Barcode placement . . . I'm going to harm someone

[Falor]

The bane of my surge checking (aside from when some department's markdown printer is screwing up and I have to type in that twenty digit monstrosity) is a certain brand of refrigerated coffee creamers. Their new 'environmentally friendlier, using less packaging' bottle has those little grooves lined up the same way as the UPC. If the UPC were turned ninety degrees it's be fine, but that dip at the same orientation just kills it.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Today while backstocking stuff off the truck, I came across some Christmas garlands where the UPC has letters of some kind right in the middle of the barcode. To scan the barcode you have to hit the very top or bottom of the barcode in the right spot.

So I ended up having to type in the UPC by hand, since these garlands also came in boxes without the SKU marked on them.

[ShadowTiger]

I recently had to go get a little tub of Sheetrock compound for a customer at the register because the one he had had NO Barcode on it whatsoever. Turns out the barcode was on a peel-off sticker, and it peeled off in the store.

That should not be...

[Marmalady]

This! This is just all so familiar!

The bags of sweets where the barcodes are printed so poorly that they never scan, to the extent that I now know a load of them by heart from typing them in so often.
The small tubs of ice cream that have no barcode at all (they used to - why did they stop?) and have to be looked up in a book every time.
The big, heavy, cumbersome objects that always have the barcode on the underneath (bonus points if there's something on the top that can fall off and smash if you haven't noticed it)
And my all time favourite, the planter that has been standing out in our garden centre for so long that although it still has a price label stuck to it, the sun, rain and wind have bleached it to the point where it's now just a blank white square of paper. Because there's no need to bother with laminating labels that have to sit outside exposed to the elements, right?

[TheMike]

Yeah, Barcode placement is a pain... luckily we have a rather small hand scanner and can hit almost anywhere... except the ID cards which the issuer kindly placed a "security hologram" directly over.

"Apparently some genius has decided they need to be placed in the armpit of the shirts, so that most of the time I end up having to nearly turn the shirt inside out before I can scan it."
I've seen a few like this.. often there's an RFID tag (the beeper gate ones) under the barcode so they place it where its harder to remove to steal.

[Becks]

people do this? you know how many people tried on those clothes? How many of them could have any number of... things. I'll try it on quickly, but I'm not wearing it until its washed. The unwashed masses are generally unwashed.

There's that, and some dyes give me hives.