Today I was at the supermarket and this location just happened to have these terminals that allow customers to process their own purchases. Must be a way for the business to save money while hopefully speeding up the checkout process. So, we thought why not as it seemed like a faster solution than lining up.

For items that simply had a barcode it wasn’t too bad as you simply scanned the barcode and it registered into the system. When it came to items like vegetables, it sure made me look silly. The way it scanned vegetables is that you have to first go through various screens that are broken down by category (It is a colored touch screen). For example, there is a category for green vegetables and inside there are items such as spinach. Once you find the item, you click on it and then place it on the scanner which weighs it to determine your cost.

It felt like a puzzle as you have to find the right category for the items and at the same time the color of the item could throw you off. For example, one of the items I had was some kale which was green. So while scanning through it I basically focused on all the pictures that were green. Instead, I found out the kale was purple colored on the screen.

Overall it was fairly simple process though. What this experience made me think of is how companies are trying to automate business operations as much as possible. Makes you wonder how much of a human touch a business like this needs to maintain a good experience for people.

An interesting thing happened today at the office. There was a person that knocked on the door and we had no idea who it could be. It turned out to be an artist who did paintings for a living and attempted to sell his work to us for a over $100.

Although I didn’t talk to the person myself, I was told what it was all about and how the person attempted to sell his work by implying that he was a struggling artist of some sort. The person who answered the door was telling me how he didn’t know if he was being scammed as he has seen people do these types of sales techniques before where they give you a sob story to get you to purchase things emotionally.

I have seen these kinds of things on TV before, but have never actually had it happen to me personally yet. That is pretty courageous I must say in trying to sell door to door in an office building environment.

I was having a conversation today with another person that brought up a topic about being resourceful. The example came from knowing a person who struggled with money and that he won’t drink water that comes from the tap. Instead, it must be bottled water that he purchases.

He then gave a confused look over that and mentions how if the person was that paranoid that he should simply boil it first. That then led to a comment on how the person must not of been a very resourceful person. More often than enough you can usually find what you need with the things you already have around you as oppose to just buying new things.

I was talking to a person today who mentioned that he didn’t exactly have a lot of money. When it came to his perspective in life though, he felt rich as he began to mention the more important things such as family and the people around them.

He then tried to use an example of a baby and how everything is so cheery for them while being able to crack a smile on virtually everyone. The other comment he posed was how we tend to become too obsessed with money as being the answer to everything. Sometimes it is those simple things in life that you need to do to really feel rich.

After trying to register the domain on Saturday, today was the day that everything was able to process. It was kind of interesting as they needed a phone call to confirm that I was indeed the person who initiated the order. I suppose that is a good thing to prevent fraud. It was just kind of surprising as I never had this happen before for something so small.

Another thing this made me think of is how sometimes people place too many security features to help protect the company and its consumers which ironically makes it more frustrating to do business with. Best example would be like some retail stores where everything feels like it is chained up to prevent theft which intimidates you to purchase it.

I don’t remember the exact source, but I did read a research study before where a company used to lock all of its software products behind a glass case. It then decided to place the products in these security cases instead and surprisingly sales started to go up. Whenever you do anything security related that affects the way you do business, you always have to keep in mind about accessibility and user friendliness as well.