Shop 'n Go

Part of the adventure has been discovering things that are new and different for us - I guess that some things are not at all different for you guys who already live in advanced and exotic places, but for us little 'plaasjapies' from Wolmaransstad, some things are quite jaw-dropping-amazing for us!
In the interests of economy, we do our 'big' shopping at Pak 'n Save - not at all glamorous, but for the most part, glamour never saved money and so when even this supermarket offers more ways of stretching the dollars, we are first in the queue - boots and all.
There is a bank of computer-like screens at the entrance to the store and then beside these, a couple of short 'aisles' of hand-held barcode capture 'guns'! Thanks to the marvels of the Internet and technology in general, we have been signed up as 'Shop 'n Go' customers for the past few weeks and now 'shop and go' with the best of them.
For those of you who could be as disbelieving as we were, we'll give you a basic run-down of how this system works and you can decide for yourselves!
On entering the store, you touch one of the computer screens and get shown the specials for Shop'nGo customers - if any of them interest you, you print them out and put them one side for scanning later. Then you scan your personal Shop'n Go card under the 'gun aisle' machine and Bob's your uncle, the machine comes up with a personal welcome note and points you to the barcode capture gun allocated to you for that visit. Armed with the gun, you go about your usual shopping, scanning each item into the 'gun' as you go. If you decide against something after you have scanned it, you simply scan it again while pressing the minus button and poof, it's gone! If at any time along the way, you start feeling a little anxious about the total you are so happily totting up, a touch of another button tells you what the total at that point is.
The specials which you printed out at the beginning of the expedition are scanned in, if and when you decide to add one of those items to your trolley - instead of the marked barcode. At the fruit and veg section, you load up the bag of broccoli or whatever and plonk it on the scale - the screen has pictures of the various available products (so you don't even need to be able to READ cauliflower) and on touching the appropriate picture, the price comes up for the bag you have placed there and then you simply hit 'print' and scan the label that the machine spews out into your 'gun'. Easy!
If you are really organised, your trolley is armed with recycleable fabric shopping bags up front, so you pick something up off the shelf, scan the item into your 'gun' and then just plonk it into the bag all ready to be loaded into the boot of your car. All the cold items go straight into the cooler bag bag and the others are sort of sorted as you go along.
Once you are finished with the list, you head to the special 'Shop 'n Go' tills where the lass or lad standing behind the till asks for your card, whether everything scanned in ok and the scanner 'gun'. Once this has been read, they put out their hand for the bucks owing and that's it!
There is a clause in the original contract which states that you can expect to be 're-scanned' at least every fourth time you shop, and definitely on the first visit. We haven't been re-scanned yet - we don't actually know why not. The first time I did a shop this way, Jo was with some of you in South Africa and I fully expected to be re-scanned, so didn't pack things into bags en-route. The lass at the till did the usual and when I asked if my purchases shouldn't perhaps be re-scanned since I was a dinkum virgin Shop 'n Go customer, this being my very first time, she just blushed and said 'no - you look really honest!'
Now that's the second time that someone has told me I look really honest - the last time was a police inspector in Wollies around the time we were doing all the paperwork for police clearance for visa applications. Maybe I should take up a life of crime - since I look so honest, even to the long arm of the law.
I am really hoping that you read this blog entry Bertus - since you are in the business of shops and shopping! We wondered if you would be thinking about this kind of service for your customers any time soon! Maybe not!
Dis al!