Thursday, September 08, 2005

An age-old dilemma...

Starting as I mean to continue, here's post two:

In Tesco today, I was again faced with a question that has plagued men since the dawn of time: when choosing a checkout, do you go for the one manned (?) by the cute young girl, or the one run by the older, and therefore more efficient, woman?

(There is a hidden third option: the one run by a male assistant. I've intentionally discounted this for two reasons. The first is that there are vastly more female checkout assistants than male ones. That's a statement of fact, not a sexist comment. To aid comparison, reason two is a sexist comment: women tend to be better at running checkouts than men. I suspect the reason for this is that checkout assistant fall into two groups: those who do the job as temporary work while they move onto something else, and those who do it long-term. Those in the first group - which seems to include almost all the men doing the job - aren't there very long, and don't get very good at it. Those in the second group, however, improve through experience. Thus, the average level of ability of a male vs. a female assistant is different.)

Anyway, tangents aside, we return to the dilemma. One one hand, men hate shopping, and prize efficiency. On the other hand, men prize any opportunity to talk to a cute young female. So, which way do we go? (It is instructive to watch this in action. Try visiting any supermarket at 8pm on any weeknight except Friday, and watch the decision-making process at work. I expect it would be even more interesting to see how men choose over the course of a whole week. No doubt Channel 4 will do a reality show about this next year: "we took thirty supermodels and put them into a supermarket. See the crazy hijinks that ensue!")

How did I resolve this crisis?

Well, I didn't. While I was making my choice, the extremely efficient manageress decided to open a new checkout, just for me. Manned by one of the rare male checkout assistants.

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