Lidl really p*** me off with their checkouts.

I'm not exactly slow at packing my shopping but the staff quickly scan the items (fair enough) and because they only have a tiny area after the till to pack your shopping there's no room left if you have a lot of things. If you make the stupid mistake of paying they move on to the next customer throwing their shopping down too!

I know the staff are no doubt only following company procedure but with such a small packing area it's impossible to bag up in the space provided if you are on your own.

I have 20 years retail customer service training behind me and I was always taught that the customer you are serving has your full attention until they have moved away. Never move on to the next one unless you are sure they have finished.

This hayfever/ chesty cough. It's annoying I can't enjoy summer like other people because of hayfever

I think I've mentioned this before in this thread (I'm certainly having a deja vu moment), but it's still annoying me so I'll mention it again.

It's the way TV programmes go for that 'amateur camera work' look. The camera goes in and out of focus, then back in again, then does a wobble, as if it's me doing the filming and not some highly-trained tech person on a salary. It really does my eyes in.

I only watch one or two TV programmes per year, and the most recent one is Great British Sewing Bee and that's rife with the unfocused/focused thing. However, I've been at my sister's house for over a week (well, a few days either side of a week away) and they have the TV on all the time, and it seems every sodding programme they watch does the same thing. So annoying.

The camera work also seems to flick from trivial shot to trivial shot before going to the subject who's talking (eg window, car, foot tapping, front view of person speaking, poster on wall, side view of person speaking, front view of person speaking).

Oh tell me about it, like it literally makes my blood boil

Poor old you with no-one to fancy! Life must be dull. Time to broaden your horizons maybe? Brush off the dust and head for somewhere new?

Annoys me as well that one. I've no idea why they do it. It makes my eyes try to follow the focus sometimes. I've seen 'focus puller' or something like that in the credits of films. Maybe they don't train them as well as they used to.

On a similar note. Is there a shortage of news studio space? Have recording studios become so prohibitively expensive that they have to set up camera and reporter out in a busy street somewhere? And the way they slowly zoom in on the reporter from about 1 km away, but you hear the talk as if you were right there and eventually you see it's someone standing in the middle of a busy pavement while 'normal' people have to make their way round him or her.

I've seen passers-by looking really strangely at the reporter who just appears to be walking along talking to himself. The quality of those zoom lenses is fantastic though. I only wish you could get that on a pocket digicam. One day perhaps?

Continuing the tv theme, zooming in for extreme close ups of the interviewee's face

At our new Aldi you don't pack your shopping away you chuck it back in the trolley and go to the packing area further away. Apparently it's supposed to be quicker.! Do Aldi & Lidl have the same basic system?

You're not supposed to bag a large shop of items at the cashout at Lidl...they provide a long shelf at the front for doing that. You throw your things into the trolley/basket and then move away to pack them.

But I get your drift - I find Sainsburys' checkout operators are cows for speed-scanning your items into a mountain, I very, very rarely shop there now because of this but when I do I find each time they haven't changed. I simply pack away while the operator sits waiting for me to pay them, and then I pay when I've finished my bagging

Why not just ask them to go slowly. When I wasn't feeling well I went and did my big shop and found the packing hard as I was going at a snails pace, I just asked the girl to slow down a bit cause I wasn't feel well and she did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvtHkSimFTI

You sound like a complete menace

Where I come from driving your car up people's backsides gets you a very angry visit to your driver side window at the traffic lights. I've seen people punched for tailgating. You're treating it as a joke but one day you'll meet your match.

The post you quoted disappeared so I wasn't able to quote it but..... if you don't know whose nervous or not why would you feel safe tailgating? What if someone genuinely had to slam on their brakes what then? Why not treat all drivers with a bit of respect and leave off a bit and then some of them won't feel the need to "brake check" you. If someone brake checked me I would think I was being a pretty shitty driver.

LIDL checkouts (in my local store) are designed so you can’t easily bag up your purchases before putting them back into your trolley.

They want you to put the stuff straight into your trolley and bag it up away from the till so it’s kept clear for the next customer; i.e. bag it up on your time, not on LIDL's time,…which I guess is fair enough.

I’ve been told that LIDL checkout operators are expected to attain a very high throughput of items per minute. They get bollocked, or even sacked, if they are not fast enough;…I’ve no idea if that is actually true though.

If they're like Aldi then they expect you to quickly put the items in your trolley then move over to a shelf on the opposite wall to then bag everything up at your leisure. Which is a fath obviously but it seems to get the queue down quicker.

Self service checkouts: "Unexpected item in bagging area"

There is nothing unexpected in the bloody bagging area, I've scanned everything.

"Approval needed for 'Cancel Purchase' when you didnt press anything indicating you want to cancel, so you have to call over a supervisor

Persons who pronounce "Ralph" as "Rafe".

The fact that the BBC doesn't stream Wimbledon footage from the ball-girls' showers.

You and MadBetty are right - tailgaters are a menace. In fact my car was written off thanks to one of those idiots. I was driving at normal speed on a badly lit road in the pouring rain with this person right up my backside, came to a traffic calming thingy (sorry don't know the technical term for it - where part of the kerb juts out into the road) and because of the conditions I didn't see it until it was too late, couldn't slow down otherwise I would have been rear-ended, and and crashed right onto it. Bastard didn't even stop to see if I was OK - luckily I was but it could have been a lot worse.

I once had great pleasure "brake checking" some pr*t and watching him swerve all over the road. Childish I know but the morons shouldn't do it in the first place.

Check out staff get paid bonus for their speed of getting people through checkouts, So that is why they do that. No one stood packing means they can move on quicker

Not sure if Lidl is the same reason

Umm, what?

Would you like me to pay you a visit so you can punch me? You (and those who you seem to admire) seem angry. Get road rage much? Where am I treating it as a joke exactly? One of the points I made in my first post on the subject was that is isn't trivial, it's dangerous.


I seem to be able to find the post they quoted OK.

I feel safe maintaining the distance I do in the knowledge of how quickly I can brake and come to a full stop if necessary. One man's safe distance is another's "tailgating". I treat all road users with respect - until they do something stupid like slamming their brakes on when they know someone is (in their opinion) following closer than they should be.

If someone genuinely has to slam on their brakes - there is no problem.

If someone brake checked you - your first thought would be that your driving is "pretty shitty"? Really?


You can't blame the car behind you for your accident, unless they made contact. You should have been concentrating on the road ahead rather than what the car behind is doing.

I don't think insurance companies accept "couldn't slow down otherwise I would have been rear-ended". I guess the other car was far enough behind to have time to avoid you when you hit the curb.


Childish people shouldn't be allowed to drive.

Something has occurred to me. My car is much lighter than most everything else on the road, but it looks much the same as any other car. I doubt it occurs to those who 'brake check' that not all cars perform as poorly as theirs does. It's no mitigation though.

Thats on the red hot button

Must be really cold up on that high horse.

Most of whom are school age