Do it yourself

I’ve had cause, in posts passim, to moan about the appalling standard of customer service in this country before. Clearly I haven’t been listened to, so I’m going to have to do it again. Same shop though – Sainsburys.

Last time, it was because I was asked “Would you like any help packing?” when I was buying three items. They are now at the other end of the spectrum. Recently the Sainsburys in Reading town centre has had about half its checkouts removed and replaced with self service check outs. So you do your own scanning and bagging. It’s an obvious money saving rouse as the customer does what traditionally stores have had to pay people to do. I’ve used these machines before in M&S and found them satisfactory as long as there are staff about to help you. If you don’t put your goods into the bag quick enough the machines go “beep, beep, beep” and request you seek assistance. Buying wine? “beep, beep, beep.” Aspirin? “beep, beep, beep.” Bleach? “beep, beep, beep.” You get the idea.

This works in M&S as they have about one member of staff to four self service tills, but Sainsburys have about one for eight. Unsurprisingly, it was pretty busy there tonight after office hours. Or does the Reading store have a new manager with no retail experience as this flood of people seemed to have taken them totally by surprise. Is it “bring your child to work week” leading to the store being managed by 2 five year olds? (This will doubtless be the subject to a later post if any bloody children are bought in to my office, but we’ll cross that bridge at the time.) There were 7 or 8 people queuing for each bank of four tills and one harassed assistant trying to quell the beeps.

There was only one proper checkout open. It had seventeen people in the queue. I counted them. I think that’s a pretty clear vote on the popularity of self service checkouts. Will anything change? No.

This will soon be re-written and emailed to Sainsburys for their comments. I will of course share any reply. In fact, I can probably do that now…

Blah, blah, blah, disappointing shopping experience, blah, blah, blah, embracing new technology, blah, blah, blah, some difficulties in the transitional phase, blah, blah, blah, we welcome your money – sorry feedback… and so it will go on.

I went on as well. To Marks & Spencer. Their fine wines are very reasonably priced.

Bullies

This annoys me...

Court jails Pirate Bay founders

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Forgive me if I'm wrong (yeah), but TPB aren't really a file sharing network if you boil it down. They are a glorified search engine for torrent trackers. The whole point about torrenting is that you are lifting stuff from somebody's computer, not a massive database of stored material, hosted, managed and distributed by The Bay. It's high-tech Socialism and it works. As does the more traditional Socialism, but that's for another day.

I know torrenting is illegal, which is why you'll never catch me doing it, so TPB are facilitating the sharing of copyrighted material, but I could just as easily search Google for say "30 Rock torrents" and guess what - I'd find links for 30 Rock torrents.

But Sony, EMI, etc didn't sue Google did they?

No.

Why?

Because Google are FUCKING MASSIVE, worth $$$$$$$ and probably have a pretty sharp legal team? I mean a better legal team even than Jacko's. Shit, I bet they even got Denny Crane leading. Best to pick on a bunch of geeky stoners who saw the whole thing as a bit of a wheeze right from the start, safe in the knowledge that, whatever the result their cult status would remain intact.

It's maddening. The best way to celebrate this victory for 'the man' is to, all of you, torrent at least one file. Now. Use The Bay, it's still live and as they say "Don't worry - we're from the internets. It's going to be alright. :-)"

Will this result stop torrenting? Yes. In exactly the same way that Bush/Bliar's war on terror has ended terrorism. Oh, hang on...

I can recommend 30 Rock by the way. And Boston Legal.

More tea vicar?

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time." Bertrand Russell 1952.