h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Are you using your own bags.
Beeep.
Please verify bags.
Beeep.
Unexpected item in bagging area.
Beeep.
Please verify bags.
Beeep.
Item number required.
Beeep.
Unexpected item in bagging area.
Beeep.
Please call for assistence.
Beeep.
Item verification required.
Are you using your own bags?
Beeep.
Please verify bags.
Unexpected item in bagging area.
Unexpected item in bagging area.
Beeep.
Please enter payment type.
Beeep.
Are you using your own bags?
Unexpected item in bagging area.
Please verify bags.
Beeep.
Unexpected item in bagging area. Unexpected item in bagging area. Unexpected item in bagging area. Beeep. Unexpected item in bagging area. Unexpected item in bagging area. Please verify bags. Beeep Unexpected item in bagging area. Unexpected item in bagging area. Unexpected item in bagging area. Beeep. Please verify bags. Please verify bags. Unexpected item in bagging area. Beeep. Unexpected item in bagging area. Unexpected item in bagging area. Unexpected item in bagging area. Beeep.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

I find the subtly asynchronous renditions of identical messages from the four self-service tills in the Sainbury's Local by the office to be almost like a modern music work.

B

i just leave all the grub and walk away! it makes a point!

This seems to be about technology that doesn't exist over here ...

Whenever I hear 'unexpected item in the bagging area' message I look around for something *really unexpected, like the Spanish Inquisition at the very least.

When I was growing up calling someone a bag, usually 'old bag' was a common insult. That's what resonates when I hear these things constantly going on about bags . It tends to get personal.

Willem, you scan your own shopping through them and put it in bags on a weight sensitive plate. If the weight of what you put down doesn't match with the scanned barcode the machine tells you off.

They can work like a dream, or they can go bananas. They scanned a bunch of grapes through for me once at £32,000.

In our Sainsburys on Saturday there was a chorus of eight EPOS check-outs being conducted by a frantic wee girl who looked about 14. They were all going bananas. I was going bananas, the guy at the next machine was going bananas, S remained irritatingly unbananaed steadily scanning items through regardless of the whole beeping pandemonium.

Those were the days.

I have now seen EPOS from the inside. From the other end. From where the torrents of data recording every single item purchased, with its VAT code, its accounting code, its date and time, its method of payment, its banking date, its copy receipt, its till operative and its shop location pour down from The Cloud every second from 9.00 till 5.00 every day. From the end where the torrents of data must be matched with the pounds and pennies landing in the bank. Where the knots created by ever-inventive till operators forgetting to close the till for a week, hitting the wrong keys, forgetting the decimal point when purchasing £242 worth of milk from petty cash, giving the wrong change, mixing up paying-in slip numbers, must be untangled. Where the snags created by the ever-inventive software writers duplicating report fields, applying all three VAT codes to a single item, recording VAT to 100ths of pennies, missing out product lines entirely and Americanising the dates must be unsnagged. And where the hitches made by customers with refunds, bouncing cheques and foreign coins must be smoothed out.

Maybe this time next year the chaos that results from putting 20 odd charity shops on Epos without a test run, or parallel running, or effective on-the-ground training will have resolved itself and all will be calm. Maybe. Or maybe £800,000 worth of purchases of secondhand clothes, books and bric-a-brac will have drowned us.

I've got a headache

Only use one when accompanied by'savvy' son The queues are usually longer than for the normal checkouts.

Websailor