Plain Weird10 Dec 2009 01:19 pm
By Nelson
Thanks to Siddhu and Neil.
I love self-service checkouts. I can buy those embarrassing items without anyone knowing, don’t have to stand behind women or old people fiddling with their purses, and can avoid all form of contact or ‘conversation’ with the checkout assistants.
mike wright, birmingham
Been struggling with this one. I reckon it’s that garlic you get that’s been chopped up and put in a tube.
I did wonder whether he was getting off his clangers on Canestan Combi. Try it next time you’re down the self-service checkout. Take a good hit of cream and you’ll be gurning like Bez at the Haç in 1989. Massive rush in the bagging area. Then you get a nice clean buzz off the pessary, perfect for a comedown.
45 Responses to “Embarrassing Items”
Just another way of covertly monitoring and controlling our behaviour and thoughts no doubt.
Is it a coincidence that I received a leaflet in the post at 15:42 yesterday from Waitrose, asking me – yes me personally, though not by name or course – if I wanted to purchase some cucumbers at half price? How did those bastards know that I’d been buying cucumbers recently! Do they realise that this leaflet would sound rather threatening to a man with a pregnant wife? This is now a matter for the police. I know you had something to do with this Nelson, I will have my vengeance!
Has there been a shortage of nutters on HYS?
The last two seem pretty tame, like the sort of people who you might meet at a party and have unpleasent small talk with, rather than the full on hairy hamster hymen who would make a scene at a wedding because there was the wrong type of food (“its all forin!”).
i applaud the use of inverted commas around ‘conversation’
Misanthropic Mike seems a classic HYSer to me.
He can’t cope with all that ‘conversation’ so de rigeur these days at the checkout. He’d rather be barked at by an electronic voice that there’s “an unidentified item in the bagging area.” (A cock presumably in his case)
He’s even irritated by elderly people peering at their change.
And what are these embarrassing items of his? Eggs that aren’t free range? I don’t think so; I can’t work out if it’s Prep H or KY.
Either way you can be pretty sure of avoiding small talk with Mike at any party you go to. He’ll be sitting home alone Having His Say.
Some might find that quite exciting.
Listen to Mr Isofuckinglation here. Contact with his fellow human beings`? Fuck that. They might be unemployed. Or maybe they don’t wash to his higher standards, or fail to bow down when the piece of shit walks past.
And he’s a fucking class A idiot as well for going to self-service checkouts – which might be in use at the time by other customers, possibly old black women – when he could have bought the same over-priced non-functional shit he desires online.
If he is shopping in Sainsburys he might be ashamed of having a trolley full of own brand food that actually says on the label that while it’s not proper food it’s good enough for poor people.
I read that in the voice of Dale Winton introducing Supermarket Sweep.
I have to say I’m pretty much with him on conversation with the checkout assistants, though in his case it’s perhaps more that he’s worried about getting an erection by having a woman talk to him.
Anyway, Paul Haines wins that thread with the phrase “Big Brother gone mad”.
Dear paranoid Mike,
No-one gives a shit about your extra small condoms, replacement douche nozzles or your 15 tubs of ben and jerrys. You feel guilty for needing that stuff and ashamed that no one could possibly understand how much maaterbate Don’t go on the Internet to justify your pathetic inadequecies. You fail at life.
Regards,
self serve till #4 Tescos, Birmingham
The question I would like to pose is: What is more embarrassing – going through a checkout with a muscle magazine and a pot of vaseline or being found out to have posted a comment about self-service checkout tills?
It’s only because the checkout assistance are all forrin’s and he can’t speak the language, mind you he is from Birmingham so even if they were indiginus Ingerlish, there would still be a language barrier (sorry Birmingham, luv ya really).
If we assume “purses” is a euphemism, then it all makes sense. Mike wants to buy his “embarrassing items” alone, and standing behind half a dozen other old men trying hide their eager anticipatory hard-ons takes the fun out of it.
Yes, you can avoid all ‘conversation’ at the tills – but it doesn’t stop you logging on and having a ‘conversation’ with the whole internet.
One for the “are all these questions compulsory?” stack?
Those silly wimmin. Always fidling with their purses while Mike’s patiently waiting in line to buy a trolley full of embarrassing items from a casheir he doesn’t want to make eye contact with.
Rest assured Mike, I’ve sent a message out to all wimmins – and old people for good measure – instructing them to pay only in notes, and to then throw the change carelessly into their handbags so as not to delay you any longer than necessary.
I apologise for any inconveniece we’ve caused you with our previous checkout-related whimsy.
In the biblical way Mike?
“Clean up at Self Service till number 4 please”
In contrast to shit-for-brains Mike, when I became a graduate student in the UK I was issued with an approved gold VISA card (with the college crest on it) in lieu of cash.
I used the bugger for the first time that same day in a local supermarket and purchased a typical student basket (typical on the issue of an undeserved credit card that is): A case of champagne, a box of twelve somethings for the weekend, and a tub of that pressurised cream that you can squirt onto girls’ privates before ingesting.
I mean, I wanted them all to see what I was spending other people’s money on : Having a good time.
Sorry to go wildly off-topic, but…
Awesome.
I quite like self-service checkouts as they have kept me from starving at times when my social anxiety really wouldn’t allow me to cope with a real person selling me stuff. How typical of my blinkered self-obsession that I failed to realise how useful they could also be to nasty men like Mike.
Also I think it’s unfair to assume that he’s racist just because he appears to hate women, old people and, um, humanity.
And they say romance is dead. What Mrs Atom John actually needs is a new foot pump and a puncture repair outfit.
There’s a game where you buy 3 items in order to try to freak out the checkout person – Freakout the Checkout – Condoms, KY jelly and a cucumber, for example. You can explain that it’s just a game the next time you are in Tescos, buying the things you need to shove a lubricated cucumber in a condom up your arse.
Marginally better than the bog roll that she got for her birthday, at least with the tin opener she can get the beans out of the can to cook Atom John’s dinner.
Aren’t we being a bit unfair on Mikey here? Okay, we’ve established that he’s a misanthropic mysonogist who particularly hates old people and (possibly) has piles, but frankly I have a bigger issue with those posting comments demanding we get rid of the machines. I mean…
Why not, you know, just not use them? Does he perhaps think they’re mandatory?
Mysonogist?
I’m having a bad day…
Ooh, this topic got me all grumpy. If people don’t like the machines, go to the normal staffed checkouts, you fuckwits. And as for all the people whinging about how this is just a way of supermarkets trying to save money…duuuuuhhh…that’s what supermarkets do. That’s why they can afford to sell you a crate of own-brand lager and turkey twizzlers for 23p.
Doesn’t mean you’re not a fucking moron though, does it?
That’s it! I’m buying the wife a tube of KY, a condom, and a half a cucumber for Christmas this year.
No more frugal than last year, mind, when I bought her a bag of hand grenades and a book on juggling.
Atom John – hope you get piles me old cocker, and I hope that your wife then buys you some deep heat for NEXT christmas (give em a chance to get going proper, like), only disguises it as bum gel with a little help from our friend Mikey. You deserve a preview of the hell you are creating.
Can I just say a big thank you to Naich for introducing me to Listopia.
I was actually going to do some work this afternoon, but now will clearly be far too occupied. Particularly liking “Jokes Are Not Hilarious”
The truth is that Mike feels more comfortable to have a conversation with the self-service tills- some of it even resulting in deep philisophical debate and argument. When “please swipe cashcard” is asked a battle of wits ensues.
Thanks to whoever linked to the Listophia site, I now have my fill of swearing and irreverance (in a humour free way).
Making jokes about Madeline McCann and saying motherfucker never seemed so boring.
Co-op in Guildford had “I invoke Lord Satan” written on one of the conveyor belts in small neat ballpoint for a while but some miserable bugger cleaned it off. Says it all really, although I couldn’t tell you exactly what.
Anyway, I think we are being unduly horrible to mike, even if he is wrong on multiple levels, and I would rather queue up at the checkout with a whole trolley full of lime green ASDA economy brand dildos than try to use one of those annoying machines which constantly insist on telling me that I am doing it wrong just because I am doing it wrong. And while I am waiting in line behind the old dears checking their change I might even take the opportunity to discreetly write something really stupid on the conveyor belt.
from, Is Online Shopping Killing The Highstreet
Look! Mike Wright and Rocket Scientist would make the perfect couple! They’re identical miserable recluses. Shame they’ll never meet, isn’t it. Aw
If hating xmas shopping is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
You can’t buy those in crates! Whichever genius does that though, he’s got my vote.
Even if he’s a self-aware, self-service, self-serving checkout monster.
I used a self service till today. £1.80 down the drain. Mind you, I did “forget” to scan £357 worth of stuff so it wasn’t a dead loss. I hate conversations. Especially conversations about the small, high value items I have stuffed down my trousers.
Atom John is a rank amateur. My Dad once got my Mum an XL tube of Anusol for Xmas (on the grounds that she had piles, but still).
He slept on the sofa till February and I’ve told him what to get her ever since.
Oh and Mike is a virgin. Guaranteed.
I have to ask – what embarrassing things could you possibly buy at the supermarket, so much so that you’d deliberately use the self-service checkouts to get them?
I assume this means that Mike does the “big shop” and then comes back later to do the embarrassing bits of it.
Condoms, tampons, dry skin cream, Top Gear Magazine, all these are reasonable things to buy under the right circumstances even though you might want them hidden from other people. And it’s not likely that the checkout person would really give a shit if you’re buying tampons and you’re a man. Can you even buy Anusol or Preparation H in the supermarket?
What the fuck is Mike buying?
be honest, who hasn’t felt better buying your root vegetables and ky from a self service till than the till jockey!
(no? just me?)
“Contact with his fellow human beings`? Fuck that. They might be unemployed.”
Contact with my fellow human beings? Fuck that. They might be Mike.
“I can buy those embarrassing items without anyone knowing”…”and can avoid all form of contact or ‘conversation’ with the checkout assistants.”
mike wright, birmingham
Lordy, I might be responsible for this. There was this pimply bloke who had a three-pack of budget knickers and some “Light Smoke” hold-up stockings in his basket the other day. I said, jokingly, “They’ll look good on you!” and he went red and ran out.
A pity, really, because I’m quite into that sort of thing.
Self-service tills are quite useful when it comes to buying Tesco’s own brand dildos & lube.
It’s the Tesco delivery people I feel sorry for. They knock on Rocket Scientist’s door and he’s still not got dressed or washed for days, this apparition with 2 foot long fingernails and tissue boxes on his feet to keep the germs away.
If I’m Howard Hughes.
Surely the whole point of buying KY jelly and cucumbers is to embarrass the pretty young checkout girl? Unless you have a sexual fetish that involves blushing robots, of course.
I think you might find that was a Tescos Value rolling pin and a pack of Tescos Value lard, but knock yourself out.
Can I make a confession? I like using self-service checkouts, but then my local supermarket is a Morrissons…
I’ll get my coat – the one with the whole german salami, family-sized tub of vaseline and incontinence pants in the pocket
@Throbbe*
Whilst rolling pins can certainly be used creatively, do be careful when using lard as lubrication as it can lead to very painful rashes.
I find a few drops of cod liver oil can be quite effective (and not in the least bit embarrassing to buy).
*snigger