from department store. I just love them. Lightweight, breathy, flexible, comfortable as hell! And storebrand 20 bucks.

 

[Harp]

⇧ This is hilarious.



A few of the things that have become less valuable in the employment marketplace are the need for a strong memory and the ability to do math rapidly in your head.

After clerking, I became of trader where a strong memory and the ability to do math rapidly in your head was the only way you could survive - and the better you were at both, the better the trader you were.

But that is all past. Today, trading is almost all computer algorithms with humans contributing abstract, non-linear thinking that is either being built into the programs or used directly to trade, but math and memory skills are much, much less important...

I remain an "instinctive technician" in real time, cognizant of fundamentals but a chart lover with Fibonacci retracement
and Elliot wave numbers etched in my soul. I also found this "gut" approach has similar application at the track,
where pace and speed factors coincide along equine equations that prove problematic to decipher.

 

[Fading Fast]

I remain an "instinctive technician" in real time, cognizant of fundamentals but a chart lover with Fibonacci retracement
and Elliot wave numbers etched in my soul. I also found this "gut" approach has similar application at the track,
where pace and speed factors coincide along equine equations that prove problematic to decipher.

I combine fundamentals for longer-term macro allocations with technicals for short-term timing / entry / exit and an experience/instinctual-driven overlay "guardrailed" by hard risk control parameters. After thirty years, I'm pretty comfortable, there is no "answer" to trading or one right way to trade; for me, it's the above high-level process (I could go on in detail more than anyone would want to read) that works. And, yes, I find Fibonacci retracements surprisingly consistently helpful.


Edit add: Like you, I apply some of the same approach to the track, but to be honest, for me, they take too much vig out of each dollar at the track for it to be anything more than entertainment.

 

[Harp]

Edit add: Like you, I apply some of the same approach to the track, but to be honest, for me, they take too much vig out of each dollar at the track for it to be anything more than entertainment.

Track takeout is far too high; also the fees for availing the exotics.
The Delaware Handicap is synonymous in memory of racecourse larceny; a generous trifecta-a hunch mathematically
nailed down while screwing off on the internet at the office-and although I enjoyed sliding the grand plus inside
my wallet the track's cut sliced the wad considerably. I prefer the exotics to a single winner play. Last Kentucky Derby
I thought to TED-spread Maximum Security and Country House in a series of tri/superfecta bets but abandoned
the notion at the last minute-taking Maximum Security as lead horse in a promising superfecta, with a Super 5/all.
Busted flush with the disqualification though I blame myself for not going the TED with Country House.
Still, I love the game, find profit, and accept that the piper gets paid at the window.