Faulty Technology

I went to Sainsbury's this morning with the intention of buying some clothes as they currently have a 25% sale on of all their branded clothes. I spent some time browsing and choose underwear, socks, shirt and trousers. I had a few other items to purchase so went round the store and put it in my trolley. I then went to pay at the nearest checkout and wanted to use a staffed one rather than a self-service one. There's nothing wrong with these self-service checkouts and I have no problem using them but there comes a time when you really want to see a human face. Not all checkout staff are very conversational and I imagine it must be a boring job, just scanning groceries. Nothing much difficult as everything is automated, including working out the change. Not like in the pre-computer days when every item had a label and staff had to put every item through manually. It does make you wonder, though, whether every item which has a barcode can be accurate and the price you see on the shelf-edge is correct and exactly the same as what you pay. Just me, I'm afraid. Anyway, when it came to scanning the trousers I'd wanted they would not scan and the operator had to call the supervisor. She took me to the customer service desk and said that she'd go round to the clothing section to see if the staff there could sort out the problem. We went back to the customer service desk and eventually another member of staff bought round another similar pair of trousers and scanned the barcode and I was able to pay for my items with my debit card. They even gave me a £5 goodwill service taken off my bill which was great and I've never had that before. Just goes to show that the technology doesn't always work on these labels that these products have.