I worked on a Tesco’s checkout when I was a law student, to make money for my children’s Christmas presents and to pay off pressing bills, so this condescending blogpost really got my goat.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Blogging Comes of Age …
There is a golden thermometer that I and others use for technology known generally as the Tesco Checkout Girl Test (TCGT). This is the test of what happens when someone, with often limited ability, has to use technology in order to carry out their job tasks, such as credit card checkers, changing till rolls, rebooting an electric till etc. It comes as a shock to me then to have been standing in a queue in my local Tesco tonight and hear two checkout girls discussing the optimal ways to ensure comment moderation in their blogs and discussing the merits of Blogger versus MySpace, Facebook or TagWorld. In fact when it came to my turn to be served I went and stood in another queue and left them to it so I could listen some more.
I don’t know when Julian was at university but grants no longer exist. The person serving you in Asda or KFC may well be putting themselves through a course in nursing or astrophysics.
He should be a little more careful – for all he knows the heart surgeon doing his triple bypass in 15 year’s time could be the same girl he’s taking the piss out of on his blog this week.
Aside from that, who the hell is he to assume that even fulltime non-student supermarket staff have no intelligence or aptitude for technology?
But ah, yes, I forgot. They’re checkout girls. Naturally their grouindstate is brainless and they have no life other than when they’re pushing his lasagna-for-one over the scanner.
Julian, you may be a fellow Pratchett and Guido Fawkes fan and Blears-hater, but you’re still a condescending sexist prick.
