Seriously, what manner of jerk developed those things and why? The only purpose seems to be separating people from understanding, not just the message ("ah-hah! STOOPID!) or from others who have figured out the knack and have the precise tech to understand (Wheee, you aren't in OUR tribe!).
I've been ignoring them mostly, until now. I haven't a smart phone, won't pay for one, and simply prefer a phone that's a phone. Let me talk to and listen to people, not sit and gloat that I'm somehow in the "better" crowd. People who know me also know I don't text either. Like I said, TALK! Habla usted ingles, por favor.
The QR codes have been a growing annoyance for a couple years. Then more people and businesses started insisting we all use that particular form of communication. What finally got our attention - and ire - was the local grocery store. They send out a weekly flyer with QR coupons in it. Some are for things we like. Some give us extra points to discount our gas purchases at their store if we use the QR codes on certain days. But can we use them?
Nope.
Last year a very helpful store cashier did a scan of the flyer I brought in, just like reading barcode pricing, so I could get the coupon. This year it has to be on my phone or something. Yep, starting to get pissed off alright. Steve had tried them, and hates them even more than I do. I suspect it's because he has the smart phone and has kept trying unsuccessfully to scan the damn things and get some meaning and/or benefit from them. He started ordering online, getting them to add all the discounts, and then set a time when we could drive to the store and have them load the bags into our hatch. Pretty handy, right? The store does it for you that way. Well, except for the gas discount bit.
You'd think with so many of us satisfied customers using those specially reserved parking spaces to get our groceries, particularly in a senior community and post-covid, they wouldn't go fuck it up. We are the ones who live within two miles, have health issues and vulnerabilities which make using the system welcome more than the general population who mostly have closer stores to serve them anyway. But last week they even ruined that.
Now our normal process is to pick an open parking space, call the phone number on the sign, confirm with their automated system it was us and our numbered parking space, and wait a minute for the load to be wheeled out and placed in the car. Easy peasy, mostly.
Last week? They outdid themselves. There was no phone number on the signs, just a QR code. Dumbfounded, we just sat and stared at each other for half a minute in disbelief, figuring what to do next. Go back home and look up the store phone number? Wait until an actual human arrives to bring one of the elites their order? In our case last week, option three was in process as an employee was hauling out another order, so Steve talked to her. I'd had the store number in my phone and was partway through dialing it when she appeared so I hung up. But what about other people?
In conversations (plural) since we have found out all the employees hate the new system. Customers are grumpy. And we don't have to take her word for it. All around the area online, "my neighborhood" people are irate that the main local grocery store is discriminating against its main customer population, aka seniors, with this new system. Our store helper suggested we could call the main store number any time, both to complain about the new system, as well as having to ask to be connected to the delivery people to get our order.
I'm not saying the old system was perfect. We just had a different idea for how to improve it. AZ is of course hot in the sun nearly all of the year. There is one parking spot in the pick-up area with shade (most hours) from a small tree, and the rest have none except for the very rare cloud. Very, very rare. The sometimes shady one is numbered "0". When you call in, you can respond to their automated system either by voice (my way) or by typing in numbers. Neither method gets it to recognize the zero as a number, and you go around the automated system three times before it is programmed to kick you out to a possible actual human, all of which so far have been able to figure out that zero is a number. Steve gets a lot of excersise yelling at another phone machine that way. (Pharmacy departments voicemails systems are even worse. We both hate those. So far they don't use QR codes or the world would end!!!)
Of course, nobody thought, if they were looking at changing the signs in any way, that changing parking spaces from zero-to-six to one-to-seven might be both cheaper and less alienating to their customers.
While that store is the repeated irritation, it's not the latest. That one started, unbeknownst to us, over a year ago with the new TV show, "Alaska Daily". We were regular watchers, and still disappointed that it only had one tale to tell and was cancelled after a single season. The tale was/is important, however, about missing and murdered indigenous women. It is a severe problem across the country, and probably world wide. They are ignored targets and victims, more than any other group. Recently Steve saw a bumper sticker/decal that he decided to buy for the car. It's aptly blood red, a hand print with a face silhouette in the palm, and MMIW underneath. We both find it haunting. The first one he ordered turned out to be very small, and was designed to be intricately cut out, thus difficult to apply. It sticks to itself, tears apart, and never quite looks right. The so-called cuts that separate the hand shape by individual fingers aren't well cut out and either pull pieces out of shape or rip fingers off. The first one didn't work. It's not pulled off... yet. Another challenge, another day.
Disappointed, we both agreed on another try, with a different, larger decal. Maybe it would work better. Steve ordered this one too, and it came rolled in a tube. I flattened it under magazines for a few days. With the sale finally over, out it came. Nice and flat.
That was the easy part. Now how to separate the backing from the vinyl, and the vinyl from itself where it was supposed to come apart? Well, what was the problem? Right here in the corner was a big bold... QR code! Tiny writing on its border said to scan it for instructions. Steve took a picture of it, and....
NOTHING! We are apparently among the STOOPIDS.
I suspected Google might have an answer, could I just find the right question. I wound up on YouTube, watched a couple demos, mostly emphasizing that we needed to push it all together really really firmly so the colored bits would stick to the clear vinyl while you pulled the paper off.
So far I'd gotten to the part where I was finding out that inserting my thumbnail between paper and vinyl was... a pipe dream. Now the vinyl is really thin. The paper is really thick. That's the part that has to go bye-bye. So whatever progress one makes, the thin delicate vinyl crinkles and wrinkles, sticks and tears.
I have to wonder: Did the people who make those bazillions of bumper stickers patent their process and make it so expensive to use that nobody can imitate it? Are the people making the bloody hand sticker deviously making it of such poor quality that one has to order them by the dozens in order to have some hope of getting one, somewhere, that applies correctly?
In the end, I had Steve out with me this time, a needed second set of hands, wiping dust off the car, taking bits of detached sticky clear vinyl that insisted on folding onto the red parts so nothing would stick to the car. I even sent him back in for scissors in hopes of separating the hand from the background where it was indented but not separated. In many cases tearing had left a ridge or ripple or corner sticking out past the hand shape, so the scissor became a straight edge (it's a new pair) to cut through somewhere close to the design, even if I risked a bit of car paint. It's finally on the car, bold and red, the face clear and letters readable. I've the decided the very visible flaw might ironically tell the story better than a perfect application: the hand is missing part of a finger.
Who knows what that damnable QR code might have had to suggest for applying the thing?
Hey, guys? Guys? Make it better next time, so people who care about your cause can apply it to their cars without needing some damned instructions!!!
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