Wednesday, May 26, 2010

When technology FAILS.

We walked into our [new] local grocery store, and we headed straight to Customer Service to sign up for their discount card. While we waited, there was a guy in front of us waiting, doing something on his iPhone, and generally being anti-social.

The assistant manager (who looked and spoke like Delroy Lindo) came up to the desk. He asked who was next, and the guy just stood there staring at his iPhone. When I pointed to him, the Asst. Manager asked, "May I help you?"

In super slow motion, the guy pulls around his packed backpack and says, "yeah I just bought all of these items, and I was charged wrong." He proceeds to unload his backpack full of items he bought, telling the Asst. Manager he hadn't been discounted, and then he showed the Asst. Manager that he had scanned his value card onto his iPhone. The Asst. Manager looked up and asked, "you....scanned your card? Our machines can't scan barcodes that are on an iPhone."

When the Asst. Manager went to check pricing for something (the guy had taken pictures of the sale price listed on the shelves - then why didn't he open his mouth at the checkout when he was charged wrong?!) the guy turned to us and said, "this happens every single time." Okay - so let's use some common sense.

If you have issues every single time then, obviously, you knew your iPhone wouldn't work for scanning the barcode of a value card. You have had this happen before. Why not just take out your value card, and use it instead of going through all of this again?