As someone who worked as a relief cashier in my teen years, my opinion is that they’re programmed to ‘instruct’ and slow down every step to reduce errors. That’s fine for that half of the purpose, but for scanning quickly (more than about 30 items a minute, I’d guess), the machines are atrocious and I refuse to use them.
I’m a something-ist against the class of people who try to help cut corners at the cost of removing any redeeming qualities in the experience: the Comcast upsells when you’re trying to return a modem, the online banking post-login splash page to offer a service you don’t need, forced multi-layered menus of phone systems for even the most simple queries. And self checkout lines.
Apparently, there’s a video floating around of a pilot performing a “controlled flight into terrain” all the while yelling at the voice warnings-- “Shut up, bitch!”.
I’ve got to admit that voice prompts of that sort bring out my inner misogynist, much to my discomfort-- especially when I can already read what’s on screen.
All the ones I’ve ever used scan about as fast as I can put stuff through them. The slowdown usually comes at the end of the process - which is where the designers seem determined to have inconsistent screens and button placement. But once you have memorised the process it’s easy.
Multi-level phone systems, however, are the devil incarnate. The typewriter was faster than copperplate, the telephone was faster than the typewriter, but the multi-level phone system is much slower than the well designed webpage. If I was dictator, I would pass a law against premium rate phone lines, because they are the reason for those phone systems.
My car dealership, which has to compete with others on the same business park, has people to answer phones.
During the winter I have to get one of my children to another part of town by 7:00am on Saturday mornings. Doing the week’s grocery shopping on the way back is hilariously fast. Also, the musak being played at that time is always oldies…it’s like they know the only people shopping that early on a Saturday are probably too old to sleep in!
The right-hand path goes past Strollers & Wheelchairs and a Gift Shop. The left-hand path goes past a place that sells newspapers. At Disneyland. That doesn’t sound the least bit “functionally identical.”
Is that a recent development? Could have sworn there’s a gift shop right next to the left-hand path. And even when I used strollers, I employed my own rather than Disneyland’s. I bet they approved. Mine had better cargo haulage. And anyway, I don’t head for one of those tunnels to rent or buy anything. For me, the function is ingress/egress, and they’re both perfectly-suited for that.
I dunno, I’m just going by that map you posted. I haven’t been to Disneyland since I was a babe in arms. Possibly in a rental stroller, I seem to have lost my journals from back then.
Point is, the crowds of people renting strollers and wheelchairs and heading for a gift shop are going to be far more slow and in the way than the one guy for some reason buying a Racing Form and a cigar.
You presume that I do not understand poverty, not knowing that that is where I come from.
I surmise the decision to do this was influenced by your desire to crow about the plight of the poor. If you must contribute to the echo chamber here you might want to be more careful about your presumptions. You might end up looking silly.
From what I heard they specifically chose a female voice with that kind of tone because pilots responded to it the most. Turns out a good way to make people want to stop doing whatever’s setting off an alarm is to make said alarm annoying.
She’s informally known as “Bitching Betty.” She might not have been exactly intentionally annoying, but most of the other voices on the headset during combat would have been male back then:
Early human factors research in aircraft and other domains indicated that female voices were more authoritative to male pilots and crew members and were more likely to get their attention. Much of this research was based on pilot experiences, particularly in combat situations, where the pilots were being guided by female air traffic controllers. They reported being able to most easily pick out the female voice from amid the flurry of radio chatter.
I read a long article in the NYT Sunday Magazine many years ago about one of the Bettys; her approach to balancing her delivery between “this is important!” and “but don’t freak out” was quite nuanced.
I’ll have to dig it up, but I remember reading in a few places that female voices are more complex and have significantly more information (information theory type information) than male voices, so they’re easier to understand in noisy environments.
I don’t know if it’s true, but female voices do show up better in spectrograms than male voices in my experience. I wouldn’t say it’s solid but it seems that way to me at least.
Although human voices are totally unmistakable, generally, on a spectrogram. They stick out like a sore thumb.
(I love spectrograms. I don’t hear so well, not deaf and probably not even “hard of hearing” just constant auditory nerve tinnitus in both ears, and reduced frequency range in one ear. So whenever I can I look at the spectrogram of whatever I’m listening to. It’s almost like reading sheet music.)
I agree about the screens and payment slowdown. And some stores are better than others about throughput over the scanners. I last tried the “whole cart of groceries” in the self scan a few years ago, and I was still ending up in the cycle where I scanned too fast and then the weight of the bagging platform was off because it wouldn’t scan that fast… And yeah, this was a couple of identical items so I knew from the first that the height/rotation was right to scan on the second.
A couple months ago…maybe the second to last time I used one of the machines?? I left the item and walked out of the store cursing at them because the item wouldn’t scan properly. It was pretty crappy for me to do that, I realize, but I have a hope that someone realizes that they’re now seeing X% more items to return to shelves (actually, it would probably be measured as a function of some bottom of the toem pole kid’s hours) since these were installed. I actually then drove to another store to buy the exact same item.
Until men hit a certain age. After that, it is specifically the higher frequencies of female voices that are the hardest to hear. And noisy environments? Might as well text each other instead.
