Okay, this is somewhat of a small thing, perhaps irrelevant in the grander scheme of things. But is anyone else in Japan (or anywhere else where they do this) tired of how cashiers in stores hand stuff to you at the end of the checkout process?

I have noticed that in most such situations, the clerk will hand you your member’s card (if you have one), your change in bills, your receipt, and your change in coins, all in one pile at one time. Does anyone else here hate that?

It seems dumb. First of all, you usually are holding your wallet in one hand, so you only have one hand free. They put all that in one hand when all else is finished, so while they go on to the next shopper and you’re supposed to move on, you must somehow (a) put the member’s card back in your wallet, (b) but the bills back in the wallet in a different place, (c) put the receipt wherever you need to put it, and (d) put the coins back in your pocket or in your change purse, all while both hands are full.

It’s even more dumb when you realize that it’s not necessary–while you are just standing there with your hand out, the clerk could hand you the card back first, and while you put that away, they could get the bills and hand them to you, and when you’ve put them away, they’d be ready to hand you the coins, and by the time you’ve put that away, the receipt would finally have printed out and perforated, and they could hand that to you, and you walk away ready to go.

Instead, you stand there for 10-15 seconds with your hand out ready to go, while the clerk picks up the card, counts out the bills, picks out the change, and then sits there waiting for the receipt to print out–and then they give you the whole pile, where you get to put four things in four different places with one hand.

Who thought up that stupid way of doing things? And why don’t they figure out more or less immediately that it’s the dumbest way to do things? I would try to explain it to the clerks, except (a) it would take a few minutes and they would just stare blankly at you or nod and then keep on doing it, (b) it would be tiring to take the time to explain this to five clerks a day, and (c) you know that they’d just do it again the next time anyway.

Some clerks do it right–hand back the card, then count out the bills for you, then give you the “komakai” (small) change, and then hand you the receipt. They did that for me today at the 100-yen shop, it worked smoothly. Then I go to the Pororoca supermarket in my building and they give me the hands-full, you-sort-it-out-magically solution.

Like I said, a trivial, irrelevant thing. And I know you’re not supposed to sweat the small stuff. The thing is, I really hate inefficiency like that. Kind of like the traffic lights that are timed to alternate so you get stopped at three red lights in a row when there’s no traffic-sense reason to do so. Kind of like in a shop, when they take a box you just bought which already has individually-wrapped pieces in a plastic sleeve inside the box, and then they wrap it in paper, put it in a bigger box, then put that in a bag for you. Or why more shops don’t use a common feeder line instead of making you try to guess which line will go fastest, or why Japanese supermarkets have no Express lane.

This is not the kind of stuff that takes a genius to figure out that it’s stupid as hell–it is plainly evident. That makes it all the more frustrating, especially when you see it several times a day.