Another awkward customer? ...no, just me again...

[hmmm_tea]

An extract from my receipt from Sainsbury's today:

COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£2.00
COUPON	£2.00
COUPON	£2.00
COUPON	£0.50
COUPON	£0.50
COUPON	£0.50
COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£0.50
COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£0.50
COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£0.50
COUPON	£2.00
COUPON	£2.00
COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£1.00
COUPON	£1.00
... YOUR SAVINGS TODAY
COUPON 23	-£25.00

Well, that's got rid of all those lunchon vouchers. Although it did take a while for the cashier to scan and cross them all out*...

Does that make me an awkward customer?

* wasn't really expecting it to take so long and the other customers in the queue were getting a little impatient. Oh well, lots of food, etc for not very much...

...and port...

...hmmmm port :-)

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Accidently awkward. I don't suppose it made any difference in the long run -- the coupons would take the same total time to deal with singly or all at once, and would even be slightly faster on an assembly line, so people would have the same average wait. On the other hand, variance would also be an issue -- you might be annoyed if you expected to be back in n minutes, and unexpectedly couldn't be. But no blame attaches to you because you couldn't reasonably have known, so you weren't any more awkward than any other customer on yourself :)

You did spend more than £25, right? :)

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

the coupons would take the same total time to deal with singly or all at once

May not have taken any longer if I'd tried to sing too, but I'm sure it would have annoyed people too...

You did spend more than £25, right?

hmmm port :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

May not have taken any longer if I'd tried to sing too, but I'm sure it would have annoyed people too...

I assumed what the people were annoyed about was what I would be annoyed about, having to wait for their shopping[1]. If they're allergic to coupon spores, my comment is withdrawn, but I think you should have mentioned the rashes breaking out, etc, and maintain my assumption was reasonable. To a first approximation people expect some variation in wait, and so the problem could be keyed to average wait, hence my comment that those would be the same.

[1] In fact, it's probably more complicated. I think a factor we tend not to notice is feeling out of control. If I know shopping always involves queuing for 1/2 hr, I can take a book, stock up on stuff, and it's absolutely worse, but not as nerve grating, as waiting for 10 min when expecting to wait for 2, all the time having to pay attention and stand still.

hmmm port :-)

ROFL.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

Could equally have said "hmmm toilet paper" as that was another thing in the shopping.

...but I suppose that's something that's fairly essential to everyday life.

...then again so's port.

*loses what point was*

[mair_in_grenderich]

but spending more than 25 pounds on port is easy. spending more than 25 pounds on toilet paper probably means you like to stock up for the whole year at once, or you have a serious stomach bug, or a toilet paper fetish, or some peculiar use for the toilet paper.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

or some peculiar use for the toilet paper

...but I thought it was perfectly normal to do that with toilet paper?