Gasoline Alley by Jim Scancarelli for July 25, 2010

Considering supermarket cashiers handle those things several times every hour, I have to agree with Slim.

Dingbat Alley.

She probably snapped under the pressure… like the mail, the groceries… just… keep… coming…

My grocery discount card is completely unregistered. A store employee was carrying a double handful of new cards to the service desk when she dropped a couple without noticing. Instead of giving them back, I kept them. Now, when I use it to buy groceries, the information they collect has no name, age or any other information attached to it. It does Big Brother absolutely no good.

I resemble the first frame!

Runar, you are off the grid, man!

no, it’s official, she’s a stupid cashier

Anybody who applies for one of those discount cards should use a fake name, fake address and lie about everything else.

@runar, I too have an anonymous grocery card. However, they still get useful information by tracking the card id. If you have ever used anything other than cash with the card (check, credit/debit card), they know the name that goes with it also.

If I were going to commit a crime, I would steal someone else’s card first - let them be the first suspect. That is the real danger of this electronic tracking. It gets even worse if the detective thinks such electronic records are gospel.

“Funny” always has a hint of truth in it.

This has never happened to anyone in the history of grocery stores!

My supermarket has a ‘rewards card’. Reward for what, letting Big Bro know what I buy and where and when? Went to a different one of their stores last week and sure enough, along comes an emailed questionnaire asking whether I enjoyed the experience and what could they do to make it even more enjoyable. The reply was to instruct checkout personnel who are 1/3 of my age not to tell me when and how to swipe my card and enter the PIN. Oh yes, the reward is apparently getting a discount off fuel at a specified service station. Scheme has been going for years now but the discount in cents is the same as when fuel cost 30% less.

I’m curious how does one find out history on those cards? My hubby uses it also get a lot off for gas. I thought if a store clerk looses one, have a list, compare numbers missing cancel.

How about the cashier who cannot resist making comments on our purchases. “Sweet tooth, huh, nice choice of steak, I never buy this stuff!”

I just give them the silent treatment, when I am not amused.

Clovia should have her head examined for letting Slim do the grocery shopping. Om the other hand, if she didn’t get him out of the garage so some real work could be performed, they’d never make any money.

@ quantumtorpedo1. Yes, wish they could resist commenting on what I buy, just as I refrain from commenting on the poor choice of groceries of the person in front of me. There is also the extraordinary interest the checkout people display in our state of health by asking how we are. Perhaps we should be more tolerant, how they stand about 10,000 blips a day from the bar code reader is beyond me. Why can’t supermarkets have two stations at each checkout, one to read the bar code and the second to simply sense if an item has been passed over it. If the code scan hasn’t worked THEN the machine could make a blip.

Lucky he can even find a divider–often the cashiers hide them all under the counter, for reasons which will never be understood.

And no, for the 347th time, I do not have a card, and I will not get one. Why? Because you keep trying so hard to make me get one, it has to be greatly to your advantage and not so much to mine. As for the supposed savings, I just won’t buy any item that’s way overpriced without the card.

And I pay in cash. No swiping, no button-punching, no nothing. I give you the money, you give me the merchandise, that’s it.