Uh-Oh

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Zeitgeisters,

At my local IGA Supermarket in South Perth when an item isn’t scanned properly a little voice goes “Uh-Oh!” When its really busy there might be something like four or five of these every minute from all five checkouts. So there may be as many as twenty-five of these exclamations in a sixty second period.

My question is this: why do people who make things, think that an electronic voice repeating any phrase or sound is cute, funny or necessary? Don’t we have years of experience that demonstrates that any synthetic voice is annoying from about the third time you hear it?

To take an obvious example, don’t we all hate the synthetic voice on the ‘phone that directs us to press 4 if we wish to speak to a consultant?

Yes. Yes we do.

Elevate,

MT

Comments

Graeme Watson said…
I find it amusing because it's exactly the same sound the ICQ (the precusrser to MSM) had to announce an incomming message.

I just stand there and think that they are all involved in some sort of online grocery debate.
8:55 am
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