Mitt Romney has a supermarket-scanners moment
AP Photo
Sheetz has had those sandwich menu touch pad thingys for what, 15 years now? Well, knock Mitt Romney over with a feather.
On a visit to Wawa in Pennsylvania, the putative GOP presidential nominee was absolutely floored by such cutting-edge technology. It’s yet another sign of how out of touch he is with the average Joe.
And it’s reminiscent of President George’s H.W. Bush’s amazement with supermarket-scanner technology, which he discovered while making a rare visit to a supermarket, more than a decade after scanners were introduced.
From Yahoo News:
What inspired him: A computer at Wawa that allows customers to type in what they want on a sandwich, as opposed to ordering it through a human cashier. It was a technology, he said, that had been fostered by competition—competition he said the federal government lacks in delivering its services to Americans. He said the government’s lack of competition and bureaucracy was hurting the United States in keeping jobs that are moving to other countries.
But more than anything, Romney seemed blown away by the Wawa computers, which he raved about.
“You press a little touchtone key pad… You touch this, touch this, touch this, go pay the cashier, and there’s your sandwich,” Romney said. “It’s amazing!”
June 18, 2012 - 7:32 PM
A touch pad took a person’s job. The way telephone answering trees take jobs. It’s such an improvement…thank god for “competition”.
He’s always been able to afford to pay someone else to do the touching for him. That’s why he was so amazed.
Romney’s first visit to a convenience store over 30 years. Amaaazzzzzing!
And they’re so handy when the guy working the deep fryer doesn’t know any english! they get the number on the print out and make the food!
So if he becomes President, will he give us all touchtone key pads so we can tell the government what services we need and the ones we don’t need? Government À la carte. It’s the 21st century way to go.
I’ve never been in a Sheetz or made a purchase like that anyplace. I wouldn’t be amazed to find out it existed. I guess Mitt doesn’t shop online either. You can order what you want using a website and you don’t even have to type. There’s also no cashier to clog up the system. Someone should tell him many things can even be delivered, including food, to the location you specify.
Competition is great. All we need now is a machine that will eat the food for us. A couple of blinking lights let you know you are full and you should quit goofing around and get back to work, which is looking for work.
I’ve never ordered an MTO sandwich at Sheetz. Talk about a redneck thing to do. And you people make fun of the GC?
I suppose he would be absolutely astounded by an ATM machine. Push a few buttons and out comes money! He would love it.
Nah, nobody’s buying the election:
“Fresh off a major donation to the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC, Nevada billionaire and major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson is expected to continue his support for some other GOP causes and may donate as much as $100 million this campaign cycle, a source with knowledge of his donations told CNN.”
Wait ’til he finds out that some people have the Internet on their telephones. Or self-checkouts! Or that some of us carpenters are even using lasers on our jobs!
Man, will his mind be totally blown!
GOP: of all the clowns in the car, this is the one you decided to let jump out?
“You see this screen?” he says, pointing to a foreign-made touchscreen display, “This is what a healthy America is all about. This is American greatness at its best.”
This has just gone beyond humiliating. I vote we just pad Obama and Romney up, give ‘em some pugil sticks and the last man standing gets the presidency. Take all the campaign money and pay it toward the federal debt. Everyone wins. Gentlemen, you have until November to train. I suggest you get started.
That picture should have been a “caption this” contest.
How long has Ole Dan been writing this crap ?? He is still out of touch.
“Fresh off a major donation to the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC, Nevada billionaire and major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson is expected to continue his support for some other GOP causes and may donate as much as $100 million this campaign cycle, a source with knowledge of his donations told CNN.”
Newt already rode that pony as far as he could. It sounds like the GOP has found a billionaire who’s suffering from dementia (which is no laughing matter) and is trying to take him for every dime they can.
“John Wilburn says:
That picture should have been a “caption this” contest.
Posted on June 18th, 2012″
‘Bend over. This’ll only hurt for a second. Or 4 years, if I’m elected.’
‘Bend over. I got your free healthcare coming right now.’
If you actually watch the UN edited video his amazement wasn’t with the touch pad it was with the federal governments inability to compete with other nations.around.the world becuase the make everything so complicated instead of finding a easy and efficient way like WAwas did. Msnbc completely misrepresented the truth.
We want a President who can lead, not one who eats hot dogs at convenient stores for lunch. I’m sure Romney has seen the technology. He was just drawing a distinction on how the private sector (Obama, do you know what that is?) is better served to come of with solutions for the situation we’re in than the govt.
Bend over. This’ll only hurt for a second. Or 4 years, if I’m elected.
Comment by Contrasuzie — June 19, 2012 @ 1:06 am
If he’s elected, if only for 4 years, it will hurt a lot longer than 4 years.
The picture definitely has a proctological feel to it. I wonder what would happen if he was exposed to WiFi.
This really is just sad!
All it really does is show how out of touch he is from reality and the average person. We’ve all known about these things in Sheetz, Wawa, and similar stores since the early 2000′s when they were introduced. As for them taking a job, I actually doubt it since the Sheetz by my house has always had them and they have a very robust MTO business with usually 2-3 people fulfilling the orders and another doing the coffee drinks, in addition to 2-3 cashiers. If anything, those helped get a few extra jobs going since a place like 7-11 (with gas pumps) can operate with just 1-2 people in a shift.
I don’t know if they still have it, but at one point the Martins, in Waynesboro I believe, was using a system where a scanner was attached to the cart, so you scanned items as you picked them from the shelf…then rolled through a checkout where it would scan the cart for you and give you the total, without having to unload and re-pack everything. That was pretty cool too, but we never used it.
Our local Kroger just added the self checkout option, finally, but it has not cut back the number of cashiers they have working. They just shifted one over to cover the 4 self checkouts, but still seem to have the same number of regular lines open any other time of day. It has made the quick 3-5 item trip much quicker though. Now I’m just waiting for the fuel center…
Note that the GA Republicans are all over Bobby McD for giving millions to the 2nd-most valuable NFL franchise. Good for them.
Isn’t it ironic that that touch screen probably came from China? Additional irony is that, somehow China, this Socialist country with “socialized medicine” is somehow able to out-compete the world in manufacturing. While we, on the other hand, have old people going broke trying to pay their medical bills.
Republicans out of touch? The party that offered us Dan Quayle to appeal to the youth vote and Sarah Palin for the women’s vote? That party? Out of touch? Nah…couldn’t be.
From Americablog:
“I understand that on seeing a vintage Princess phone this week, Romney said: “You touch this, touch this, touch this, touch this, touch this, touch this, and touch this and there’s your phone call. It’s amazing!”
Princess phone. What a marvel.
So after a few days and little sleep and not checking my e-mails I get some time to go through my list of things to do online. One of the things I do do is check out Dan’s blog. And when I saw that photo I saw what the GOP has in store for us. What else is new but it’s good to start the day with a good laugh.
OJ, The Giant up here in C’ville has that. You take a portable hand-scanner with you into the store, scan your groceries as you put them in your cart, then go to the check out and give them the scanner, pay and you’re done.
I remember when Self-Checkout came to Giant up in NoVA about 13 years ago, I asked the bagger how they felt about it and he said “It will never catch on. People don’t want to scan their own groceries!”
I guess there’s a reason he’s a bagger.
Oh man, I would LOVE cart scanners.
Almost always in the supermarket, I used the self-scanners, because I’m buying only a few items. But it kind of pings me when somebody with 45 items pulls up to one and takes 20 minutes to check out. The cart scanners would take care of that irritation.
My wife, on the other hand, NEVER uses the self scanners.
I’ll use the self scanners for a full load of stuff at Kroger, but we usually shop after 9 or 10 in the evening anyway, when all 4 of them are open. We do that to make it easier since we use the re-usable bags and are kind of particular with how things get bagged, since both my wife and I have worked retail and know how things should, or should not, be bagged…and we just want to make sure the Drano is not put in with the fresh produce…which happened at Walmart once.
I know people who refuse to use them specifically because they see them as job-killing. Sillies….they don’t know that it’s clean water that’s killing jobs!
I do think you should get some sort of discount for doing the work yourself.
OJ, the last three times I was at Kroger, the baggers asked me if I wanted my cold stuff together. I was a little non-plussed…isn’t that the usual default for bagging? “no…I’d like the ice cream on top of the roasted chicken, please…makes it so much easier to spoon out”
I make a point of finding the lines with two teenagers ringing and bagging if I can…they’re usually fastest and best.
It is true that technology, innovation and self serve have taken away jobs. That would not be a problem if we had not had the massive migration overseas and the historic recession to buttress that reality. You do kinda start seeing how many ways we have replaced humans/workers in times like these. You also notice the niche jobs that are primarily performed by foreigners or minorities. It goes with the territory but it can be disheartening.
Last week Mitt the twit said there was no recovery going on in the economy.
This week, it’s,”the economy is making some improvement but Obama gets no credit.
Make up your mind Mitt. It wouild be terrible if you told people in Iowa the same thing you told people in Ohio.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/boat-tour-iowa-romney-argues-obama-doesn-t-204440260.html
Of course you are nothing but a political HACK for the left! That isn’t the whole quote!
Maybe you should do your JOB and tell the WHOLE STORY!
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/303246/msnbc-edited-romney-wawa-video-katrina-trinko#
Of course I don’t expect ANY of you closed minded liberals to even check it out.
You’re right, Sandi. I think about things like Netflix, Hulu, and Redbox and how they have decimated the movie rental business, driving Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, Hollywood, and countless others out of business or to severely reduced operations. Same goes for Amazon and how Borders and other companies have ceased selling books. Convenience, efficiency, and customer satisfaction took the industries in new directions with the internet and high-speed connections.
When I want to see a movie, I just turn on my TV and Blu-Ray player, load Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, or any other service we can access, do a search, and can either select it or pay for it right there from the couch. A lot of folks did lose jobs in those stores, and it is sad that it happened…I doubt the replacements have hired enough folks to make up the difference, but it is the natural progression of life.
People take something and figure out ways to make the job easier, more automated, more safe, less prone to mistakes, faster, cheaper, you name it…and humans have been doing that since we crawled out of caves (some later than others). There are folks needed to design, build, and maintain the new systems, especially the maintenance end, since they are so complex and technology-dependent now.
But like with Redbox…rather than having a movie rental store in Fairlawn like we used to (actually had 2 with one in Radford nearby), we now have 5 different movie kiosks in the same radius, with pretty much one person in a van driving around to service and maintain them (and probably a lot more) on any given day. It took away jobs, but it’s what the customers wanted…I know I didn’t like the $5 late fees…I can get 4 movies from Redbox for that, or almost cover an entire month of Netflix or Hulu+. Business is an ever-changing and evolving thing…and the companies that failed to adapt to those changes are gone, replaced by newcomers who can just as easily flame out if they fail to adapt to whatever the next changes may be.
I watched the video clip provided by Scott with the big S (not to be confused by small s scott).
It was a disjointed speech, punctuated by a Reaganesque story Romney told about an optometrist having to fill out a 33-page form for Medicaid just because he changed his address. MSNBC cut that part out, indeed.
But others have picked up on it, and say that’s a lie.
“He only missed it by 31 pages. That’s right, the form that’s so very inferior to the sandwich computers at “Wawa’s” is two pages long, four if you include the instructions. That optometrist is either delusional, or a delusion of Romney’s. Either way, it’s inexcusable for journalists to let this go, even as they come down on MSNBC for completely permissible, completely transparent editing.
“Let’s see if those same journalists are this aggressive with Mitt Romney about his bald-faced lie. In fact, let’s see if the lapdog right-wingers who leapt to his defense have the self-respect to care that he lied to them. I’m betting no. I’m also betting that “working the ref” will end up working, and MSNBC will issue some kind of clarification. Here’s hoping they stick to their guns. “Out of context” has to mean more than the mere act of pulling a quote from a longer section of speech.”
Click on the link above, and you’ll see a link to the form (if you want to know the truth).
#35 NOPE, not a single ONE of US will CHECK it OUT, eSPecially after YOU SHouTED at US ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!
#37 Shades of Ronald Raygun and the welfare recipient with the new Cadillac.
yeah that guy is giving me a bad name!
Glad you posted the unedited clip: this was taken out of context, big surprise. Mrs. Alan Greenspan is out of touch, like she’s been to Wa Wa’s.
There may be hope for you Dan.
Maloof,
I don’t agree it was taken out of context. Romney’s comments were such a mishmash of (mostly false Reaganesque garbage) that it would be impossible to take any of them out of context.
I can only concluded that you’re upset that MSNBC cut out the FALSE stuff Romney said about the 33-page Medicaid change-of-address form. Is that the bar for “fair and balanced reporting” now? That the so-called “liberal” media is obligated to repeat a candidate’s lies?
Give us a break.
So…Rmoney said what it was reported he said. I’m not clear how raving about a medicare form factors into his general awe over a touch screen.
I grant you that there are people who make the Dems and Libs look bad, but wow, the right wing is a sad demented monster and there is no way around it. You folks seem truly rabid!
So it looks like NBC selectively edited again to advance its leftwing agenda. And Dan went right along with it, pushing it as if it were the truth.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison.
http://mrctv.org/videos/msnbc-selectively-edits-romney-speech-laughs
When you watch, the ONLY reason it could have been edited this way was to make Romney look like an idiot.
Really, you people should be calling for MSNBC’s credentials to be taken away just like you demanded of the Daily Caller reporter’s for simply asking Idiot Boy an obvious question.
This was 100% dishonest reporting. Dan should now realize that and apologize for this thread.
“Really, you people should be calling for MSNBC’s credentials to be taken away just like you demanded of the Daily Caller reporter’s for simply asking Idiot Boy an obvious question.”
The BS never ends.
Who on here demanded Neil Munro’s credentials be yanked? Nobody, that’s who.
AND, who on here believes the Romney campaign can’t kick MSNBC off its campaign bus or plane? The answer, again, is nobody.
I’ve never heard of the Daily Caller but one of the leading lights who reads there posted this informative bit….:
“PEPSI USES HUMAN FETAL TISSUE FOR FLAVORING.
No one cares. ”
No wonder Pepsi blows. Coke would never stoop to this. Not that anyone’s seen their recipe.
“You people” means you liberals. Not necessarily those on this blog. I don’t know why this is such a difficult concept for you. You couldn’t grasp the “Chimpy” thing either.
So when are you going to apologize, Dan, for putting out a blog that was based on a lie? The least you could do is acknowledge MSNBC’s obvious deliberate editing of the video intended to make Romney look out of touch.
Will you have the decency to do that?
#47 For putting a blog thread that was based on a lie
“So when are you going to apologize, Dan, for putting out a blog that was based on a lie? The least you could do is acknowledge MSNBC’s obvious deliberate editing of the video intended to make Romney look out of touch.”
Suzie,
1) The second “lie” is that the blog post was based on the video, which I never saw until the RWer spin machine tried to take this obvious gaffe and turn it around (the same way they did with John Kerry’s war record vs. GWB’s). The post, which has no embeded video, was based on news reports. I quoted Yahoo, but there are reports from Reuters and other news agencies out there. You should apologize for this falsehood.
2) The first “lie,” came from the RWer spin machine, which realized early on how damaging the gaffe was to Mitt and engaged in a desperate attempt to turn the tables on it. You all wouldn’t be so upset if you didn’t grasp how bad this is for Rmoney.
Sandi @44 – as Barney Frank so succinctly put it:
“We’re not perfect, but they’re nuts!”
So I take it Dan doesn’t have the decency for promoting this obviously manipulated video. Got it.
Watch the side-by-side I linked Dan.
“52.So I take it Dan doesn’t have the decency for promoting this obviously manipulated video.
You’re slipping, Oliver.
The very idea that Romney requires selective editing to look like an idiot is simply absurd! Whatever MSNBC or anyone else does, it is not necessary. He does a stellar job at making himself look bad.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/18/mitt-romney-wawa-pennsylvania_n_1606652.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-worst-mitt-romney-gaffes-caught-on-tape/#0
Can’t wait for the debates. Romney will make Rick Perry look like a Rhodes Scholar.
This is such BS! Not that I am surprised the right wing is carrying it in both hands!
“…the mainstream media are so accustomed to being worked over by right-wing cries of “bias” that they leapt to condemn MSNBC’s completely reasonable editing of the clip, even as they ignored the glaring lie Romney told in the longer clip. As it turns out, MSNBC did him a favor by omitting his stupid comparison“.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/inconvenient-untruth-mitt-romneys-wawas-story-was-a-big-fat-lie/
Suzie:
49.”#47 For putting a blog thread that was based on a lie”
Or like some people, base each and every post on a lie.
You’re slipping, Oliver.
Dan deleted the corrected post immediately after this one. Guess he has a lot in common with MSNBC.
Poor Mitt the twit. He can’t get no respect. He tries to appear to be a regular guy by going on a bus tour. All he ends up doing is emphasizing how little he has in common with the people he is trying to solicit.
And then he gets upstaged by a bunch of Nuns!
http://nunsonthebus.com/
When you watch MSNBC’s doctored version, you come to the conclusion you morons came to, that Romney was amazed at the technology at WaWa because he’d never been in one. In the longer clip, it’s obvious he was comparing government inefficiency (illustrated by the business owner having to fill out the long form three times) with private sector efficiency ( the quick way to order a sandwich at WaWa). His term ‘Amazing!’ was said like “It’s amazing how fast simple and customer-friendly the private sector method is compared to the cumbersome slow public sector method.
Again, this report was CLEARLY edited to give the wrong impression, and all you leftwingers know it. Dan needs to apologize for not being a reporter and taking this MSNBC bilge at face value.
I’ll give him another day to demonstrate he has a little decency.
MSNBC and Yahoo did a complete hack job on what was said.
Here’s the fully:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTrmwDmOjy4&feature=player_embedded
“It’s amazing, people in the private sector have learned how to compete. It’s time to bring some competition to the federal government”
Idiots.
#58 You know, suzie, we also don’t believe your claims that Dan regularly deletes tons of your posts. Just more BS.
Suzie, if Dan’s blog and the way he runs it so offends your indelicate lack of sensibilities, go on, take your money and run!
“When you watch MSNBC’s doctored version, you come to the conclusion you morons came to, that Romney was amazed at the technology at WaWa because he’d never been in one. In the longer clip, it’s obvious he was comparing government inefficiency (illustrated by the business owner having to fill out the long form three times) with private sector efficiency ( the quick way to order a sandwich at WaWa). His term ‘Amazing!’ was said like “It’s amazing how fast simple and customer-friendly the private sector method is compared to the cumbersome slow public sector method.”
Again, this report was CLEARLY edited to give the wrong impression, and all you leftwingers know it. Dan needs to apologize for not being a reporter and taking this MSNBC bilge at face value.
I’ll give him another day to demonstrate he has a little decency.
The fact is that MSNBC went waaaaaay easy on Romney with this disputed clip. They could have showed the whole thing, including his falsehoods about the 33-page Medicaid change-of-address form (which is actually 2 pages) and used it to prove he’s either a liar or a know-nothing or somebody who can’t even count to 2.
And if they had, you RWers would have been screaming about THAT. In other words, you’d you’d be screaming either way. It’s the same old same old. The valuable thing about this is, it sets the tenor of the campaign, and foretells the play-the-victim strategy that is to come. From here on out we know that RWers will be full-on blaming the big, bad media for every gaffe Romney makes.
Romney ought to be thanking the network for giving him the kid-glove treatment. I’ll give him another day to come to his senses and realize this.
gdad I did delete one from Suzie yesterday. It seemed identical, or almost identical to another one on the same blog thread. That’s why.
#65 And do you delete two to three a day as she recently claimed?
#60 “I’ll give him another day to demonstrate he has a little decency.”
And then what? You’ll quit the blog? Yet again?
Someone’s going to have to explain to me how ordering your sandwich from a machine is “competing”. Unless the assumption is that a machine can give you better service than an actual human being.
#65 And do you delete two to three a day as she recently claimed?
Nah. It the past 10 days the average is less than one a day.
Self scanners sound like a shoplifter’s dream.
Newman, at Kroger they seem to work reasonably well. If you don’t scan something and you put it in a bag, the scanner (which is weight senstive) stops and tells you to scan the item. If you do scan something and don’t put it in the bag, it stops you, too. In both cases the cashier who lords over the 6 or so self-scanners has to reset your machine.
Now as for self-scanners on supermarket carts, you might be right. I reckon the NoVa stores where they’re in action know exactly what happened to their shrink after they brought them on. It may very well be that they still save more money in the long run than they’d pay cashiers if they didn’t have them.
newman, when I self check out and try to put one my my light reusable shopping bags in the bagging area, the machine balks and tells me to scan my item. I think they have the weights of every store item saved in the system so it can tell if you’re bagging something you didn’t pay for.
#69 Maybe is you stepped up the rate…
Back to the Caption Contest:
“Now where did Marcus Bachmann go?”
The post Dan removed was the correction of the first post. In leaving the first one with the typo, I guess he knew it would invite comments from the typo police. Which it did.
I will say the blog has been much more enjoyable lately. The unfair deletions have disappeared the last week or two.
Dan does aim to please.