On Tue, 23 May 2000, Chuck McManis wrote: On the same token, how many of you have gone to one of those computer superstores like CompuUSA or Fry's and felt totally indignant at having to have your bag checked and receipt highlighted with a marker for apparently no good reason? Well, I tired of that really quickly and now simply breeze through the exit (as it was intended) without even so much as acknowledging the poor idiot who has that job. The fact is, they cannot stop you and you have no obligation to stop. I haven't done any legal research but I'm sure "unlawful detention" comes into play here. I urge everyone who encounters one of these honorless systems to simply ignore them. Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking for a six in a pile of nines... Coming soon: VCF 4.0! VCF East: Planning in Progress See http://www.vintage.org for details!

On Tue, May 23, 2000 at 10:45:37AM -0700, Vintage Computer GAWD! wrote: Actually from what I understand there is a good reason. Namely they don't trust thier own employees! Supposedly they're checking to make sure that the cashiers charged you for everything you got. However, considering how much I've dropped in both stores I've got to agree. It totally pisses me off! Zane

On Tue, May 23, 2000 at 01:30:11PM -0700, healyzh(a)aracnet.com wrote: Nearly everything about the Fry's checkout process sucks. If you go to buy computer parts like memory or a hard drive, they have long forms onscreen to fill out (including name, address etc, but usually they skip that part). Then they _print_ the form. (This is a computer store, haven't they heard of a network?) Last time I had to wait several minutes because the printer kept jamning. So then you walk up front and wait in another long line. Wait for somebody to hold up a sign. So low-tech. (I'm sure they must have fun telling new cashiers, "here's your sign". It would certainly be appropriate.) Half the barcodes don't scan. They used to use these old fashioned light-pen type scanners but at least the last time, they'd finally upgraded to the pistol-grip autoscanning kind. Then the cashier disappears for several minutes to get your stuff from the cage. He or she finally reappears, and after adequate payment hassle, you wait while the receipt printer (which has done nothing in advance of this moment) prints out two feet of paper, slowly, one line at a time. Then you go wait in line again at the exit. And get home to find out your product was already returned once and is missing something or doesn't work. So you can go stand in line again and shuttle more paper back and forth and be trapped into buying from them again because they will only give you store credit because you lost the receipt. What I would like to see instead, despite the cries of "Big Brother" from so many people, is a smart card or iButton that has the memory of who you are and all the ID numbers for all the various stores at which you shop. You use it when checking out like all the grocery stores are doing with the "[euphemism to make you feel appreciated] Card"s, but you use the same one everywhere. Encryption would be involved (the Java-iButton from Dallas Semiconductor would be perfect for this) so that each store can only get from your device the information that they put on it in the first place, as well as a little bit of "public" info like name and phone number. Somebody could make a killing selling POS systems to do that. But I guess the customer's convenience is really the last thing on their minds. -- _______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud(a)bigfoot.com (_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud kb7pwd(a)kb7pwd.ampr.org __) | | \________________________________________________________________ Get money for spare CPU cycles at http://www.ProcessTree.com/?sponsor=5903

Try going through their checkout line when their checkout POS system was down. They had to call in every VISA authorization by voice call. Big big line then... George ========================================================= George L. Rachor Jr. george(a)racsys.rt.rain.com Beaverton, Oregon http://racsys.rt.rain.com United States of America Amateur Radio : KD7DCX On Tue, 23 May 2000 healyzh(a)aracnet.com wrote:

On Tue, 23 May 2000, Shawn T. Rutledge wrote: At the risk of turning this into a full-fledge anti-Fry's flame-a-thon (apologies in advance) the clerks there (gawd bless them) are so stupid sometimes. I got one who was having trouble scanning stuff so he'd swipe the bar code wand over the item back & forth three or four times to make it scan. His hearing must not have been very keen, nor his eyesite, because he managed to scan one package of candy 3 or 4 times and didn't catch it. I heard the beeps and immediately knew what happened, but poop-for-brains didn't realize it. When the receipt came I pointed it out. Knowing full well from past experiences that if I had made him take the extra charges off it would have taken probably 10 minutes for him to call a manager over (they can't seem to do ANYTHING other than ring-up crap unless a manager gets involved) and since I had to get back to the VCF because a speaker was waiting for the VCR I was also purchasing, I just went and grabbed 3 more candies from the shelf and told him we were even. Of course I breezed through the Gestapo check at the door. DAMN those printers are slow!!! Always, always, ALWAYS ***OPEN*** the package you want to purchase and visually inspect everything inside. Make sure it is complete before buying it. You'll save yourself a ton of hassle. Which brings me to a point, which is sometimes it's more cost effective to just pay more at another store than to take the chance with Fry's crap. Yeah, I'll pass. Really, the problem with Fry's is that they can't keep employees around because the working environment probably sucks so bad. They are mostly immigrants (nothing against them!) who speak poor English, getting paid minimum wage at best, who are told to show up the first day in a nice white shirt, tie, and black slacks, then thrown out into the fray to answer questions from customers who already know way more about computers than they ever will. After two or three days of feeling like idiots they leave to find a real job. One day I actually found a regular American white boy working the floor who actually knew the answer to the question I had, knew where to find what I was looking for, took me to that place, and actually APOLOGIZED for how crappy the experience at Fry's was! It was like finding, in a colony of chimpanzees, one that could talk. I felt sorry for him. Anyway, I'm very sorry for carrying on like this. But Fry's has been a Silicon Valley institution (for better or worse) for the past couple of decades, so it's part of the history and culture and gives you outlanders an idea of what it's like at least :) Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking for a six in a pile of nines... Coming soon: VCF 4.0! VCF East: Planning in Progress See http://www.vintage.org for details!

Actually since a Mac only store opened last fall a few blocks from them I don't believe I've purchased anything from CompUSA. I'd rather pay more than deal with them anymore. Although if you can ever find one of there 'end of the fiscal year' type sales, they're well worth going to. I got lucky and stumbled across one of those, but not lucky enough that got one of the $200 laptops :^( Still the PII/266 I got that day for $400 was a steal, and my cousins twins love their $100 PowerMac. Zane

Amazing how well that works at Radio Shack, and it doesn't raise anyones blood pressure. Though usually I use something along the lines of "You don't need that information." Zane | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator | | healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast | | healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

Zane wrote: I've sometimes gotten arguments over that. Maybe you have more midiclorians (sp?) than I? :-)

On Tue, 23 May 2000, Chuck McManis wrote: How many are not? (shorter list) Altho, in a previous life we had come up with what we considered to be a reasonable solution for this irritant. Altho since they no longer hand write the tickets it really won't work these days... I worked in a service center about a 2 minute (round trip) walk from a Radio Shack, so we made frequent excursions over there to pick up parts that we needed in a hurry, but not in a quantity that made it worthwhile to order from our distributor. Of course, the five minute interrogation tended to negate the time saving (note I won't say 'convienence') factor, and the sales droids were annoyingly determined to extract the information... So one day, we had an 'X'-stamper (self inking rubber stamp) made with the companys address (P.O. Box - no phone number) on it, and the next time that we got the interrogative from the droid, the stamp came out of the pocket, and WHAM'ed across the top of the ticket pad with a flourish and a satifying whump. As the sales droid's eyes glazed over... he hands up the ticket and we depart a good 4.5 minutes sooner than usual... After about three rounds like this, they stopped asking and just slid the pad over the desk for the ceremonial whomping. See... proper use of technology CAN simplify life! At least for some... -jim --- jimw(a)computergarage.org || jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com The Computer Garage - http://www.computergarage.org Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174

On Tue, 23 May 2000, Vintage Computer GAWD! wrote: No foreheads... But I do recall getting a hand or two when they did move out of the way quickly enough. B^} -jim --- jimw(a)computergarage.org || jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com The Computer Garage - http://www.computergarage.org Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174