Sad - but true

SoapAlchemist

SoapAlchemist

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Checking out at Tesco today (sorry) with some actual sweetcorn, not wrapped in plastic, labelled nor even stripped. The checkout young woman had to ask me what it was. And told me she had never seen them 'come like that' They seemed quite calm to me......
Waiting for the day when I have to explain that the potato is actually related to the frozen chip.
Seems sad to me that some young people don't even know what food actually is anymore. Guess I've reached that stage in my life where I bemoan 'young people' - the lucky buggers, if only they knew it.
Monsanto, anyone? Or is that highly controversial. Or does anyone care? Guess that might seem like a separate issue, but all in the same ball park to me.
 
Been somewhere before and the checkout staff didn't know what a courgette was. The piss take is that they have pictures on the screen that they only have to look at, they don't even need to know the veg/fruit item.

I used to manage a supermarket. A customer once brought a multi pack of (5) apples to the till. The member of staff pressed 5x then scanned the pack therefore charging £5 for a pack of apples...

I sacked them.

BTW, I'm 25, so not all young people are stupid.
 
dantheman1 said:
Been somewhere before and the checkout staff didn't know what a courgette was. The piss take is that they have pictures on the screen that they only have to look at, they don't even need to know the veg/fruit item.

I used to manage a supermarket. A customer once brought a multi pack of (5) apples to the till. The member of staff pressed 5x then scanned the pack therefore charging £5 for a pack of apples...

I sacked them.

BTW, I'm 25, so not all young people are stupid.
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I'd have trained them !
 
Remember the cheapest loose item they carry and when asked, simply tell them your Alphonso Mango is an orange. Not that we get Alphonso Mango here now ... thanks, EU!

Your comment rather reminds me of that dippy bint (sorry for the sexism) who posted about her cruelty-free meat that she buys from the supermarket, where they make the meat, not kill it. It was on Facebook, or something equally dim.

But yes, I can sympathise with your view that large corporations have both divorced end product from raw material and even productivised (if that's a word) raw materials. Folks actually fear things outside of a box without instructions - they've actually no idea what to do with ... well ... ingredients.

Didn't we have a "law" thread going? My law would be that all school children, sod Maths, Languages and whatever else kids learn today; kids should learn the basics of cooking, washing, cleaning and money management. You "fail" high school without passing this ... because you will fail in life otherwise. And sod Maths, Languages and so on ... you learn more about angles playing pool, more about fast subtraction playing darts and more about language by walking down any inner city high street than you would in school.

Cook, clean, maintain yourself and keep a lid on your finances.

... or am I being a bore? No, I'm being a bore and should fill out that application form for UKIP.
 
pjgh said:
Didn't we have a "law" thread going? My law would be that all school children, sod Maths, Languages and whatever else kids learn today; kids should learn the basics of cooking, washing, cleaning and money management. You "fail" high school without passing this ... because you will fail in life otherwise. And sod Maths, Languages and so on ... you learn more about angles playing pool, more about fast subtraction playing darts and more about language by walking down any inner city high street than you would in school.
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My youngest son (14) took 'construction' as one of his optional GCSEs, happily tidies up and can make his own pizzas.

His money-management skills are phenomenal though (which he gets from me). He recently walked into his usual bank, closed his account and withdrew all his money. Lady in the branch asked him if he was treating himself. He just said No. He was taking his money to another bank that was offering a much better interest rate.
 
I went to a home-brew shop and asked the young assistant (maybe about 17 years old) for two dozen corks. She looked at the older assistant and asked her what a dozen was. The older assitant rolled her eyes, looked a bit embarrassed for the younger one and explained.
The younger assistant then asked her "So how many is two dozen?" :icon_rolleyes:
 
I wonder if she would buy the correct number of eggs if her Mum sent her to the corner shop to buy four half dozen boxes of eggs.

I think I'm right in saying they are only taught up to the ten times table, if they are taught multiplication tables at all.

Ask my 16 year old grandson a question involving some simple mental arithmetic and he reaches for a calculator. He really struggles if I ask him to do it in his head. He won't reference his times tables until I tell him he needs to - he knows them fine well, though - just doesn't use them because there is always a calculator to hand most everywhere you go.
 
Been there many times with the young Girls serving on the Tesco check out quite funny really not only have they never seen an aubergine or a courgette but what's worst they have never eaten one, I'm now going to give you a heads up of how to get some deserving and satisfying cash back from Tesco's, here goes now I love my fruit and especially New Zealand Jazz apples very expensive, so whenever I see them loose I pick myself half a dozen make my way over to the self serve then plonk them on the scanner thingy which will ask you to tell them what fruit and what apples they are, so obviously you will tell them they are the cheapest apples in the store so you scan you pay and away you go with a large finger up yours Tesco's.
 
When my family ran pubs, to earn our 'board' we (children / grandchildren) were expected to do the odd shift behind the bar.

No digital tills for us - like Arkwright's till on Open All Hours - and this was a proper boozer's pub. Big rounds of pints and shorts were the norm and people would expect you to tell them how much it was before they handed their money over.

We have just found more and more ways of making life easier / people lazier.
 
But the sun is shining and the young are young, doing young things and not giving a thought or a care about when they are running the world. All we can say is that they will cope one way or another - and do it their way, which won't be like ours. And that could be a good thing!
 
It's not really young people I'm bemoaning (though I could if you get me on to their lack of ability to do mental arithmetic); it's the disconnect between real food and the crap that fills a lot of people's trolleys. I often see people checking out, obviously for a family given the amount of stuff, and there isn't one item that you could recognise as actual food.
 
Gentlemen, I teach three days a week in an Academy (basically, what used to be called a Secondary Modern and - by the time I got to "big school"- a Comprehensive). Now, I know that at nearly 55, I can be considered an 'old fart' but I sometimes truly, truly and deeply despair the lack of general knowledge, basic levels of literacy and basic levels of numeracy that plague our educational system. I'm not going to go into a long rant here - I could, but I don't want to bore you all to tears! Just know, that the next time a politician (of any political flavour) stands at a podium and announces:
"...during our term of office, GCSE/A level passes at A-C grades rose from X% to XX%"
... that, by and large, it's all boll*@&s!

'Nuff said!
 
I am one of those folk that just cant do maths, I have tried and had tutors that just got frustrated and gave up, comments like 'your just lazy' or 'you cant be that dumb' don't help ones self esteem much. The simple fact in my case is that I just don't get maths Basics are ok although it takes me longer to do than everyone else. I was never lazy at school however I often lost concentration in maths cause no matter how much the teacher would try to explain I just couldn't get it. So folk like me are boxed, labeled and put on a shelf.

It worries me what will happen to the people who get left behind and who are labelled lazy and incompetent, where do they fit in and where do they get confidence and self worth from?

Apologies if this is off topic a wee bit but its a subject that bothers me a lot.

Jim
 
jim3rg said:
It worries me what will happen to the people who get left behind and who are labelled lazy and incompetent, where do they fit in and where do they get confidence and self worth from?
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30 years ago, lads who got left behind would be able to make a decent living down t' pit, on building sites, at Boots, in the Army, Raleigh, Imperial Tobacco etc.

Now it's a real struggle.

My eldest left school without a qualification to his name (diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia far too late into his school life). He's a bouncer now and loving it.
 
May I take that a little further, Jim - with apologies to Sharon.

I spent some time supporting two bunches of lads, one training to be brick-layers and the other carpenters. They were required to hold NVQ1 certificates in order to work and were having difficulties with the maths and English parts. They had been boxed and shelves years ago, were convinced they couldn't do maths and English and anyway, as one lad put it, "I don't care how many bricks it takes to build a wall. That's the Foreman's job."

They could all lay bricks or carpenter wood but they couldn't get this minimum qualification - and therefore, they told me, wouldn't be able to work in their chosen trade. What is going to happen - or what is happening to them, by now?

Their idea of food was that it came in frozen packets.

Thoroughly nice lads who had given up on Society because it had given up on them - and I didn't count, apparently. They were intrigued that I wore an ear-stud in my right ear lobe but wasn't gay - or so I said, they said.
 
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