Why I miss ICA

This will be a rather unnecessary entry, as exactly all my three readers are Swedish and have been to Australia, but I'm writing it anyway.

I would like to point out how mind bogglingly inefficient the Australian supermarket check-out system is. Or perhaps it's the Swedish one that's simply genius. You be the judge.

In Australia, when you go to pay for your items, you walk up to a check-out conveyor belt much like in Sweden. However, the groceries belonging to the customer ahead of you are ALWAYS in the way. This is because past the check-out person scanning your purchases, there is no belt. The groceries have nowhere to go. Instead some imbecile has come up with the idea of having the person at the till pack your groceries for you. This creates a painfully slow system where you, the customer, is left standing idle, waiting for each bag to be packed so that you can put it in your trolley.

In addition to this, the Aussies have not been taught the system of not building grocery towers and to put all the bar codes facing the correct way to be scanned efficiently.

In Sweden, the long and spacious conveyor belt continues past the check-out person. The groceries are scanned  and sent on their way towards the shopper, who then packs them themselves. Now, the ingenius part. The conveyor belt can be divided in half to make the groceries go either left or right. This means that you can pay once all your groceries are scanned, then go to the end of the belt and continue packing whilst the next customer's groceries are being scanned and sent down the other half of the belt. SO EFFICIENT. No waiting, even when the person ahead of you has done their weekly shopping for a family of six.