Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

He sent me this :D

 

It wouldn't surprise me. To go into his little shed you probably need a hazmat suit. It's like a museum of banned chemicals. He does grow lovely dahlias though

 

I have been swindled. So, last week, in a supermarket which I will not name, I put the correct money in a self-service (£2.50), but my 50p did not register and was not spat out when a member of staff intervened to void the transaction. She was very young and, clearly deciding tangling with a pensioner was above her pay grade, I was allowed my goods. Scroll forwards to today. Same shop but in a different location. I put in money, but the machine keeps spitting bits back and then decides it can't take cash and registers I have only put in 2p, whereas I had parted with at least 34p. Not only does the assistant take no measures to retrieve even the 2p, when the machine then spits out 30p, she says it is a machine fault as a 2p was not included.


Pffft! Is this a cunning plan to discourage use of cash?

 

Go to a staffed till @ViewAhead and make them earn your money until they give a discount for using self-service tills and thus savings for them on wages, national insurance etc.

 

No staffed tills, unfortunately. They do have a couple, but only open them at peak times.

 

Change shop?

 

I would have to forego my favourite chocolate bar then, an own brand variety. I think I will just put notes in in future. It seems to be coins that cause the issue. Then, if the correct change does not emerge, I can call for assistance and show the evidence. Or I could buy 4 bars at once and then I wouldn't need any change from a tenner!

 

I gues sit depends on how strongly you feel about it.

We have just given up buying our favourite Milka chocolate after I discovered they'd paid the necessary bribes to set up in Russia despite western sanctions. There are others but we don't consume Pepsi and the rest.

I feel very strongly about automatic tills replacing jobs, usually for women whose job options are limited by the need for child friendly hours so will never use one. My favourite SM has tills with priority for the disabled, pregnant mums, care professions and people who like to chat - not all the same till! They even have a couple of "English spoken" tills in summer, not that i've tested them.

 

Tills are a thing of the past here. Self-service outnumber these at a rate of about 12 to 1 in both my nearest Sainsbury's and Waitrose, and the few till lanes available are often closed. In my Waitrose, you can't pay cash at any of the self-service ones either, so they are doing their best to filter that out as well.

They know we have to shop somewhere so by all adopting the same self-service approach, none of them lose customers to another SM on account of this.

 

Soon after covid the supermarket I use was struggling to get staff, nobody wants the jobs, it was soon after they moved to lots of self service tills.
I'd much rather use those and avoid queuing but often there is even a queue there as well.

 

I do actually like the self service tills, especially the ones where I can ‘zap’ m shopping and put it straight into my bag. I used to get back ache transferring my shopping onto the conveyer belt, then back into my bags. In fact, when they store would offer help to pack my bags, I would ask them to empty my trolley instead! I didn’t mind doing the packing. I would have been very grateful, after a big shop, to have had someone to carry me to the car!
We stopped buying any Walls ice cream, @Obelix-Vendée, for similar reasons. Unilever products also went on our banned list, very tiresome finding alternatives but have managed mostly.

 

The bar weighs 100g, @shiney, so that is at least 4 portions ... and usually 8. I like my chocolate fix little and often. So, for a tenner, I'd get between 16 and 32 portions.

Have you seen the ingredients list for a Magnum? This chocolate has 5. I don't buy Cadbury's anymore due to all the things in it! Chocolate doesn't need E numbers and "flavourings" can cover a multitude of undesirables.


Ingredients

• MILK, sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, whey powder (from MILK), vegetable fats (palm, shea), emulsifiers (E442, E476), flavourings

 

I see a few people loitering in the drinks area where I got, often elderly people, they have no basket or trolley.

Usually they put a few cans or small bottles straight into their bag.

I assume they can't be stopped until they walk out the store.
They changed the spirits counter from self service to pay at the counter recently.