Buying vegetables

When I was a child, my parents had to weigh and put price-tags on all the fruit and fresh vegetables they bought. This has long been history in Sweden. Instead, the cashiers learn all the four digit PLU codes by heart (or occasionally look in a table) and all the costumers have to do is to put the apples or onions in a plastic bag. I was amazed to come to Switzerland where the "old" system is still up and running. And when I by mistake forgot to tag my cauliflower or eggplant, the cashier took I run (and I really mean a run!) to the fruit and vegetable department to weigh it in for me. That's what I called service.

But at the same time it's kind of stupid. Because if they had a scale and a catalog of PLU numbers by the counter, they wouldn't have to take that run. And if they had a scale and all the necessary PLU codes by the counter there would be no need for the costumers to do the job themselves at all. In the end, it would mean that the costumers have to wait a tiny bit longer by the counter, but save much more time in the vegetable department since there is no risk of forgetting the cucumber number before reaching the scale (since in Switzerland, every vegetable and fruit have a number, and by the scales you press the individual number for every item). I guess this is what the supermarkets in Sweden figured out long before I bought my first orange.

However, Sweden being in the frontier, the scales are now reintroduced. Not for every Tom, Dick or Harry, but for everyone following the self-scanning trend. So now, we who call ourselves the go-aheaders run around the supermarkets with barcode scanners, fooling ourselves that we are saving time while what we really do is to save the cashiers from work. And of course, self-scanning means that we have to go back to the scales for the potatoes and watermelons we buy since there is no cashier in the end to do the work for us. And to confuse it all even more, even if you are not a self-scanning costumer, you can still use the scales and "save time" at the counter (in case there's an unexperienced cashier who doesn't know all the PLUs by heart) by spending an eternity by the touch screen that goes with the scale to find the image of that fennel...

Some stores in Switzerland also have the self-scanning option, and something tells me that they will completely skip the scales-at-the-counter-step, no matter how costumer friendly that would be.