And the always present 'do you need a hand to pack', no, I pretty much mastered putting small objects in a bag some forty years ago - thanks!
(Benzyl, Tue 15 Jun 2010, 17:35, 1 reply)

^This^
And all the other scripted bollocks...
"Do you have a reward/nectar/give-us-valuable-and-intrusive-personal-data-for-next-to-fuck-all card?"
"Are you collecting the school vouchers?"
"Would you like a VAT receipt?" (on the forecourts).

I noticed most of them don't ask "would you like cashback" on smaller transactions any more. Presumably some time and motion tosser noticed that it was taking morons twice as long to take out their wallet/purse to see how much cash they've got, um and ah for just a bit too long, remember their pin, punch it in, wait for the transaction to go through, wait for the cashier to open the till and give them the cash, put it away in their wallet/purse, put their debit card back in their wallet/purse, put their wallet(s)/purse(s) back in their pocket/handbag, etc. compared to just paying for their stuff and queueing up at the cash machine on the wall outside.

And why is it that the friendliest till staff always seem to be the screamingly camp ones with the fascinating skin conditions, Marty Feldman squint, paint-stripper halitosis, waterbed obesity ripples, those strange flesh-coloured plastic arthritic hand support things, etc.? They seem to be exactly the sort of people you'd cross the road to avoid in any other context. The teenagers and the pretty but dim GCSE failures can barely muster a "hello".
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Thu 17 Jun 2010, 13:34, closed)