On Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:01:04 -0800, sf > wrote:

>On Sun, 3 Jan 2016 19:46:38 -0500, Dave Smith
> wrote:
>
>> On 2016-01-03 7:38 PM, sf wrote:
>>
>> >> We should be able to give them a whack in the back of the head to
>> >> smarten them up, or at least to express our displeasure at the stupidity
>> >> that wastes the time of the people behind them.
>> >>
>> > In the olden days, you could watch the cash register as entries were
>> > made and catch mistakes. Not so anymore, but you can't teach an old
>> > dog new tricks.
>>
>> Are you serious? In the old days cashiers rang things up by hand and
>> they were usually so fast that you really had to keep an eye on the
>> register to catch mistakes. Now they have a fair sized screen that
>> shows the item, weight and cost per unit if applicable, and the price,
>> and there is room on the screen for about a dozen items, so it is much
>> easier to catch mistakes.
>
>Maybe you couldn't keep up, but I could and if they entered the sale
>price I could remember if it was correct or not. I could keep track
>of it even after scanners - before they started ringing up the full
>price and subtracting at the end to give us a mysterious total.

Hah... in my olden days the cash register receipt was a brown paper
bag and a pencil... and the clerk could add up a whole column faster
than todays clerks can input data on a computer, and no errors. There
were no UPC codes, clerks knew the price of every item in the store.
They never asked "paper or plastic", there was no plastic.