Rocks Thrown at Border Patrol Chopper

On 2005-08-27, Jay Honeck wrote:
they certainly would never have dreamed of all the bi-lingual crap we must
deal with every day, from ATMs to voice mail systems.

Nothing wrong with multi-lingual ATMs - it's easy, it's just done in
software. I rather like it on the very occasional visit I make to
France. In fact, the ATMs here won't ask you a language if your bank
card is recognised as local.

Let me describe this issue in cold economic facts, rather than the emotion
of English versus Spanish: For every million shoppers who must spend an
average of 3 seconds (probably far longer) trying to figure out which button
to push (Spanish or English), that is 34.7 DAYS spent wasting everyone's
time in line, making a stupid, unnecessary choice.

No it isn't. Most people have realised by now you can swipe your card
whilst the checker is scanning the goods. Therefore the tasks are
happening in paralell - unless it takes you SO LONG to make that
selection that the checker beats you scanning the items.

In any case, it certainly doesn't take me 3 seconds to choose the
language. It's hardly something that needs "figuring out" unless you're
functionally illiterate.

The people who are really wasting time are those who insist on paying
for $3 worth of groceries with a check!

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

This is AMERICA, and the language here is
ENGLISH -- and I shouldn't have to TELL THEM THAT.

This is America, where citizens don't want to learn anything anymore,
not another language, not enough mathematics to add a hamburger and
fries without a computer, not world geography or culture, where weather
reports have all but become smiley faces and frowney faces because
nobody knows or cares what an isobar is, where from day one people are
taught to "feel good" about their underachievement, and where people
expect fifty dollars an hour to attach bolts on an assembly line when
someone in China will do for fifty cents and be grateful for the
opportunity. And we have the audacity to be indignant.

For every million shoppers who must spend an
average of 3 seconds (probably far longer) trying to figure out which button
to push (Spanish or English), that is 34.7 DAYS spent wasting everyone's
time in line, making a stupid, unnecessary choice.

(1,000,000 x 3 seconds = 3,000,000 seconds divided by 60 = 50,000 minutes
divided by 60 = 833.33 hours divided by 24 = 34.7 days)

The choice is unnecessary to =you= because =you= believe it should be
arranged for =your= comfort and convenience. What about "paper or
plastic" (or skip the bag, If I need a bag to hold a roll of film while
I walk to the car I shouldn't be shopping), "cash or credit", "credit or
debit", "would you like fries with that", and "your call is important to
us".

You're on the wrong boat.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
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