Life's Little Irritations

What sort of irritations am I referring to? One I can mention is, during the summer, such as now, when we have warm weather, when we have the windows open to cool the house, you get bees and other flying insects coming in. Then they get stuck, trying to get out again, attempting to get through the glass of the window, not realising that you can't get through glass, and then, when you open the window wider to let the thing out, it refuses point blank to go out through the open window! Then the flitting and buzzing they make continues unabated and there seems to be nothing you can do to relieve it.

You put dirty laundry on in the washing machine. The machine finishes it's cycle, you hang the washing out to dry, and almost every time, no matter what you do, you find you have one lone sock that hasn't gone in the machine with it's partner. Invariably you get that one lone sock at the end of the wash-cycle, even when you go to put them in your sock drawer. WHY does this happen? How many odd, lone socks do I now possess? Or you go to put on clean socks in the morning, take out what you imagine to be a matching pair and then you find they don't actually match? Does it matter? Who's going to see they don't match? Nobody. It really doesn't matter. You probably don't realise until the night, when you change to go to bed. You then discover they don't match. Oh well, just another of life's little mysteries.

You go to the supermarket and spend a lot of time going round the store, putting items into your trolley. Once completed, you go to the checkout and load your items onto the conveyor belt. This takes some considerable time, but then the checkout malfunctions so you have to spend even more time taking each item off the conveyor belt and moving to another working check-out. Time and energy wasted. This invariably happens at one of those self-serve check-outs. As I've probably mentioned in an earlier blog post, it's bound to be the only one of these check-outs that is available as all the others are occupied and you've probably had to queue to get on one of them. The other similar event is when you need to use a lift, usually to get down to the carpark after you've done your shopping and then have an extremely full trolley. You go to use the lift, no doubt the other lift (there's usually two lifts, the other being in use, or out of service. Then you get in the lift, it's extremely full with other shoppers and their trolleys. Then, on attempting to press the button for your floor, the lift won't move, it's also out of order and it takes some time to extricate yourself from the lift and the have to push your trolley down to the carpark, going down various ramps and walk-ways.

Okay, I know what you're thinking. 'He's written about 'Life's Little Irritations' in earlier posts, under 'niggles.' Well, yes, perhaps I have. I have to admit that I find some 'niggles' in everyday life. I'm sure we all have in some way shape or form. I could go on. So I will.

Bottles and tubes that are difficult to open. Think those bottles that liquid hand-soap comes in. Those annoying pumps that come locked when you buy them. You're supposed to twist the pump to release the thing and they invariably refuse to unlock. Those plastic packets of various products, such as sweets, that you're supposed to get into by tearing across the top, but never do. You end up having to use scissors to cut the packet open.

How about traffic lights? How long should they remain on red? In Milton Keynes we have very few. The ones near Sainsbury's do seem to take an age to change to green. There isn't that much traffic to let through, so why does it take so long? Are they set at a certain length of time? Do they alter the length on how much traffic moves past? Some sort of computer system that measures the amount of traffic and alters the timing accordingly?

Ticket machines, in carparks particularly. You have to put coins in said machine, you hunt through your pockets for the correct amount and then put these in the slot in the machine. The whole lot fall through and come out of the slot at the bottom of the machine. You have a £1 coin, the new style coin. The machine refuses to accept it. It also falls through. You would assume that all the parking  ticket machines would have been adapted to take the new-style coins. But no . . .

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.

Last Day of School Holiday

Monday was Carol's final day of the summer holidays. She has two day's teacher training. Not her favourite two days as a lot of it is incredibly boring. I know how boring this can be as when I did care work you had to do the mandatory training, lifting and handling, food handling, infection control, child protection etc etc. Basically ticking boxes and making sure you're up to date with the latest legislation. We went over to the Academy at around 9 o'clock to prepare so stuff, sticking labels on boxes and sorting thing out. Only a couple of other teachers in her department turned up so it shows who id dedicated to their job. We then went to Asda to get some food for lunch and our evening meal. We had done a large order on-line from Sainsbury's on Saturday and that should arrive today (Tuesday). It tuned out our Asda visit might not have been such a good idea as it was very crowded and most of those in there were children with parents. In the clothes section many parents were buying school uniforms for their offspring and it looked like bees round a honey-pot. I think they will have bought out the entire stock. We had a look at the clothing section but Carol couldn't see anything she liked. By the time we'd done the rest of our shopping and got to the checkout there were very fraught parents with screaming children. On child in particular was screaming fit to bust, clamped into seat in shopping trolley while it's father was packing groceries as it came off the checkout conveyor belt. Why let a child get away with such ear-piercing noise? It was awful.

I have to say I think I know why the children were being so noisy and over-bearing. They had very loud music on in Asda. Also, whenever they use the Tannoy, to communicate with other members of staff or to give customer information, it is far too loud. It's a very large space, the building is huge. If I have a problem with shopping there it is that it so large you seem to spend a lot of your time walking up and down and it can be very exhausting. So, with loud music, someone shouting over a Tannoy system, you can see why those children would get upset, which then leads to stressed parents and other adult shoppers. It really is about time someone in Asda realised the music and Tannoy announcements need to be quieter. Sometimes they have Tannoy messages which are so distorted and loud you cannot really hear what is being said, so it defeats the object of having a Tannoy system.